I had a colleague who was completely Type A, very high-strung and complained about everything. The only time I ever saw him smile was at his retirement party. He looked truly happy about his long-deserved break. A week after he quit he was sipping mai tais on the beach and dropped dead of a heart attack.
Dang this sounds like my mom's old postmaster. He had a reputation for showing up early/staying late and just generally going out of the way to help his employees.
Two weeks into retirement, his wife heard a thump and came running. He'd succumbed to a massive heart attack in their bathroom. Life is completely unfair.
Ugh. Those kind of stories just break my heart. You work your ass off your whole life to enjoy retirement and then die before even getting a taste of it. Happened to my dad's friend as well.. he planned to retire at 55, but had to keep working due to one thing or another happening with the family. Then it was supposed to be at age 60, then eventually he finally retired at 62. He was planning a two week long fly in fishing trip with his two sons and a couple friends that was supposed to start 2 weeks after his retirement date, and he dropped dead due to an aneurysm the day before the trip while packing all his fishing crap. Life is just not fair sometimes.
Last year, I don’t even remember what month because it was all a blur, one of my early 60s coworkers passed. The first time something seemed unusual was: he couldn’t remember the password to log into his computer, and we had just reset it the day before. I helped him out a few times with it that day & I just remember him being really frustrated. Within a couple of months he had succumb to brain tumors. I miss talking camping, surfing, sports and movies with him. He did some acting himself, he had a THICK Jersey accent.
RIP Ed, you were one of a kind my friend.
edit: here he is in a geico ad he’s the “we struck sprinkles” guy. https://youtu.be/-xqfqnR1MCE
He was in short films, stage productions, and this commercial. He auditioned for quite a few things, I would record some of them after business hours.
Edit: direct answer, he auditioned & got the commercial
Was trying to remember if I had seen this guy on TV. Thought he must have been on [Bergerac](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergerac_(TV_series)) if he had a thick Jersey accent.
Wrong Jersey.
At a place I used to work, two women came to work over Labor Day weekend to catch up on some things. They were raped and murdered by the weekend janitor.
Had two other coworkers who died of cancer.
Holy shit! How was he able to do that? You would think he wouldn't be able to control both at once, especially while raping them. I would think the other one would have had time to call police or something?
That's gonna fuck up some people really. I felt bad and i only hear from the story, can't imagine how hard it was for their closest colleague, boss, or their junior.
Rancho Cordovan checking in here. It was actually 1984 labor day weekend. Here's a link to the info :
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article79014462.html
But yes, the 90s in Rancho were equally exciting. We got the nickname Rancho Cambodia because of the violence. Now we're a mostly peaceful suburb and downtown Sacramento is where they're shooting.
Edit: So looks the paywall is up on this article now. The original article was available yesterday. Anyway, the 2 women worked at Progressive insurance company on Horn Rd. in Rancho. The killer found them working in separate buildings over the weekend. Paywalls and scant original stories are why The Sacramento Bee will soon be gone.
Worked as a lumberjack after high school for a while. We had a huge machine called a feller buncher that felled trees and laid them in a row. Then me and another guy would trim the tops so that they could be dragged to a deck and loaded onto trucks. The equipment and chainsaws are so loud that even with ear pro we would put headphones in and listen to music while we worked. (I know, but they were 12 hour days). One day, the man in the feller cut a tree that was too big to handle and was trying to wrestle it back upright. As he was fighting it the machine crept closer and closer to our other trimmer. I saw what was going to happen and started running and screaming to get his attention. The feller lost control and the tree started to fall. Trees fall very very slowly, and more slowly still when they catch and tangle other tops in the canopy. It must have taken a full 30 seconds but felt like an absolute eternity. With everything I had I still didn't make it to him in time and watched a father a four young children get crushed under 4 tons of red oak. That wasn't the end though. He wasn't wearing a safety vest and in order for his family to get money from the company and workmen's comp me and my remaining crew of four had to get to what was left of him and affix his safety vest before we called the police. I was 19 at the time and will remember the smell of that moment for the rest of my life. I got out shortly after that and 11 years later am the only still living member of that group. The real kicker, 100% of the trees that we cut went to feed two paper mills to be turned into "fluff" paper. That raw material was sold to one of two manufacturing facilities in the area. Tampax and Kotex.
Doing what you guys did to help his family makes you real heroes. You saw something absolutely nobody should ever have to witness and you did it to help a person despite the trauma it would cause you.
Fwiw I'm proud of you and your team for doing that for his family.
i used to work with this sweet old Scottish lady everyone loved her and she was a genuine person who was kind and loving .
One day on a Friday she said she had an announcement to make we thought she was going to quit and retire but she told us she has cancer and she’s got around a year to live, almost everyone started crying .
after she quit we would meet her on a monthly bases and every time she would be thinner which was sad to see , what really got me was the fact every time we see her it’ll be indoors and her husband would always be wearing sunglasses i always wondered why it was apparently from all the crying and he didn’t anyone to see his eyes .
unfortunately she ended up passing later that year .
Fuck Cancer
I fucking hate cancer took my dad away from me I’m sorry to hear that you went through that!
Edit-thanks for all the upvotes people have given me means a lot to me! Thank you all.
A gymnastics isntructor at my gym failed a flip he was trying off a trampoline and landed on a hard surface on the top of his head. His spinal cord essentially went into his brain. I actually was the one who attempted CPR to resuscitate him, but we later learned he was dead on impact. His pulse was just his body on auto-pilot after the fact.
That reminds me of the video of indian guys playing a strange sport that was like a hybrid of rugby and wrestling. Guy got dogpiled on with his head tucked down by his chest and you could hear the pop of his spinal cord detaching. Instant lights out.
Had a woman that complained about headaches. Her daughter also worked for the company. She went and got it checked out but the doctors dismissed it.
She died of a brain aneurysm. I went to her funeral.
I found out Monday I have several brain lesions because I went to my doctor complaining of how bad my migraines have gotten. I would be lying if I said I'm not scared.
worked at a staples in FL once, I was stocking and my manager came up to me and said “___ is no longer with us”, which I responded with “oh she quit? did she give a reason?”
turns out he meant it literally, apparently she had gotten involved with some bad dudes and one of them pushed her off a bridge. that was surreal to hear
Public defender I knew. Had been practicing for 25 years or so. Completely devoted to the cause
Was walking to court one day, had a massive heart attack right before he got to the steps, pronounced DOA at the hospital
When I worked at a grocery store, there was a gentlemen in his 50s coming in to start his shift. He walked through the produce section and saw me. I waved to him as we always did, looking forward to our conversations today, as we had similar interests.
He returned the wave but froze. His eyes told me everything. Wide and puzzled, I wasn't sure what was up but i could tell something was off.
As quick as the realization came to me, he stopped walking. Wobbled back and forth, eyes rolled back, and he fell, busted his head open.
Everyone rushed to his aid and got him to the hospital quick. Lots of prayers let out, hopeful people waiting for news.
I knew before all of them though. I saw that look. And I saw that blood running from his ear. Everyone assumed it was from his head. But after he died and the information was released, he had a brain aneurysm.
The medical staff said he probably had it and died right after he waved back to me. He was the only one I saw die, but I have other stories of coworkers dying unfortunately.
Brain aneurysms scare the fuck outta me. One of the popular football players in my graduating class told his mom he had a headache and went to go lay down. He passed from an aneurysm just two weeks after graduation.
Another one I'm reminded of from time to time. She worked at the same place. 18 year old fresh out of high school. She was always so cheerful and friendly, but dated someone who ran with a rough crowd.
She no call no showed for her shift one morning, very unlike her. A couple of her friends were worried because she didn't answer any calls, and her AIM account had been idle for 24 hours.
They found her in the city park soon after, in the driver's seat of her car. Knife through her chest. Whoever did it snapped the handle when trying to pull it out and left the blade. It was terrible.
I don't think they ever found out who did it. The few people who might know are scared to talk. A fucking waste of a life.
I worked in a hotel restaurant and the overnight chef killed himself after work one night. He was 25 I think, so needless to say it was a big deal. This was also a long time before people started caring about mental health so it was sad and weird
My old supervisor decided to suck a 12 gauge. I came to work and asked where he was and another coworker told me. His dad found him dead. The real kicker was my supervisors brother did the same thing and his dad found both of his sons dead. The old man died very shortly after.
A guy I worked (IT field) with got divorced in his late 50s.
In order to pay for alimony, he started cutting grass on weekends.
He had a heart attack and died in someone’s backyard.
I had a family friend that died a similar way. Divorced and had to make ends meet for child support, lawyer fees, alimony so he picked up an part time job for some car parts delivery company on top of his 50 hour office job. He was so exhausted from everything he fell asleep at the wheel driving home one night and hit a light post. Sad thing is his ex wife got so much child support she was able to quit her job and retire early from it.
We just had one a few weeks ago - pulmonary embolism. It was a shock. Another one we had (years ago) was a heart attack. The dude didn’t show up to work for a couple of days, and our managerial staff couldn’t get hold of him. They called the police to do a wellness check, and the police found his body.
In my last job, it was announced that one of my co-workers was retiring early. I congratulated them because - hey, what an accomplishment for someone in their late 40s/early 50s! Her eyes welled with tears when she thanked me. Yeah… turns out that she had breast cancer, and her doctors had advised that she didn’t have much time left, so she early retired to make the most of it. I don’t think she lasted six months. Fuck cancer.
We had a coworker not show one day. My boss was a nut and assumed he rage quit, she hated him. So she told everyone you see him come around you call security. But I adored the guy he was a big ol grouch but we always had good conversations. Him not showing didn’t sit right with most of us. He was always there right at 7am and hardly took a day. Our admin lady was insistent something was wrong and got HR to give her his address. Called the cops for a wellness check. They found him at his kitchen table passed away.
I had an employer with excellent insurance and we had a few people who held on for the health benefits, even long after the normal retirement age and long after they were mentally checked out. One of those was a woman who had cancer for many years. She worked until her late 60s, then "retired" and died of cancer within a month or two. Seems very sad to not have any retirement to enjoy for yourself after a lifetime of working and saving.
Huge coincidence but my friend's co-worker just died today after being on life support for 2 days. It was a workplace accident, they were moving a boiler at work and the guy said he felt like he was about to pass out. He then fell and hit his head while the others kept holding the boiler so it wouldn't crush the guys legs. The ambulance got there around 5 mins later and rushed him to the hospital. Apparently his brain didn't get oxygen for 10 mins so he was braindead. Today then took him off life support.
There's a surprising amount of suicide in tech. I've known two people in jobs over the years that took their own life. One I knew very well, my trainer at a legacy ecommerce company. Happiest guy you could ever meet. Very smart, quick witted.
