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What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

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Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#41

Post by michaelochurch »

notastartup wrote: post #14

Colin’s boss is on vacation this week. He recorded a message by webcam. He’s lying on his side on a hotel bed. He talks about the clarity of Colin’s press releases as palm trees shudder in the wind behind him. “I wish I had gotten to know him better,” he says. “He seemed nice.” Reading this kind of made me rage...and sad. Tragic, but the inequality, and the indifference free market creates, makes me steer clear away…

I'd rather be a writer or an artist working on one's creation and dropping dead than die for someone's marginal materialistic desires.

It doesn't seem to me like he died "for" work.

People die, often randomly, and sometimes at surprisingly young ages. It's a Gompertz curve. With the Internet, we hear about it a lot more than we would have, 25 or 50 years ago (even though early death was more common in the past).

I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but I don't think we have any good reason to assume his death was work-related.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#42

Post by busterarm »

Things get a bit more strange when you don't meet the people you work with. I work somewhere with a large staff that's entirely remote. In the five years that I've been working here, we've had three deaths (so that's about 1 in 400). One was a very grotesque suicide by somebody who was very unhappy and everyone they interacted with knew it. The other two were strokes. The whole company gets an email when this happens but little more than that. I don't even think we offer grief counseling.

I'm very senior here and know that I worked with the people but don't remember any of their names by now. Very few people do, in fact. Only one person I know remembers the name of the guy who killed himself.

There is one name that I remember though. We had a guy who had a very debilitating stroke and tried to come back to work. After about a month of some incredibly strange behavior from him, he was let go. He just never came back the same after his stroke.

Sitting down all day is really bad for your health. So is not having regular interaction with other people. When working remote it's really important to have some regular group activity that you do.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#43

Post by jbm »

theorique wrote: post #32
jboggan wrote: post #8

This has happened in my experience before, and it is one of the strongest reasons for good source control that is infrequently considered. It was a tragedy when a very wonderful and dear researcher in our group died suddenly, especially to his three children and wife that he left behind. It was also a great loss as well that we could never recover some key bits of source code from his computer, and that a very promis…

In Japan it happens so often they have their own word for it: karoshi . Sararimen fall over dead at their desks, and others simply avert their eyes and focus on their work while a manager urgently calls for white-gloved personnel to spirit the corpse away to the undertaker. Nobody even misses a beat. The work must go on.

Karoushi incidents are national news and are rare (although overwork is common, for reasons that are too much to get into in this post). These also happen in Korea and other parts of Asia; more so than Japan now, possibly.

I'm breath taken by the casual disregard for life that you imply the Japanese have.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#44

Post by jakejake »

This happened to me last year. A young guy with a wife and two kids hit his head getting out of a cab and died a few days later from sudden complications. He was the life of the party type of guy, kinda like the Kramer of the group. Really well liked. I had a voicemail from him on my phone that I hadn't listened to yet.

It really does make you think for a while that you shouldn't take any day for granted. But, just like in the article, after a few months we all just settle back into our routines.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#45

Post by DigitalJack »

_wp3r wrote: post #38

I have personally experienced this on five occasions in the work place. I can say that only once did no one have any idea that there was an issue. I have seen CO's, junior enlisted, and the inbetween. The powers of self loathing are in my experience not the driver, the most dangerous force is self confirmed failure. The type or scale of the failure does not matter, only the persons value of that failure matter. That…

Are you talking about suicide? The man in the article died of natural causes.

Even so, I totally agree with regards to failure and its magnitude not necessarily (or even frequently) having a relationship to the self loathing one can feel due to that failure.

I struggle with this a couple times a year. Holding one's self to overly high standards can be unhealthy.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#46

Post by bane »

bsirkia wrote: post #30
bane wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the first case, everybody really took a day or two to come to terms that it had happened. Work really ground to a halt. People showed up to work, but took lots of time out of the office in coffee shops talking and processing the event. We named a room after him and had some ceremonies, everybody showed up to his funeral. It really took a few weeks for everything to get back to normal. In the other two people reall…

Right. What time of year was it in the first case? I would think it's easier to get over if it's the summer or around Christmas when people are going home for vacations.

That's a good question, it was...10, 11 years ago? I think it was spring or early summer. Looking back, I think the endless ceremonies, reminiscing, room naming...his office was a shrine for a couple months and nobody emptied it of his personal affects until his widow came and asked...I think it extended out the difficult feelings longer than it would have if everybody had been driven back to work or gone on vacations or something.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#47

Post by atgm »

theorique wrote: post #32
jboggan wrote: post #8

This has happened in my experience before, and it is one of the strongest reasons for good source control that is infrequently considered. It was a tragedy when a very wonderful and dear researcher in our group died suddenly, especially to his three children and wife that he left behind. It was also a great loss as well that we could never recover some key bits of source code from his computer, and that a very promis…

In Japan it happens so often they have their own word for it: karoshi . Sararimen fall over dead at their desks, and others simply avert their eyes and focus on their work while a manager urgently calls for white-gloved personnel to spirit the corpse away to the undertaker. Nobody even misses a beat. The work must go on.

This makes no sense.

過労死 is just a compound word basically consisting of "too much work death."

Using your "they have a word for it so it's common and blithely ignored" logic, you could say that "infanticide" happens all the time and is ignored in English-speaking countries simply because there's a word for it.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#48

Post by jvagner »

RougeFemme wrote: post #33

At one company where I worked, I resented the fact that the executive assistant to the CEO made more than I; after all, she was non-technical and "simply a secretary". Then she had a heart attack at her desk and died instantly. I felt guilty for my thoughts and resolved to find out exactly what her job entailed. About 2 years later, her replacement was struck by an aneurysm at her desk and died several weeks later. I…

i don't mean this crassly: that CEO probably needs more than one assistant, from the sounds of it.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#49

Post by ekianjo »

theorique wrote: post #32
jboggan wrote: post #8

This has happened in my experience before, and it is one of the strongest reasons for good source control that is infrequently considered. It was a tragedy when a very wonderful and dear researcher in our group died suddenly, especially to his three children and wife that he left behind. It was also a great loss as well that we could never recover some key bits of source code from his computer, and that a very promis…

In Japan it happens so often they have their own word for it: karoshi . Sararimen fall over dead at their desks, and others simply avert their eyes and focus on their work while a manager urgently calls for white-gloved personnel to spirit the corpse away to the undertaker. Nobody even misses a beat. The work must go on.

What the hell are you talking about? People don't die from work exhaustion at their desks in Japan. I live in Japan and I've never even remotely heard of anything like that through my years here. And Karoshi is not even used the way you pretend it's used. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#50

Post by jusben1369 »

RougeFemme wrote: post #34
officemonkey wrote: post #18

When this happens to people in their 20s, it's notable. Sadly, as I approach 50, it happens in my workplace, in my private life, and in my family pretty much every other year.

A few of the folks that I know who are approaching 50 have started checking the obits in the paper frequently, so that they won't have an awkward encounter when they run into an acquaintance at the store, on the street, etc. and ask "How's so-and-so/our mutual acquaintance/your spouse?"

That seems a wee bit premature.
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