First, I was not a VIP being shown around. I knew an old Air Force pilot through the Civil Air Patrol and it was he who took me there. BTW, it was not a special entree; this place had regular visiting hours for the public at large (we just had access on “off hours”). So, I don’t think they did anything special for me.
Second, I gathered that this was before there was computerization of a lot of the separations of various flights and I damn well believe that it was a stressful job under those circumstances. You may not. We have our opinions on that.
You must have entered a strange air controller facility if someone was acting crazy and you got the impression that the controllers considered their job a joke. What I saw was a group of people with intense concentration on what they were doing.
I will grant you the real possibility that times have changed, particularly with regard to computers making their jobs quite different from what I saw. That being the case, our experiences differ considerably.
Yeah. "New York Center" is real strange. "Centers" handle the at-altitude IFR air traffic in this country. There are 22 of them now for the entire country. About NYARTCC, Wikipedia says
New York Center enjoys a unique and interesting history, and was the world's first Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC). Collectively, the center owns 3,270,000 square miles (8,500,000 km2) of controllable airspace, and over the years has remained one of the busiest sectors of airspace in the world.I wonder what impression you would get if you observed a joke/mock crisis obviously staged for your benefit as soon as you walked into the place. (And I doubt that the guys there thought of this just for me.)
I was no VIP. I was a friend. I was treated af if I were "one of the guys." This was in the late 70s. They had computers then.
I did once visit another ATC facility as a stranger. This was the tower at St. Louis (Lambert). There everything seemed businesslike if not extremely busy. I didn't see their cafeteria or TV room, if either existed. But then a "tower" is really a small operation as compared with a "center."
ML/NJ