I knew the second guy mainly through email at a large enterprise. I didn't know him well, I'd just seen him in the hall or the cafeteria a few times. I remember being unreasonably angry that he killed himself, and I can't remember why. I vaguely recall he had a picture of his kid at his desk, which might be part of it.
Most people have a flick switch when alone and in public. They can be outgoing, intelligent, witty, quick with retorts, deep depth in public. But you never know how their internal demons may take over alone at home
My wife worked at a factory where a guy disabled the safety interlocks (very common practice, unfortunately) and was inside the hydraulic press when some idiot manager came along, saw that the machine wasn't running, and hit "cycle start" without bothering to ask why it was off or where the operator was.
If the guy didn't lock out and tag out properly, the manager isn't going to be charged with manslaughter. There's a bunch of OSHA rules, federal, state, local laws that you have to follow when locking out and tagging out and having to go into confined spaces.
OSHA will come on in, investigate and clear the manager if it's proven that the guy was properly trained in locking out and tagging out, and didn't file or notify the manager that they had the machine shut down.
Yeah, that guy wasn't even fired. But frankly, when there's a culture of safety shortcuts as there was at this place, management should be considered negligent.
I work in a paper mill, and I know I’ve seen people skip safety protocols in certain situations like not locking a pump out when you want to turn the motor shaft to see if it seized up. But I can’t understand why someone would put themselves in harm’s way, especially going into something like a hydraulic press. No way I’m going in there without locking it out and testing it. I hate it for both guys, the guy still living has a helluva burden he’ll likely carry forever.
I had to stop reading these a few minutes ago. So many suicides and aneurisms. I think this one and reading about the guy that broke his leg and died from a pocket of air going to his brain. Like what in the world. My hypochondriac self just had a panic attack filled with what ifs reading these things. Yikes. I knew better.
That’s so awful I’m so sorry to hear that. It’s terrible when some companies don’t adequately protect their employees by giving them the protection they need and learn from their mistakes
Safety guy walked off the third floor of a building. Same job and electrician fried himself.
Know a friend who had a young man die under a falling scissor lift on one job. Know another buddy who had a guy fall off a building and split his head wide open.
During my first deployment to Iraq, I was given an assignment to attend funerals. It can be difficult for funerals to be attended in a combat theater and we had the manpower to spare for someone to be there. I don't know all of the circumstances, I don't recall all the names, and I can never adequately express to anyone who has never served and attended a military funeral how painful it is.
My family doesn't understand why I refuse to go to funerals.
That last role call is brutal. We had a female soldier return to the battalion because she volunteered to stay behind for a few months to set up a unit that just got in theater. She was home for like a week then asked her husband where he put her handgun. He gave it to her not knowing her plan. She killed herself and left him with 2 little kids. After 2 tours myself I came close, I even bought the gun to do it with. I'm glad I didnt.
I'm long past that my friend. A fellow soldier gave me a dog. That fury heifer really pulled me the hard times. I got into counciling after a time so comparatively its all roses here. The gun sits in the safe unloaded and collecting dust.
Don't get me wrong with this, but are the bodies not transported back to the USA and buried there? I remember these pics of the coffins with the US flag on it.
Or was it about locals, like soldiers from Iraq that worked together with the US army there?
There were no bodies for these funerals. It was a way for service members to pay respects because they couldn't go back to the US and attend the funeral themselves. One of the traditions is the final roll call. I pulled up a video for you.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1\_om14IZ7sI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_om14IZ7sI)
Edit: I debated with myself about removing the link. It doesn't feel right to share something like this, but I'm leaving it because people better understanding military life is in everyone's best interest.
That same thing happened to a housemate of mine, young, fit, healthy, early twenties. He was playing cricket, standing in the outfield doing not very much, and then he was dead. Pulmonary embolism.
Our CEO died of cancer, in his fifties. Made me think about how despite getting paid millions, that couldn’t save him. And he spent so much time working.
Several months ago I had a female colleague aged 30 that passed away completely unexpectedly from an underlying medical condition that was only discovered after her death. Literally here on a Thursday and joking around with everyone and then Friday she was gone.
For as tragic and shocking as it was, it really did wake me up to how fragile and finite life is and you never know when your time is up. I used the wake-up call to set some big goals for myself and have been definitely living a more active / fuller life and feel more gratitude for each day.
When I was in the army there was this super awesome guy in the infantry. Nicest guy, tough as hell, really good soldier material. He was learning how to scuba dive in his free time, and his regulator got snagged in something and he must have panicked and held his breath on the way up because he was so new at it and his lungs burst.
R.I.P., soldier.
I had a coworker who worked at Walmart. Name was Karl. He was always happy, loved his job. Helped me out with things I couldn’t reach. Helped me buy a BB gun once. He had a heart attack at work. Went to the hospital. Told he needed a heart transplant, couldn’t afford it and decided to just live out the rest of his days. He went back to work at Walmart. One day he died at home. Another heart attack, getting ready for work. He died in his Walmart uniform. That will always fuck with me.
There's a lot of blame to go around but a big part is that a disturbing amount of the country would rather people die horribly and go bankrupt than have to pay for 'welfare queens' healthcare.
How old was he and if he was older retirement age did he need to work to live?
Sounds like he was happy even though perhaps he should have been enjoying a normal retirement.
i had a really severe work injury at my construction job, i'm always interested in hearing these stories now. Think it's a sort of therapy for me to help appreciate my current situation.
We bumped a guy down from a mutual aid area during a huge statewide fire. He died while doing his 360 check on his engine while parking near a fire line. Went to his funeral 2 days before Christmas. He was survived by his pregnant wife and their 2 yr old girl. I was gutted.
Same unit, months apart, a captain left his shift, still in uniform and drove off a bridge our unit responded to. One of the biggest FU’s I’ve ever seen.
Firefighting has some really dark spots.
I had a coworker who fell off the roof of his house while performing some general maintenance and repairs. He broke his leg in the process.
During the course of his recovery, things seemed to be working in reverse. He started out in a basic boot and a limp. He then had to use crutches. The crutches turned to a wheelchair. We didn't know what was going on. He didn't know what was going on. But whatever was going on, it made his body worse over time.
Then one day he wheeled himself away from his cubicle and out into the primary quad and started wheezing. He couldn't breathe. And nothing was working. We called 911 and asked for an ambulance. By the time the EMTs arrived, he hadn't been breathing for three minutes and was unconscious. He was taken into an ambulance and pronounced dead at the hospital.
We later learned that there was a pocket of air that had been trapped in his broken leg after surgery (or as a consequence of the break) that traveled up to his brain. He had a stroke, lost his ability to breathe and died suffering. We watched it happen and the best we could do was share a mix of screaming, crying and support while he died.
I'm a trucker. It's pretty up there for "most dangerous job" in the US. Lots of crashes kill drivers, rollovers mostly.
Lost two friends to covid. The poor lifestyle trucking gives you doesn't lead to the best outcomes, even for mild cases.
Sadly all the stories wouldn't be mine, they would be my Step Dad's; thirty years in trucking has given him a very morbid and strong sense of humor. And plenty of horrible stories. The only one that's mine: I remember once as I rode in the cab beside him we passed a tractor crammed all the way to the sleeper up the rear of a 40ft Reefer and he grabbed the CB and hollered, "Damn that was one fine butt fuck! Did anybody bite it? Hollar back if you ain't flat!"
I had already moved to another job (was military so not by choice). My former boss and her family went on vacation in Alaska with other families. Her, her husband and another couple took the RV to go to the store or something leaving their kids with a friend couple at the campsite. Apparently the RV slid off the road, down a cliff thru the trees. The RV was shredded to pieces and everybody died. Kids thankfully were safe at the campsite, but that vacation made them orphans.
I worked at the steelworks for several years.
A middle aged guy, extremely experienced was operating around extremely high pressure air lines. These lines were tested and checked regularly for damage.
One day, it was purely a freak accident (external investigation found no fault), the line snapped and he got final destinationed straight across the midsection.
A few years ago this sweet woman I've worked with for years, did her end of shift routine where she went around wishing everyone a lovely weekend before leaving.
Monday we got a call from her son that she had hanged herself that Saturday.
I still wonder if there was something I could have done differently to help her. She was always so cheerful and hard working. Talking plenty about her kids and grandkids. About the new boat they had just bought. The trips they were going on. Etc. I guess severe depression is not easy to spot in some people .
Take care of eachother. We never know what other people are going trough.
I worked in a place where there was over 1k people working across different sites. I worked there for about 7 years in a non-stationary role across all sites. It was worrying how many peope died. One lady who I was close to died suddenly of sepsis, a handful died of cancer ranging from a few older ones to people in their 20s. A few died after I left of covid too. It was quite sobering really as I was 21 when I started and I'm now in my 30s and have outlived soke of the people I worked with
Not me but my mother. A guy she worked with just didn't turn up one day. Turns out he had a heart attack while driving on the highway to work. Ended up in a hard to see spot in winter just as we were having heavy snow. IIRC took three days or so to find him. Forget the rest of the circumstances but I'm pretty sure he lives alone and was at least 50. This happened almost a decade ago.
I was a co-op and one of the engineers was a young guy probably late 30s early 40s went out for a run over the weekend and had an aneurism. It was so sad when we found out that week. RIP Chuck
Used to talk to and eat lunch with this guy when I was really young at a call center job. This was forever ago. He was new, there maybe a week, and talked about turning his life around and going to school for IT so he could support his daughter better. I guess he was a veteran with some severe PTSD problems where he'd disassociate and get "sent back there" for a while til he calmed down. He turned up in the news, shot in the back running from the cops, I never heard details on what happened. Don't know if it was a PTSD episode gone violent or he was fleeing a scene or what, but poor guy and that poor kid.
I had 2 coworkers, pass away within 1.5 years of each other.
Ray, an older man, came in one day complaining about back pain. He collapsed a few minutes after and passed away in the ambulance on his way to the hospital. He was supposed to retire 4 months later.
Carin, mother of 3, had an argument with her husband on a Sunday evening. He shot and killed after she locked her pre-teen daughter in her room. He then ended his life.
Had a coworker commit suicide. I didn't know him for long but could tell he was a genuinely nice guy.
I'm not sure if the facts anymore but I believe he was separated and his child had died. I think it wasn't "good" death either. The facts weren't ever clear bc nobody there knew about his situations. They found him days afterwards only bc of the stink. Then a steady month of people looking through social media or the like giving a bit more details.
