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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

#3

Post by bane »

I've had this happen a few times over the years. It's really tough.

In one case it was a very popular and looked-up-to engineer. Out for a jog one day and an unknown heart defect dropped him dead before he hit the ground. People were very broken up over it and donated food and all sorts of things to his widow and kids. I think a small charity was set up in his name.

In another, nobody really knew the guy outside of his group. But he had had a very bad cough for a few months that to be honest, had become kind of a workplace annoyance and was blamed for everything from loss of productivity to a rash of URIs that ran through the office for a few weeks. He didn't show up one day and everybody assumed he had finally decided to take some time off and attend his cough. The next day it was announced he had died. There was no further information and nobody outside of his immediate group and management really knew anything about him or how to reach out to his family. His desk was filled the next week.

Finally, a guy I knew and my friends all used to work with, broke off to try his hand in the restaurant business. Things didn't go well and mired in debt and suffering from some mental illness issues took his wife and daughter hostage and committed suicide (his wife and kid made it out with very minor wounds). I think everybody was in such shock over such a mild mannered person doing such a crazy thing that people wanted to get over it as quickly as possible and pretend like we all didn't know him at all.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#4

Post by pgrote »

Great writing.

I worked with a business analyst once who dropped off his laptop for me to take a look at on a Friday afternoon. Odd, because we did regularly scheduled maintenance and he brought his external monitor in.

On Monday morning his mother called to report he had killed himself.

It was so abrupt and took the group by surprise. I do remember thinking that it would change everything. Life went on, though.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#5

Post by Refefer »

Reminds me a little too much of the regrets of the dying[1]. Ingrained deep within our mammalian brains is the instinctual desire for community and personal intimacy. We'd do well to remember ourselves and what makes us happy before we're reflecting from our own death bed.

[1] http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#7

Post by bsirkia »

bane wrote: post #3

I've had this happen a few times over the years. It's really tough. In one case it was a very popular and looked-up-to engineer. Out for a jog one day and an unknown heart defect dropped him dead before he hit the ground. People were very broken up over it and donated food and all sorts of things to his widow and kids. I think a small charity was set up in his name. In another, nobody really knew the guy outside of h…

How did those deaths affect your workplace? Do people try to hang out and talk more or do people generally just carry on normally?

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#8

Post by jboggan »

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 promising cancer drug trial was derailed because we couldn't articulate why the compounds were chosen for study in the first place.

He died of a heart attack at age 42 after pulling three 90+ hour weeks. It completely changed my attitude towards work. May he rest in peace.

Re: What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies

#10

Post by tn13 »

When I was working for an Indian out sourcing giant we had a 9 floored building each with a wide gallery. I liked working beyond 8pm and when I was about leave at 9pm I noticed a small crowd near one of the parking entrance.

Soon found that someone had jumped from one of those galleries. An sms from the individual to his elder brother blamed the extreme work pressure. Knowing his team and manager, surely that did not seem to be the case.

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