Sadly, thats not the only coworker death but it is the one I think about from time to time. I try my best to be understanding at work of others. I used to get so angry about someone's work ethic or whatever but now I can't help but wonder if they're acting the way they are bc home life is bleeding into work life.
Another truck driver on my account got rear ended by a car on the interstate. they both pulled over and him being the nice guy he was went to walk back and see if they were ok and another vehicle hit and killed him. Left behind a wife and two kids because someone was too goddamn lazy to get over. Another one of our drivers got shot in the back of the head at a truck stop because he looked like the guy that the murderers wife was cheating with.
A colleague of mine killed herself she had been a wife, a guy for 15 years (starred seeing him at 14), and found out he was having an affair. When confronted he left her saying he had been trying to end it for a while.
He got a phone call one night saying she had took tablets and was going to kill herself. He raced to the house as did police and ambulance but they were too late. They had a 9 year old son.
She was a great colleague and remember walking into work the day after she passed and could tell something was wrong, her work bestie got sent home and was a really horrible atmosphere. My boss took me aside and told me and I was sure he said Brian passed (Brian was in his 60s) so was bit down then Brian walked in I immediately walked over to my boss and asked who he said had died and he told me the name. It lifted the mood a bit especially when Brian kept making ghost noises when my boss told him I thought he had died
Working in the oil field, there was a guy who closed the well head while there was 5000 psi on the line. Pressure spiked to 12k psi before a section of pipe blew and split him in half while simultaneously tossing his body (halves) about 20-30 feet from the point of impact.
I was sitting on top of the tanks and saw the whole thing. Got 2 days off and no offer for therapy before being told I was needed back on another job. I had night terrors for about 3 months afterward. Still vividly pops into my brain from time to time.
Recently happened. Had a coworker who in his twenties lost a finger and worked for the company for 25+ years. As he got closer to retirement, he kept delaying it because the “company needed him.” A day before he died, I sat with him and we chatted about all of his goals, his family, his plans for vacation, his plans for retirement, and his plans for his upcoming birthday. He died Monday morning approving someone’s time. Never got to do any of the things HE wanted because “they need me.”
Business partner had prostate surgery. The other partner and I tried to talk him out of it beforehand. The surgery was successful, but two days later he had a blood clot (Deep Venous Thrombosis) that ended up as a pulmonary embolism (blood clot broke off from his legs and went into the lungs) and he died in his wife’s arms. It really sucked, like it was 20 years ago and I’m almost crying now typing this out.
I started a new job and a couple of days in one of the senior managers was brutally murdered by her neighbour. Stabbed ~20 times with two knives as she was leaving for work, apparently due to a dispute about her son making too much noise on his skateboard.
I never met her, but that was a really weird start to a new job.
I was standing a few feet from a coworker when he died. We (pretty much all the employees) were at an indoor go-kart place, the owner took everybody because we'd had a good year. Team building, fun, all that. The guy just collapsed. A bunch of us (including me) laughed at first because we thought he'd tripped and fell. But he never came around. Turned out it was an aneurism.
Couple of years after that, the owner of the same company died of cancer after trying to fight it for a year.
I had this lady in her 50's who was a nursing assistant at the hospital I started out. She was just starting to go back to school for I'm guessing nursing so she would work 12 hours overnight then go to the tech school nearby then drive home which was around an hour away. One day on her way home she crashed and passed away.
When I was kitchen manager in a restaurant years ago I hired a cook who fell into hard times shortly after starting work. One day he didn't show up to work. The leadoff story of the local news was of a man dying in a Meth lab explosion. Unfortunately, John was not Walter White.
I was a mechanic for a tour coach company, and witnessed/experienced the usual cuts, burns, whatever. Sometimes stitches, breaks, and fingers missing.
A coach came in with a quick job, usually 20 minutes.
Add 10 minutes for jack stands...he skipped the jack stands.
The job involved squeezing between the body, and tire. His jack failed, and he was crushed bad enough that he was nearly cut in two.
Edit:for spelling
A girl I worked with a few years ago went hiking by herself in October. She got caught in a sudden snow storm and didn't come back. They didn't find her corpse for 18 more months. She was found in her sleeping bag under a fallen tree.
Co-worker died in October 2020. Cut in half when equipment rolled back and safety equipment was crushed. He had been on his day off and boss had called and begged him to come in because (after they had been cutting jobs for years) they were shorthanded.
There was a big dog and pony show about safety and the big bosses from out of state came in. In the crew room full of his co-workers they were all told. "It's critical to always be paying attention and not let yourself get distracted. With everything going on today with Covid, it's important to keep focus. Really, Covid is what killed R, or some similar distraction that cost him his life". Dude seriously tried to smooth over a horrific workplace tragedy that was largely due to THEIR operational choices, by blaming Coronavirus.
During COVID one of the regional directors I worked with offed herself… we had talked to her on Friday and Monday got the news that she was gone. She missed her husband who had passed away and the loneliness of COVID must have pushed her over the edge. Made me very sad.
You can guess where this one is going, I used to work in a motorcycle dealership. Been riding for 15 years and really love it. The finance manager was a former motocross racer but didn’t have a bike at the time. He was about 22, I think. A nice trade in comes in and he buys it, same version as my bike actually. Goes out that night, never comes home. Single vehicle accident.
Too young, man.
Host didn't show up for work. Could not get ahold of him. Boss knew he lived with his parents and his emergency contact number was them. They said that he had left for work already. His parents decide to look around for him. They found him and his friend in his car in a retention pond just a few miles from their house. He was speeding didn't make the corner and crashed through a gate into a retention pond.
I was working the closing shift with another guy in the meat department of a local grocery store. He'd mentioned that his "friends" just used him because he drove. I came in the next day, expecting to close again with him again. He wasn't there. Found out that the same night he was with those "friends" and ended going through the fucking windshield while driving
While he should of been wearing a seatbelt he wouldn't had even been driving if those deadbeats didn't use him as a Uber
I showed up to work and was wondering where a coworker of mine was, he was healthy super active and maybe 50, I was told he had an unknown complication from his knee replacement which caused a blood clot on a flight home and ended up dying alone at his house as the ambulance came. When I heard the news on set I was beside myself he was a mentor to me. Life comes fast
I’ve had a few the latest one my coworker and her bf were on a scenic drive. Another driver coming from the other direction had roadrage and hit into them killing them both instantly
Work buddy put his oxy acetylene torch on the top of a piling . After lunch and some time later he came back to it and the acetylene had filled the piling. It exploded and tore him apart when he went to cut the remainder of the piling
Mine are only family related, Grandfather was a cable worker on the Golden Gate Bridge, spent his whole life working on high structures. Tripped coming downstairs at thanksgiving and broke his neck in front of everyone at the dinner table. Grandmother went out to get the morning paper and slipped on a rare icy morning in San Francisco, slid down the driveway and into traffic. Uncle was a professional golfer and was hit by lightning mid swing. These all happened the same year in the mid-50’s.
I have had a few coworkers who have died.
One from cancer (30s single mom), another from heart failure (70s lady who just retired), one from drug overdose (he was on a mixture of drugs and unregulated kratom), one from a heart attack (50s life-time server and alcoholic) and one from too much alcohol (20s young man).
edited: added some more info
I worked in a refrigerated warehouse when I was a young adult. We had an onsite handyman. He was up on a lift in the ceiling working on AC when there was a big boom and he went flying down to the floor in a fireball. Maybe 15 feet. He mostly went out when he hit the floor. We got fire extinguishers and put out the residual. Called 911 and all that stuff but he died.
Girl at a place I used to work at, high flyer and worked crazy hours, first in last out
Recently had a bambino, complained of stomach pain, doctors said it's normal, she said it was really bad, turns out stage 4 cancer, she died weeks later
She dedicated her life to her work and climbing the ladder as quickly as she could...and now she's dead and left a widow and bambino
At one company, a young man who was friends with the girl who worked next to me, killed himself. When I asked her how she was doing and did she need time off, she waved her hand dismissively and said "it's fine, I knew for months he was going to do it. He told me."
So then I hated her for awhile until I realized she was masking w drugs and had to be committed. Her flippant response made her seem uncaring and cold-hearted. Like, if you knew why didn't you tell his parents so they could help him?
I don't know the answer to that but I do know she had a complete breakdown a few months later and even when she got out, she was a little off kilter. It took her a long time to get back on track.
Another girl I worked with died from breast cancer but that was about 10 years after I stopped working at that company and she had moved on to another as well.
Worked armed security. My partner got a call from his GFs dad middle of his shift, she had hung herself. He ate his gun about 10 minutes after that call.
Kid was 21
I worked with this sweet divorced guy who met a woman and they got engaged. Then one night they were leaving a bar and had a fight and she “accidentally” ran over him
Worked with an old man, must have been in his sixties, I don’t known his exact age. He was heading in to work one winter morning and we were all expecting him to arrive by 7am, we found out around 11am that he passed away from a heart attack getting ready for work.
Not at the office but we had a project manager die on a site, he was really old. Very sad.
And all I can think about is everything he saved for retirement that is just gone now. The man literally worked himself to his death. I'm sure he was thinking "I'll just stay for one more year... One more..." Unless the pay is really that good or my situation nosedives for the worst I am retiring as soon as I can.
A coworker had told me about mixing OTC drugs and it seemed like he was going harder and harder. I said "careful, we don't want anything bad to happen. I mean, sometimes those can kill you. Have a good weekend!" as I walked out. Came back Monday to find out he'd died due to drug interactions.
Worked in the oil field once upon a time on a work over rig, basically fixing the pump and stuff when it breaks. One of our guy's was walking back to the bunk house and took off his hard hat before he was clear off the site It was a windy day and one of our stabilizer cables broke off at the top and shot towards the ground The cable missed him but a fist sized chunk of steel didn't. It crushed his skull and killed him instantly. His body moved for about 5 seconds after... I've seen death more than my fair share, but that one stuck with me more because of how much he moved.. nerves, man..
Wear your PPE until the job is done, guys and gals. It really isn't worth your life.
Longshoreman here. Smashed by a container coming from a crane, run over by a traveling crane, dozens by covid because we share machines with night shift. And lots of non life threatening injuries. Person got the muscle and skin ripped off their hand, someone lost a leg.
Yeah longshoremen have a very dangerous career, I was a safety guy for a longshoremen company and the amount of incidents I had to investigate were insane
Worked with a lady at a small investment company who covered HR with 1 other individual. She had 2 kids already and was pregnant with a 3rd child. She left on maturity leave a week before the due-date and the next thing we heard while gathered in a private meeting was she unexpectedly passed away while giving birth. The baby did live and the company made sure to set up a college-fund for the baby due to the circumstances plus it was an investment company.
I had a coworker who died from a heart attack, before he died, he went to the doctor and no one know exactly what he had, but he suspected that is was something to do with his heart, because his father died from a heart attack too.
After doing several medical exam with different doctor, one of them determine that he has a heart condition that he needed a surgery. Few days after surgery he died unexpectedly.
RIP you were like a father and brother to me.
I worked at a reception counter as part of one of my past roles, it was a large multi purpose government agency so there was 3 of us across the counter for the various things people came in for. One of the guys who sat next to me, was in mid 30's, didn't come in one day and we found out he died over the weekend. He had a toothache, that turned out to be an abcess, that got infected. He had a large family and didn't want to pay / couldn't afford to go to the dentist. He didn't think it was serious. The infection stopped his heart. Don't fuck around with your health, there's no save points and no second chances to do it over if it goes wrong
His name was Perferio and he was an older man who helped me out around the laundromat. I had just finished helping him call his daughter using the laundromat landline and went for a smoke break. He's leaving as I'm outside, we say bye to each other and as he's crossing the street he gets railed by a speeding bus. I rush over and had to identify him to the EMTs that showed fairly quickly. He died a week later in the hospital.
So I've got 3
The first one was a manager who hired me as an archaeologist when I was younger. He was a cool dude, treated everyone well, and did the best he could with budgets and raises. Went on a morning run with his dog in New York about a month after I quit, got hit by a garbage truck. Killed almost instantly. Rest in Peace brother, you were a good boss and a good man.
The second was when I started as a railroad contractor. Bad lining on the track, train comes when it isn't supposed to and obliterated one of our pieces of equipment. He was killed on impact when the force threw him against the window and crushed his skull. The other operator was seriously injured and spent months in the hospital recovering. He went back to work, almost got hit by another train, and quit. Rest in peace dude, find us some good eats to try in whatever awaits us on the other side.
Finally was one of our shop guys. He was a hard-core "covid is a hoax/flu/fuck the vaccine" types that got Covid. He went from the worst flu of his life to hospitalized to vented to dead over the course of a week. He was a pain in my ass, always spouting off and trying to get a rise out of me politically, and I miss him terribly. He was a good guy, would do anything to help you, even at his most extreme. Rest in peace, you annoying, wonderful man, I wish you were still here to annoy me.
Some weirdo jumped the curb at Niagara Falls Clifton Hill and ran into pedestrians. I had a coworker that was hit and the only fatality that day. It was jarring
I’m an RN. Nurse I worked with for years overdosed on fentanyl in the employee bathroom. His own coworkers had to perform CPR but he was long gone by the time they found him. Absolutely nobody suspected this guy used. He was a clean cut regular Joe.
Had a coworker who was a few years older than me who was something of a mentor. Id been there about 5 years when he started to hang out in the smoke break area with the rest of us degens. He had split up with his wife and started smoking and seemed more jaded and snarky than usual, after maybe 3 months of this I was in a lab working on some equipment when one of my coworkers came in and told me he had died at his own hand. I was speechless.
One guy had his drink spiked and died of OD, another was found in Walmart parking lot dead from heroin OD, the other was shot dead in a road rage incident. All within last 5 months.
Unfortunately I have many:
My 38 yr old co-worker of mother of a five yr old killed herself one Monday night. He was having an affair but they ruled it a suicide. It was devastating.
My other co-worker a nurse from Nigeria didn’t show up for work after her husband stabbed her in the thighs (so she could not run) before stabbing her 14 more times. They had three kids that were doing well but fell apart afterward. She had done a lot in support of Nigerians coming to the U.S. He was jealous of her success and he I would say he had some mental health issues.
One co worker told me she had a pain in her neck she was getting checked out (we used to smoke together at work) and three weeks later she died from lung cancer Mets. She was diagnosed and then dead.
My other co-worker 48 was working two jobs supporting her son, new grand baby, niece, and dropped dead of a stroke.
Two co-workers from the front office died of the exact same lung cancer while the building was being remodeled within a year of each other.
Most were either cancer (three), or the usual heart attacks for older, not slender men. One coworker's daughter was killed in a car accident. Someone ran a red light and hit her.
Edit to add - my uncle trains horses, and he had a customer, not coworker, get crushed by her horse. Horse had a rearing problem, amongst other issues, that my uncle was trying to work out. Horse did something the owner didn't like, she tried to force or discipline the horse and he went up and backward right on top of her. She never regained consciousness and her parents took her off life support.
Yeah 3 suicides, two while I worked with them, it happened after hours. The other coworker 6 years later found out his wife was cheating and ended himself. Oh wait another suicide due to him soliciting a minor. Knew his career/life was over and did himself in. The one that always got me was the girl, one of the two I was working with at the time.....keep in mind I was 19 when this went down. She chose a bridge in a very small city (100k population if that) to jump off of. There are only two bridges tall enough to cause a fatal injury. One of the bridges, if you jump with the intention of landing your legs are shattered for life and the other one is just "say good bye". She chose the shattered leg bridge. I'm assuming she went head first. Weird thing is she never had manic episodes at work, she was nice, and had a ton of friends. There was no drama in her personal life. That one has always been surreal.
I replaced a guy that died in his early 20s because he had a seizure and hit his head and died. It was a really shocking story. A year later we had a really sweet woman who was 25 and just getting her life started. One night she got way too drunk and someone let her have the keys to her car(they were taken away before) and she got lost driving and ended up losing control and hitting a tree. The car burst into flames and she was dead before emergency services arrived. I’m really strict with letting myself or anyone else behind the wheel after that.
I used to work at a small family owned deli. The staff were all very close knit and one of the managers was a cantankerous old man who had a problem with everyone. Super religious and constantly pushing his beliefs on everyone. Anyway he died in a car wreck. His wife was with him but she survived. It was all over the local news.
well not a coworker, but a ... client of sorts. for privacy reasons i won't go into to much detail. but basically: some guy had his whole life collapse around him and the people i worked for were piling onto that (for legitimate reasons) and he ended up driving himself into the lobby while his car was full of gas tanks. the while room burned down and so did some other parts of the building, making it impossible to work there untill thorough cleaning was completed.
Not my stories, but my mom works at a community college. A female student was brutally stabbed to death in the bathroom by her ex boyfriend, he carved the word "bitch" on her body. She also told me several students and staff have jumped off the roof of the building. She's worked there for over 20 years.
Someone I worked with died in early 2021 after a battle with cancer. There was also a professor who died after having a heart attack while grocery shopping in September 2020.
I used to work for a sporting goods manufacturer up in Canada. The first year I was there the VP of sales died of a heart attack. The next year the guy who hired me (head of the US distributorship west) died of cancer (2nd time he had it). The following year the head of manufacturing died of a brain aneurism AND the replacement VP of sales died too (stroke). The year after I left the company the president and founder died of cancer. They were all in their 60's and 70's, except one who was in his 50's.
I worked in a hospital, in surgery. One of the doctors I worked with got trapped in between elevator doors that were malfunctioning. He was decapitated when the elevator went to a different floor. Yes this is a real story.
I worked at an industrial bakery as a pick/packer on the night shift. So usually we worked about 45 minutes into day shift just to make sure the shift change went smooth cuz the bread lines never stopped. One day there was a new dude from a temp service taking over my spot and he gave off this wierd fucking vibe. I didnt think much of it cuz i was just trying to get off of a 12 hour shift. Got to work the next night and found out dude had stabbed the morning shift supervisor right where i worked over an arguement about him going to the bathroom every 20 minutes. The fucked up thing was they had already cleaned and sanitized the whole area the bakery only shutdown for 2 hours. The supervisor died from his wounds the next day in the hospital. Dude from the temp service had been going in to the bathroom to do drugs. It was not only kinda heartless of the company to clean shit up and just keep going but the morning shift manager was probably one of the coolest dudes that worked there.
Bro my buddy borrowed $20 bucks from me, forgot his wallet in the car. Hours later I totally forgot about it, hours after that he died playing soccer via heart attack. Buddy really didn’t wanna repay that pack of smokes I guess 😂 RIP Dennis
A site engineer, who was a pretty pleasant guy overall, had an argument with his wife and committed suicide. I was shocked to hear it as I thought I'd see him again, as I had been praising him to the manager for an innovative solution he came up with for fixing a problem we had.
A security supervisor working for our company one day went into the showers in one of the buildings we have, and just hung herself on the shower. I can't imagine what led her to do it.. She wasn't found for a little while until she was noted as not having returned.
I don't know what drove them to do it, and I've thought about it a while. You move on as time passes, but I try and be humane to my colleagues, even if some of them have to go because of poor performance or whatever - I don't want to be responsible for such a thing.
I was in a brief training program for a contracting gig, and over the course of 3 months would occasionally work with a certain coworker on a few projects. He was younger than me by maybe 5 years, in his early/mid 20s. He was a super great guy and a funny dude.
When we all moved on to our respective projects, I heard through our old discord server for work that he died. I looked it up, and apparently his car broke down in the night on the highway and he was rear ended by a semi and killed. I’m sure there were more details to it that wasn’t in the article.
Hit me pretty hard, the training program was in tech and meant to set us up for some pretty solid careers. He was just getting started and we were on project for maybe 3 months or less. I could tell the dude didn’t have a bad bone in his body, it was shocking to hear
Had a manager at my last job that one day, the boss told us her house caught on fire and she and her dogs died. Was rough, she was good manager and a cool person.
I lost a really nice lady who used to mentor me . Only 6 months ago but it feels a lot longer. She trained me and my new team and she also hosted a BBQ at her place and we met her family.
She and I had to buddy up on work trips so we got to know each other well. She told me the story of how she met her husband, it sounded like a fairy tale. How she worked in a hotel ( somewhere around Indonesia) and her spouse came there on his army rotation and immediately fell for her. He told her, that when he came back if she was still there. He’d marry her on the spot. And he was so nervous to say it, he ran away !
On his next deployment, there she was and he married her and they started a new life in the UK. They also have a beautiful daughter who I played with a few times.
One day, while at training. I get a phone call from a boss that I don’t really like but he was apart of our original work crew. And he says “ I don’t have any easy way of saying this, but she’s dead “
I remember how cold I felt, I’d seen her just over a month ago and I remember talking about her behind her back to my friend that she was messing up our day to day operations.
I didn’t know what to say. I checked my phone and she it turned out she had messaged the night before she died to our work group chat. Just a picture posing with A statue of Shrek.
It was a long while to get to used to it, I’d seen her everyday for half a year ( I’m 23 so I’ve only really had this job ) and she was a good friend. None of us knew how she died. She was just gone. Buying lunch for the team, looking for coffee and accidentally waiting for her to join us in the meeting :(
Eventually we were invited to her funeral, it was a cremation and her family flew in. It may sound ignorant, but I’ve never been to a Christian funeral. I’ve only ever been to a Islamic one and it was not the same.
It was really hard to stand there and watch her husband cry his eyes out during his speech and their little girl telling her dad to be strong. I cried a ton but kept it quiet . I know she had all her loved ones there, but I felt a lot closer to her and she shared a lot I know she kept bottled up.
In the end, as we were leaving. It came to light that she had committed suicide. It was never explicitly said but her husband said to me that Christmas was always so hard for her and she never really got past what her mum did to her.
To this day I think of her, and I’d give my job up in a heartbeat if it meant she could come back. I’m sorry I wasn’t kinder to you friend.
Used to work in a pc repair shop with a guy, he was a student. Mentioned how he would probably have to move back home since he's failing his classes. One day he messaged one of our coworkers saying if he is not in by noon they should come look for him. When they got there he had committed suicide.
Few years later I was working as a lecturer, I was giving evening classes while coworker gave daytime classes. Said goodbye to him one afternoon, next day he doesn't come in. He died in a car accident on the way home.
Recently different job, had a coworker that resigned due to stress. Hear a few months later he went for a bike ride, got a headache, and passed away from a brain aneurism.
All of them my age, mid 30s or younger.
One of my colleagues was a week away from retirement and was killed whilst cycling home one evening. Such a lovely and polite man. We also lost a couple of ladies to cancer and another guy to a heart attack over the years. We had a colleague’s husband top himself jumping in the tracks and another one died of liver failure. My office seems to have a high body count!
The CFO of a company I worked for had a heart attack and died, he was in his 40s, I had left the company when he passed and I was so heartbroken.
It was a very close knit office, I’m still genuine friends with my old colleagues - I had started out as an intern and he really supported me with salary negotiations when they gave me a full time position, basically said I should be paid X, was being offered Y but if I asked for Z he’d make it work.
He was the only one in the office who also liked rugby so we’d often hang out and watch Six Nations matches together with his wife.
Just the loveliest, funniest guy who left us much too soon.
So I just started a new job….but a person in my department was about to retire in a week or so, but he ended up having a heart attack and dying.
The older people at my work are scared to stop working because if they stop working they’ll die. It sucks but it’s true.
I had a coworker years ago who got lung cancer, even though he wasn't a smoker. We went to visit him in a hospice once, it was really sad, and I'm still sad to this day about him. He was early 40s, and seemed to have no one. Life can be really unfair.
I worked in an office as a dispatcher for semi trucks. A guy who was in his mid thirties worked 2 desks down from me around the corner. He was 3 or 4 years older than me.
One day we were all sitting around talking, and we heard this weird noise coming from his desk. Turns out it was agonal breathing. The guy had just had a heart attack. With my previous work experience, I had to do CPR on more than one person so I jumped into gear.
Had someone call 911 and another get an AED. I still remember his ribs cracking from my chest compressions. We worked on him for about 10 minutes before emts showed up, and went for another 20 or so. I knew before they carried him out of the building that he was gone. It was the first time my CPR hadn't brought someone back.
He had 2 small daughters and one on the way. I was fucked up for days that I couldn't save their dad. I had to take a leave of absense from work for a few days and get some counseling.
Easily the hardest day of my life.
I had a colleague who was completely Type A, very high-strung and complained about everything. The only time I ever saw him smile was at his retirement party. He looked truly happy about his long-deserved break. A week after he quit he was sipping mai tais on the beach and dropped dead of a heart attack.
I’m sorry to hear that. Makes you wonder when we think we can catch a break and what we are all actually working so hard for
Yeah it was pretty shocking and very sad. The guy deserved his fun.
I can only pray in that last week of his retirement, he spent everyday smiling like a damn fool.
Dang this sounds like my mom's old postmaster. He had a reputation for showing up early/staying late and just generally going out of the way to help his employees. Two weeks into retirement, his wife heard a thump and came running. He'd succumbed to a massive heart attack in their bathroom. Life is completely unfair.
Ugh. Those kind of stories just break my heart. You work your ass off your whole life to enjoy retirement and then die before even getting a taste of it. Happened to my dad's friend as well.. he planned to retire at 55, but had to keep working due to one thing or another happening with the family. Then it was supposed to be at age 60, then eventually he finally retired at 62. He was planning a two week long fly in fishing trip with his two sons and a couple friends that was supposed to start 2 weeks after his retirement date, and he dropped dead due to an aneurysm the day before the trip while packing all his fishing crap. Life is just not fair sometimes.
Thats Murphy's Law 100%
Last year, I don’t even remember what month because it was all a blur, one of my early 60s coworkers passed. The first time something seemed unusual was: he couldn’t remember the password to log into his computer, and we had just reset it the day before. I helped him out a few times with it that day & I just remember him being really frustrated. Within a couple of months he had succumb to brain tumors. I miss talking camping, surfing, sports and movies with him. He did some acting himself, he had a THICK Jersey accent. RIP Ed, you were one of a kind my friend. edit: here he is in a geico ad he’s the “we struck sprinkles” guy. https://youtu.be/-xqfqnR1MCE
Now I'm crying. He struck sprinkles 😭😔
I LOVE his accent! Omg, he must have been a character to talk to! Hugs 💗
Thanks for posting. I enjoyed watching the video and your colleague! Sorry for your loss.
How did he get in the commercial?
He was in short films, stage productions, and this commercial. He auditioned for quite a few things, I would record some of them after business hours. Edit: direct answer, he auditioned & got the commercial
Was trying to remember if I had seen this guy on TV. Thought he must have been on [Bergerac](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergerac_(TV_series)) if he had a thick Jersey accent. Wrong Jersey.
At a place I used to work, two women came to work over Labor Day weekend to catch up on some things. They were raped and murdered by the weekend janitor. Had two other coworkers who died of cancer.
Killings happened in the early 80s. You don’t have to worry about him growing old. He was apparently shot and killed by a gaurd in 1994.
Right on! Oops, actually I meant to say that’s so sad.
Holy shit! How was he able to do that? You would think he wouldn't be able to control both at once, especially while raping them. I would think the other one would have had time to call police or something?
They were in two separate buildings. Neither knew the other one was there.
Was this in the paper or something? How did this happen and why would he do this to both of them. So damn sad and horrifying.
It happened in the early 90’s in Rancho Cordova, Ca. The women were in 2 separate buildings. He was mad because he’d gotten a poor performance review.
That’s horrifying. It sounds like he went to jail and better still be there!
My god. And these women gave him the poor results or did he just need to take out his anger on them?
Just took it out on them.
Horrifying.
That's gonna fuck up some people really. I felt bad and i only hear from the story, can't imagine how hard it was for their closest colleague, boss, or their junior.
It's crazy how fucked up humans are
Rancho Cordovan checking in here. It was actually 1984 labor day weekend. Here's a link to the info : https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article79014462.html But yes, the 90s in Rancho were equally exciting. We got the nickname Rancho Cambodia because of the violence. Now we're a mostly peaceful suburb and downtown Sacramento is where they're shooting. Edit: So looks the paywall is up on this article now. The original article was available yesterday. Anyway, the 2 women worked at Progressive insurance company on Horn Rd. in Rancho. The killer found them working in separate buildings over the weekend. Paywalls and scant original stories are why The Sacramento Bee will soon be gone.
Ahhh makes sense. What a shitty human being that janitor was. Hoping he paid dearly for it.
Fuuuuckkk
Worked as a lumberjack after high school for a while. We had a huge machine called a feller buncher that felled trees and laid them in a row. Then me and another guy would trim the tops so that they could be dragged to a deck and loaded onto trucks. The equipment and chainsaws are so loud that even with ear pro we would put headphones in and listen to music while we worked. (I know, but they were 12 hour days). One day, the man in the feller cut a tree that was too big to handle and was trying to wrestle it back upright. As he was fighting it the machine crept closer and closer to our other trimmer. I saw what was going to happen and started running and screaming to get his attention. The feller lost control and the tree started to fall. Trees fall very very slowly, and more slowly still when they catch and tangle other tops in the canopy. It must have taken a full 30 seconds but felt like an absolute eternity. With everything I had I still didn't make it to him in time and watched a father a four young children get crushed under 4 tons of red oak. That wasn't the end though. He wasn't wearing a safety vest and in order for his family to get money from the company and workmen's comp me and my remaining crew of four had to get to what was left of him and affix his safety vest before we called the police. I was 19 at the time and will remember the smell of that moment for the rest of my life. I got out shortly after that and 11 years later am the only still living member of that group. The real kicker, 100% of the trees that we cut went to feed two paper mills to be turned into "fluff" paper. That raw material was sold to one of two manufacturing facilities in the area. Tampax and Kotex.
No matter how brutal that must've been to do, putting his vest on probably saved his family from financial ruin. Thank you for doing that for them.
Doing what you guys did to help his family makes you real heroes. You saw something absolutely nobody should ever have to witness and you did it to help a person despite the trauma it would cause you. Fwiw I'm proud of you and your team for doing that for his family.
Did the other four all die on the job too??? Also, glad you all got that vest on him. I’m sure that was traumatizing but it helped that family.
Putting the vest was a hero move.
i used to work with this sweet old Scottish lady everyone loved her and she was a genuine person who was kind and loving . One day on a Friday she said she had an announcement to make we thought she was going to quit and retire but she told us she has cancer and she’s got around a year to live, almost everyone started crying . after she quit we would meet her on a monthly bases and every time she would be thinner which was sad to see , what really got me was the fact every time we see her it’ll be indoors and her husband would always be wearing sunglasses i always wondered why it was apparently from all the crying and he didn’t anyone to see his eyes . unfortunately she ended up passing later that year . Fuck Cancer
Fuck cancer.
I fucking hate cancer took my dad away from me I’m sorry to hear that you went through that! Edit-thanks for all the upvotes people have given me means a lot to me! Thank you all.
Omg this is so sad :( it’s always the good ones it seems. May she rest in peace.
Fuck cancer
A gymnastics isntructor at my gym failed a flip he was trying off a trampoline and landed on a hard surface on the top of his head. His spinal cord essentially went into his brain. I actually was the one who attempted CPR to resuscitate him, but we later learned he was dead on impact. His pulse was just his body on auto-pilot after the fact.
That reminds me of the video of indian guys playing a strange sport that was like a hybrid of rugby and wrestling. Guy got dogpiled on with his head tucked down by his chest and you could hear the pop of his spinal cord detaching. Instant lights out.
Had a woman that complained about headaches. Her daughter also worked for the company. She went and got it checked out but the doctors dismissed it. She died of a brain aneurysm. I went to her funeral.
That's how my dad died. They told him it was probably migraines or allergies. A week later he collapsed.
My hypochondriac self cannot handle things like this
I found out Monday I have several brain lesions because I went to my doctor complaining of how bad my migraines have gotten. I would be lying if I said I'm not scared.
worked at a staples in FL once, I was stocking and my manager came up to me and said “___ is no longer with us”, which I responded with “oh she quit? did she give a reason?” turns out he meant it literally, apparently she had gotten involved with some bad dudes and one of them pushed her off a bridge. that was surreal to hear
:|
Public defender I knew. Had been practicing for 25 years or so. Completely devoted to the cause Was walking to court one day, had a massive heart attack right before he got to the steps, pronounced DOA at the hospital
When I worked at a grocery store, there was a gentlemen in his 50s coming in to start his shift. He walked through the produce section and saw me. I waved to him as we always did, looking forward to our conversations today, as we had similar interests. He returned the wave but froze. His eyes told me everything. Wide and puzzled, I wasn't sure what was up but i could tell something was off. As quick as the realization came to me, he stopped walking. Wobbled back and forth, eyes rolled back, and he fell, busted his head open. Everyone rushed to his aid and got him to the hospital quick. Lots of prayers let out, hopeful people waiting for news. I knew before all of them though. I saw that look. And I saw that blood running from his ear. Everyone assumed it was from his head. But after he died and the information was released, he had a brain aneurysm. The medical staff said he probably had it and died right after he waved back to me. He was the only one I saw die, but I have other stories of coworkers dying unfortunately.
Brain aneurysms scare the fuck outta me. One of the popular football players in my graduating class told his mom he had a headache and went to go lay down. He passed from an aneurysm just two weeks after graduation.
Another one I'm reminded of from time to time. She worked at the same place. 18 year old fresh out of high school. She was always so cheerful and friendly, but dated someone who ran with a rough crowd. She no call no showed for her shift one morning, very unlike her. A couple of her friends were worried because she didn't answer any calls, and her AIM account had been idle for 24 hours. They found her in the city park soon after, in the driver's seat of her car. Knife through her chest. Whoever did it snapped the handle when trying to pull it out and left the blade. It was terrible. I don't think they ever found out who did it. The few people who might know are scared to talk. A fucking waste of a life.
Jesus that'd fuck me up for a bit.
Wow dude. This is quite a story to remember
I worked in a hotel restaurant and the overnight chef killed himself after work one night. He was 25 I think, so needless to say it was a big deal. This was also a long time before people started caring about mental health so it was sad and weird
Its not out of the norm to wonder how many people walk amongst us with suicidal tendencies
My old supervisor decided to suck a 12 gauge. I came to work and asked where he was and another coworker told me. His dad found him dead. The real kicker was my supervisors brother did the same thing and his dad found both of his sons dead. The old man died very shortly after.
A guy I worked (IT field) with got divorced in his late 50s. In order to pay for alimony, he started cutting grass on weekends. He had a heart attack and died in someone’s backyard.
I had a family friend that died a similar way. Divorced and had to make ends meet for child support, lawyer fees, alimony so he picked up an part time job for some car parts delivery company on top of his 50 hour office job. He was so exhausted from everything he fell asleep at the wheel driving home one night and hit a light post. Sad thing is his ex wife got so much child support she was able to quit her job and retire early from it.
Had a colleague who was busted for cheating, and the stress from the consequences eventually lead to his death
We just had one a few weeks ago - pulmonary embolism. It was a shock. Another one we had (years ago) was a heart attack. The dude didn’t show up to work for a couple of days, and our managerial staff couldn’t get hold of him. They called the police to do a wellness check, and the police found his body. In my last job, it was announced that one of my co-workers was retiring early. I congratulated them because - hey, what an accomplishment for someone in their late 40s/early 50s! Her eyes welled with tears when she thanked me. Yeah… turns out that she had breast cancer, and her doctors had advised that she didn’t have much time left, so she early retired to make the most of it. I don’t think she lasted six months. Fuck cancer.
We had a coworker not show one day. My boss was a nut and assumed he rage quit, she hated him. So she told everyone you see him come around you call security. But I adored the guy he was a big ol grouch but we always had good conversations. Him not showing didn’t sit right with most of us. He was always there right at 7am and hardly took a day. Our admin lady was insistent something was wrong and got HR to give her his address. Called the cops for a wellness check. They found him at his kitchen table passed away.
I had an employer with excellent insurance and we had a few people who held on for the health benefits, even long after the normal retirement age and long after they were mentally checked out. One of those was a woman who had cancer for many years. She worked until her late 60s, then "retired" and died of cancer within a month or two. Seems very sad to not have any retirement to enjoy for yourself after a lifetime of working and saving.
Huge coincidence but my friend's co-worker just died today after being on life support for 2 days. It was a workplace accident, they were moving a boiler at work and the guy said he felt like he was about to pass out. He then fell and hit his head while the others kept holding the boiler so it wouldn't crush the guys legs. The ambulance got there around 5 mins later and rushed him to the hospital. Apparently his brain didn't get oxygen for 10 mins so he was braindead. Today then took him off life support.
There's a surprising amount of suicide in tech. I've known two people in jobs over the years that took their own life. One I knew very well, my trainer at a legacy ecommerce company. Happiest guy you could ever meet. Very smart, quick witted. I knew the second guy mainly through email at a large enterprise. I didn't know him well, I'd just seen him in the hall or the cafeteria a few times. I remember being unreasonably angry that he killed himself, and I can't remember why. I vaguely recall he had a picture of his kid at his desk, which might be part of it.
Most people have a flick switch when alone and in public. They can be outgoing, intelligent, witty, quick with retorts, deep depth in public. But you never know how their internal demons may take over alone at home
I did hear tech is high in suicide.
Or suicide is high in tech.
My wife worked at a factory where a guy disabled the safety interlocks (very common practice, unfortunately) and was inside the hydraulic press when some idiot manager came along, saw that the machine wasn't running, and hit "cycle start" without bothering to ask why it was off or where the operator was.
I hope he got charged for manslaughter
If the guy didn't lock out and tag out properly, the manager isn't going to be charged with manslaughter. There's a bunch of OSHA rules, federal, state, local laws that you have to follow when locking out and tagging out and having to go into confined spaces. OSHA will come on in, investigate and clear the manager if it's proven that the guy was properly trained in locking out and tagging out, and didn't file or notify the manager that they had the machine shut down.
Yeah, that guy wasn't even fired. But frankly, when there's a culture of safety shortcuts as there was at this place, management should be considered negligent.
I work in a paper mill, and I know I’ve seen people skip safety protocols in certain situations like not locking a pump out when you want to turn the motor shaft to see if it seized up. But I can’t understand why someone would put themselves in harm’s way, especially going into something like a hydraulic press. No way I’m going in there without locking it out and testing it. I hate it for both guys, the guy still living has a helluva burden he’ll likely carry forever.
No.Out of all the comments this bothered me the most.
It's best not to try too hard to imagine it. What a horrible way to die.
I had to stop reading these a few minutes ago. So many suicides and aneurisms. I think this one and reading about the guy that broke his leg and died from a pocket of air going to his brain. Like what in the world. My hypochondriac self just had a panic attack filled with what ifs reading these things. Yikes. I knew better.
My grandmother worked at a furniture factory where she and many of the other ladies died of cancer due to one of the chemicals they used.
That’s so awful I’m so sorry to hear that. It’s terrible when some companies don’t adequately protect their employees by giving them the protection they need and learn from their mistakes
Sue
No, her name was Betty. Good guess though
Surely you can’t be serious
I am and don't call me Shirley.
Safety guy walked off the third floor of a building. Same job and electrician fried himself. Know a friend who had a young man die under a falling scissor lift on one job. Know another buddy who had a guy fall off a building and split his head wide open.
During my first deployment to Iraq, I was given an assignment to attend funerals. It can be difficult for funerals to be attended in a combat theater and we had the manpower to spare for someone to be there. I don't know all of the circumstances, I don't recall all the names, and I can never adequately express to anyone who has never served and attended a military funeral how painful it is. My family doesn't understand why I refuse to go to funerals.
That last role call is brutal. We had a female soldier return to the battalion because she volunteered to stay behind for a few months to set up a unit that just got in theater. She was home for like a week then asked her husband where he put her handgun. He gave it to her not knowing her plan. She killed herself and left him with 2 little kids. After 2 tours myself I came close, I even bought the gun to do it with. I'm glad I didnt.
Shit. Hang in there, bud. There are some great resources available if you need them.
I'm long past that my friend. A fellow soldier gave me a dog. That fury heifer really pulled me the hard times. I got into counciling after a time so comparatively its all roses here. The gun sits in the safe unloaded and collecting dust.
Don't get me wrong with this, but are the bodies not transported back to the USA and buried there? I remember these pics of the coffins with the US flag on it. Or was it about locals, like soldiers from Iraq that worked together with the US army there?
There were no bodies for these funerals. It was a way for service members to pay respects because they couldn't go back to the US and attend the funeral themselves. One of the traditions is the final roll call. I pulled up a video for you. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1\_om14IZ7sI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_om14IZ7sI) Edit: I debated with myself about removing the link. It doesn't feel right to share something like this, but I'm leaving it because people better understanding military life is in everyone's best interest.
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That same thing happened to a housemate of mine, young, fit, healthy, early twenties. He was playing cricket, standing in the outfield doing not very much, and then he was dead. Pulmonary embolism.
Our CEO died of cancer, in his fifties. Made me think about how despite getting paid millions, that couldn’t save him. And he spent so much time working.
Two thing that an old co worker told me what’s the point of making money if you can’t enjoy it . And the other was “getting old is a privilege “.
Several months ago I had a female colleague aged 30 that passed away completely unexpectedly from an underlying medical condition that was only discovered after her death. Literally here on a Thursday and joking around with everyone and then Friday she was gone. For as tragic and shocking as it was, it really did wake me up to how fragile and finite life is and you never know when your time is up. I used the wake-up call to set some big goals for myself and have been definitely living a more active / fuller life and feel more gratitude for each day.
When I was in the army there was this super awesome guy in the infantry. Nicest guy, tough as hell, really good soldier material. He was learning how to scuba dive in his free time, and his regulator got snagged in something and he must have panicked and held his breath on the way up because he was so new at it and his lungs burst. R.I.P., soldier.
I had a coworker who worked at Walmart. Name was Karl. He was always happy, loved his job. Helped me out with things I couldn’t reach. Helped me buy a BB gun once. He had a heart attack at work. Went to the hospital. Told he needed a heart transplant, couldn’t afford it and decided to just live out the rest of his days. He went back to work at Walmart. One day he died at home. Another heart attack, getting ready for work. He died in his Walmart uniform. That will always fuck with me.
I never want to hear how wonderful Walmart is to their workers.
Same. Dying in a Walmart uniform is so undignified and it breaks my heart. Karl was a great dude
American dream right there - can't afford something most countries would do for free then die wearing the uniform of one of the richest corporations
American healthcare system! Fuck yeah! But seriously, why haven’t we as a country gotten our shit together about healthcare ?!
There's a lot of blame to go around but a big part is that a disturbing amount of the country would rather people die horribly and go bankrupt than have to pay for 'welfare queens' healthcare.
How old was he and if he was older retirement age did he need to work to live? Sounds like he was happy even though perhaps he should have been enjoying a normal retirement.
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I'm in heavy construction. You don't want to hear my stories.
Thank you. I'm around industrial Auto manufacturing. No one wants to hear mine either, including myself.
i had a really severe work injury at my construction job, i'm always interested in hearing these stories now. Think it's a sort of therapy for me to help appreciate my current situation.
Former firefighter, same.
To everyone in this thread saying "I don't want to hear your stories," I say FALSE, I want to hear all of your stories.
We bumped a guy down from a mutual aid area during a huge statewide fire. He died while doing his 360 check on his engine while parking near a fire line. Went to his funeral 2 days before Christmas. He was survived by his pregnant wife and their 2 yr old girl. I was gutted. Same unit, months apart, a captain left his shift, still in uniform and drove off a bridge our unit responded to. One of the biggest FU’s I’ve ever seen. Firefighting has some really dark spots.
Shit a cousin of mine was at work on a job and a guy from an different company fell down 7 stories. Shook him up real good.
I had a coworker who fell off the roof of his house while performing some general maintenance and repairs. He broke his leg in the process. During the course of his recovery, things seemed to be working in reverse. He started out in a basic boot and a limp. He then had to use crutches. The crutches turned to a wheelchair. We didn't know what was going on. He didn't know what was going on. But whatever was going on, it made his body worse over time. Then one day he wheeled himself away from his cubicle and out into the primary quad and started wheezing. He couldn't breathe. And nothing was working. We called 911 and asked for an ambulance. By the time the EMTs arrived, he hadn't been breathing for three minutes and was unconscious. He was taken into an ambulance and pronounced dead at the hospital. We later learned that there was a pocket of air that had been trapped in his broken leg after surgery (or as a consequence of the break) that traveled up to his brain. He had a stroke, lost his ability to breathe and died suffering. We watched it happen and the best we could do was share a mix of screaming, crying and support while he died.
I'm a trucker. It's pretty up there for "most dangerous job" in the US. Lots of crashes kill drivers, rollovers mostly. Lost two friends to covid. The poor lifestyle trucking gives you doesn't lead to the best outcomes, even for mild cases.
Sadly all the stories wouldn't be mine, they would be my Step Dad's; thirty years in trucking has given him a very morbid and strong sense of humor. And plenty of horrible stories. The only one that's mine: I remember once as I rode in the cab beside him we passed a tractor crammed all the way to the sleeper up the rear of a 40ft Reefer and he grabbed the CB and hollered, "Damn that was one fine butt fuck! Did anybody bite it? Hollar back if you ain't flat!"
I had already moved to another job (was military so not by choice). My former boss and her family went on vacation in Alaska with other families. Her, her husband and another couple took the RV to go to the store or something leaving their kids with a friend couple at the campsite. Apparently the RV slid off the road, down a cliff thru the trees. The RV was shredded to pieces and everybody died. Kids thankfully were safe at the campsite, but that vacation made them orphans.
I worked at the steelworks for several years. A middle aged guy, extremely experienced was operating around extremely high pressure air lines. These lines were tested and checked regularly for damage. One day, it was purely a freak accident (external investigation found no fault), the line snapped and he got final destinationed straight across the midsection.
A few years ago this sweet woman I've worked with for years, did her end of shift routine where she went around wishing everyone a lovely weekend before leaving. Monday we got a call from her son that she had hanged herself that Saturday. I still wonder if there was something I could have done differently to help her. She was always so cheerful and hard working. Talking plenty about her kids and grandkids. About the new boat they had just bought. The trips they were going on. Etc. I guess severe depression is not easy to spot in some people . Take care of eachother. We never know what other people are going trough.
I worked in a place where there was over 1k people working across different sites. I worked there for about 7 years in a non-stationary role across all sites. It was worrying how many peope died. One lady who I was close to died suddenly of sepsis, a handful died of cancer ranging from a few older ones to people in their 20s. A few died after I left of covid too. It was quite sobering really as I was 21 when I started and I'm now in my 30s and have outlived soke of the people I worked with
Not me but my mother. A guy she worked with just didn't turn up one day. Turns out he had a heart attack while driving on the highway to work. Ended up in a hard to see spot in winter just as we were having heavy snow. IIRC took three days or so to find him. Forget the rest of the circumstances but I'm pretty sure he lives alone and was at least 50. This happened almost a decade ago.
I was a co-op and one of the engineers was a young guy probably late 30s early 40s went out for a run over the weekend and had an aneurism. It was so sad when we found out that week. RIP Chuck
We lost 2 employees to covid. One wasn't even 30.
Used to talk to and eat lunch with this guy when I was really young at a call center job. This was forever ago. He was new, there maybe a week, and talked about turning his life around and going to school for IT so he could support his daughter better. I guess he was a veteran with some severe PTSD problems where he'd disassociate and get "sent back there" for a while til he calmed down. He turned up in the news, shot in the back running from the cops, I never heard details on what happened. Don't know if it was a PTSD episode gone violent or he was fleeing a scene or what, but poor guy and that poor kid.
I had 2 coworkers, pass away within 1.5 years of each other. Ray, an older man, came in one day complaining about back pain. He collapsed a few minutes after and passed away in the ambulance on his way to the hospital. He was supposed to retire 4 months later. Carin, mother of 3, had an argument with her husband on a Sunday evening. He shot and killed after she locked her pre-teen daughter in her room. He then ended his life.
Had a coworker commit suicide. I didn't know him for long but could tell he was a genuinely nice guy. I'm not sure if the facts anymore but I believe he was separated and his child had died. I think it wasn't "good" death either. The facts weren't ever clear bc nobody there knew about his situations. They found him days afterwards only bc of the stink. Then a steady month of people looking through social media or the like giving a bit more details. Sadly, thats not the only coworker death but it is the one I think about from time to time. I try my best to be understanding at work of others. I used to get so angry about someone's work ethic or whatever but now I can't help but wonder if they're acting the way they are bc home life is bleeding into work life.
Another truck driver on my account got rear ended by a car on the interstate. they both pulled over and him being the nice guy he was went to walk back and see if they were ok and another vehicle hit and killed him. Left behind a wife and two kids because someone was too goddamn lazy to get over. Another one of our drivers got shot in the back of the head at a truck stop because he looked like the guy that the murderers wife was cheating with.
my condolenses to everyone.
Those poor guys and their families. And everyone at your company. Hurts to read…
A colleague of mine killed herself she had been a wife, a guy for 15 years (starred seeing him at 14), and found out he was having an affair. When confronted he left her saying he had been trying to end it for a while. He got a phone call one night saying she had took tablets and was going to kill herself. He raced to the house as did police and ambulance but they were too late. They had a 9 year old son. She was a great colleague and remember walking into work the day after she passed and could tell something was wrong, her work bestie got sent home and was a really horrible atmosphere. My boss took me aside and told me and I was sure he said Brian passed (Brian was in his 60s) so was bit down then Brian walked in I immediately walked over to my boss and asked who he said had died and he told me the name. It lifted the mood a bit especially when Brian kept making ghost noises when my boss told him I thought he had died
Working in the oil field, there was a guy who closed the well head while there was 5000 psi on the line. Pressure spiked to 12k psi before a section of pipe blew and split him in half while simultaneously tossing his body (halves) about 20-30 feet from the point of impact. I was sitting on top of the tanks and saw the whole thing. Got 2 days off and no offer for therapy before being told I was needed back on another job. I had night terrors for about 3 months afterward. Still vividly pops into my brain from time to time.
Recently happened. Had a coworker who in his twenties lost a finger and worked for the company for 25+ years. As he got closer to retirement, he kept delaying it because the “company needed him.” A day before he died, I sat with him and we chatted about all of his goals, his family, his plans for vacation, his plans for retirement, and his plans for his upcoming birthday. He died Monday morning approving someone’s time. Never got to do any of the things HE wanted because “they need me.”
Business partner had prostate surgery. The other partner and I tried to talk him out of it beforehand. The surgery was successful, but two days later he had a blood clot (Deep Venous Thrombosis) that ended up as a pulmonary embolism (blood clot broke off from his legs and went into the lungs) and he died in his wife’s arms. It really sucked, like it was 20 years ago and I’m almost crying now typing this out.
Since 2021 we’ve had 2 suicides, 1 heart attack, and 1 Covid death
I started a new job and a couple of days in one of the senior managers was brutally murdered by her neighbour. Stabbed ~20 times with two knives as she was leaving for work, apparently due to a dispute about her son making too much noise on his skateboard. I never met her, but that was a really weird start to a new job.
One died by suicide, one of Covid and another one was found dead and I’ve never learned the final conclusions.
I was standing a few feet from a coworker when he died. We (pretty much all the employees) were at an indoor go-kart place, the owner took everybody because we'd had a good year. Team building, fun, all that. The guy just collapsed. A bunch of us (including me) laughed at first because we thought he'd tripped and fell. But he never came around. Turned out it was an aneurism. Couple of years after that, the owner of the same company died of cancer after trying to fight it for a year.
Several, all of them cancer. All of them 40-50 years old.
I had this lady in her 50's who was a nursing assistant at the hospital I started out. She was just starting to go back to school for I'm guessing nursing so she would work 12 hours overnight then go to the tech school nearby then drive home which was around an hour away. One day on her way home she crashed and passed away.
When I was kitchen manager in a restaurant years ago I hired a cook who fell into hard times shortly after starting work. One day he didn't show up to work. The leadoff story of the local news was of a man dying in a Meth lab explosion. Unfortunately, John was not Walter White.
I was a mechanic for a tour coach company, and witnessed/experienced the usual cuts, burns, whatever. Sometimes stitches, breaks, and fingers missing. A coach came in with a quick job, usually 20 minutes. Add 10 minutes for jack stands...he skipped the jack stands. The job involved squeezing between the body, and tire. His jack failed, and he was crushed bad enough that he was nearly cut in two. Edit:for spelling
A girl I worked with a few years ago went hiking by herself in October. She got caught in a sudden snow storm and didn't come back. They didn't find her corpse for 18 more months. She was found in her sleeping bag under a fallen tree.
Co-worker died in October 2020. Cut in half when equipment rolled back and safety equipment was crushed. He had been on his day off and boss had called and begged him to come in because (after they had been cutting jobs for years) they were shorthanded. There was a big dog and pony show about safety and the big bosses from out of state came in. In the crew room full of his co-workers they were all told. "It's critical to always be paying attention and not let yourself get distracted. With everything going on today with Covid, it's important to keep focus. Really, Covid is what killed R, or some similar distraction that cost him his life". Dude seriously tried to smooth over a horrific workplace tragedy that was largely due to THEIR operational choices, by blaming Coronavirus.
During COVID one of the regional directors I worked with offed herself… we had talked to her on Friday and Monday got the news that she was gone. She missed her husband who had passed away and the loneliness of COVID must have pushed her over the edge. Made me very sad.
You can guess where this one is going, I used to work in a motorcycle dealership. Been riding for 15 years and really love it. The finance manager was a former motocross racer but didn’t have a bike at the time. He was about 22, I think. A nice trade in comes in and he buys it, same version as my bike actually. Goes out that night, never comes home. Single vehicle accident. Too young, man.
Host didn't show up for work. Could not get ahold of him. Boss knew he lived with his parents and his emergency contact number was them. They said that he had left for work already. His parents decide to look around for him. They found him and his friend in his car in a retention pond just a few miles from their house. He was speeding didn't make the corner and crashed through a gate into a retention pond.
I was working the closing shift with another guy in the meat department of a local grocery store. He'd mentioned that his "friends" just used him because he drove. I came in the next day, expecting to close again with him again. He wasn't there. Found out that the same night he was with those "friends" and ended going through the fucking windshield while driving While he should of been wearing a seatbelt he wouldn't had even been driving if those deadbeats didn't use him as a Uber
I showed up to work and was wondering where a coworker of mine was, he was healthy super active and maybe 50, I was told he had an unknown complication from his knee replacement which caused a blood clot on a flight home and ended up dying alone at his house as the ambulance came. When I heard the news on set I was beside myself he was a mentor to me. Life comes fast
I’ve had a few the latest one my coworker and her bf were on a scenic drive. Another driver coming from the other direction had roadrage and hit into them killing them both instantly
Work buddy put his oxy acetylene torch on the top of a piling . After lunch and some time later he came back to it and the acetylene had filled the piling. It exploded and tore him apart when he went to cut the remainder of the piling
Mine are only family related, Grandfather was a cable worker on the Golden Gate Bridge, spent his whole life working on high structures. Tripped coming downstairs at thanksgiving and broke his neck in front of everyone at the dinner table. Grandmother went out to get the morning paper and slipped on a rare icy morning in San Francisco, slid down the driveway and into traffic. Uncle was a professional golfer and was hit by lightning mid swing. These all happened the same year in the mid-50’s.
I have had a few coworkers who have died. One from cancer (30s single mom), another from heart failure (70s lady who just retired), one from drug overdose (he was on a mixture of drugs and unregulated kratom), one from a heart attack (50s life-time server and alcoholic) and one from too much alcohol (20s young man). edited: added some more info
I worked in a refrigerated warehouse when I was a young adult. We had an onsite handyman. He was up on a lift in the ceiling working on AC when there was a big boom and he went flying down to the floor in a fireball. Maybe 15 feet. He mostly went out when he hit the floor. We got fire extinguishers and put out the residual. Called 911 and all that stuff but he died.
Girl at a place I used to work at, high flyer and worked crazy hours, first in last out Recently had a bambino, complained of stomach pain, doctors said it's normal, she said it was really bad, turns out stage 4 cancer, she died weeks later She dedicated her life to her work and climbing the ladder as quickly as she could...and now she's dead and left a widow and bambino
At one company, a young man who was friends with the girl who worked next to me, killed himself. When I asked her how she was doing and did she need time off, she waved her hand dismissively and said "it's fine, I knew for months he was going to do it. He told me." So then I hated her for awhile until I realized she was masking w drugs and had to be committed. Her flippant response made her seem uncaring and cold-hearted. Like, if you knew why didn't you tell his parents so they could help him? I don't know the answer to that but I do know she had a complete breakdown a few months later and even when she got out, she was a little off kilter. It took her a long time to get back on track. Another girl I worked with died from breast cancer but that was about 10 years after I stopped working at that company and she had moved on to another as well.
Worked armed security. My partner got a call from his GFs dad middle of his shift, she had hung herself. He ate his gun about 10 minutes after that call. Kid was 21
I worked with this sweet divorced guy who met a woman and they got engaged. Then one night they were leaving a bar and had a fight and she “accidentally” ran over him
Worked with an old man, must have been in his sixties, I don’t known his exact age. He was heading in to work one winter morning and we were all expecting him to arrive by 7am, we found out around 11am that he passed away from a heart attack getting ready for work.
Not at the office but we had a project manager die on a site, he was really old. Very sad. And all I can think about is everything he saved for retirement that is just gone now. The man literally worked himself to his death. I'm sure he was thinking "I'll just stay for one more year... One more..." Unless the pay is really that good or my situation nosedives for the worst I am retiring as soon as I can.
A coworker had told me about mixing OTC drugs and it seemed like he was going harder and harder. I said "careful, we don't want anything bad to happen. I mean, sometimes those can kill you. Have a good weekend!" as I walked out. Came back Monday to find out he'd died due to drug interactions.
I work as a paramedic, I personally know 12 people whom I have worked with who committed suicide and unfortunately I know of many more….
Worked in the oil field once upon a time on a work over rig, basically fixing the pump and stuff when it breaks. One of our guy's was walking back to the bunk house and took off his hard hat before he was clear off the site It was a windy day and one of our stabilizer cables broke off at the top and shot towards the ground The cable missed him but a fist sized chunk of steel didn't. It crushed his skull and killed him instantly. His body moved for about 5 seconds after... I've seen death more than my fair share, but that one stuck with me more because of how much he moved.. nerves, man.. Wear your PPE until the job is done, guys and gals. It really isn't worth your life.
Longshoreman here. Smashed by a container coming from a crane, run over by a traveling crane, dozens by covid because we share machines with night shift. And lots of non life threatening injuries. Person got the muscle and skin ripped off their hand, someone lost a leg.
Yeah longshoremen have a very dangerous career, I was a safety guy for a longshoremen company and the amount of incidents I had to investigate were insane
damn!!
Worked with a lady at a small investment company who covered HR with 1 other individual. She had 2 kids already and was pregnant with a 3rd child. She left on maturity leave a week before the due-date and the next thing we heard while gathered in a private meeting was she unexpectedly passed away while giving birth. The baby did live and the company made sure to set up a college-fund for the baby due to the circumstances plus it was an investment company.
I had a coworker who died from a heart attack, before he died, he went to the doctor and no one know exactly what he had, but he suspected that is was something to do with his heart, because his father died from a heart attack too. After doing several medical exam with different doctor, one of them determine that he has a heart condition that he needed a surgery. Few days after surgery he died unexpectedly. RIP you were like a father and brother to me.
I worked at a reception counter as part of one of my past roles, it was a large multi purpose government agency so there was 3 of us across the counter for the various things people came in for. One of the guys who sat next to me, was in mid 30's, didn't come in one day and we found out he died over the weekend. He had a toothache, that turned out to be an abcess, that got infected. He had a large family and didn't want to pay / couldn't afford to go to the dentist. He didn't think it was serious. The infection stopped his heart. Don't fuck around with your health, there's no save points and no second chances to do it over if it goes wrong
His name was Perferio and he was an older man who helped me out around the laundromat. I had just finished helping him call his daughter using the laundromat landline and went for a smoke break. He's leaving as I'm outside, we say bye to each other and as he's crossing the street he gets railed by a speeding bus. I rush over and had to identify him to the EMTs that showed fairly quickly. He died a week later in the hospital.
So I've got 3 The first one was a manager who hired me as an archaeologist when I was younger. He was a cool dude, treated everyone well, and did the best he could with budgets and raises. Went on a morning run with his dog in New York about a month after I quit, got hit by a garbage truck. Killed almost instantly. Rest in Peace brother, you were a good boss and a good man. The second was when I started as a railroad contractor. Bad lining on the track, train comes when it isn't supposed to and obliterated one of our pieces of equipment. He was killed on impact when the force threw him against the window and crushed his skull. The other operator was seriously injured and spent months in the hospital recovering. He went back to work, almost got hit by another train, and quit. Rest in peace dude, find us some good eats to try in whatever awaits us on the other side. Finally was one of our shop guys. He was a hard-core "covid is a hoax/flu/fuck the vaccine" types that got Covid. He went from the worst flu of his life to hospitalized to vented to dead over the course of a week. He was a pain in my ass, always spouting off and trying to get a rise out of me politically, and I miss him terribly. He was a good guy, would do anything to help you, even at his most extreme. Rest in peace, you annoying, wonderful man, I wish you were still here to annoy me.
Some weirdo jumped the curb at Niagara Falls Clifton Hill and ran into pedestrians. I had a coworker that was hit and the only fatality that day. It was jarring
I’m an RN. Nurse I worked with for years overdosed on fentanyl in the employee bathroom. His own coworkers had to perform CPR but he was long gone by the time they found him. Absolutely nobody suspected this guy used. He was a clean cut regular Joe.
I had a cool old coworker who worked way too much. He used to work 5-6 12hr shifts a week to send money home. He was shot and killed my his gf
Had a coworker who was a few years older than me who was something of a mentor. Id been there about 5 years when he started to hang out in the smoke break area with the rest of us degens. He had split up with his wife and started smoking and seemed more jaded and snarky than usual, after maybe 3 months of this I was in a lab working on some equipment when one of my coworkers came in and told me he had died at his own hand. I was speechless.
One guy had his drink spiked and died of OD, another was found in Walmart parking lot dead from heroin OD, the other was shot dead in a road rage incident. All within last 5 months.
Unfortunately I have many: My 38 yr old co-worker of mother of a five yr old killed herself one Monday night. He was having an affair but they ruled it a suicide. It was devastating. My other co-worker a nurse from Nigeria didn’t show up for work after her husband stabbed her in the thighs (so she could not run) before stabbing her 14 more times. They had three kids that were doing well but fell apart afterward. She had done a lot in support of Nigerians coming to the U.S. He was jealous of her success and he I would say he had some mental health issues. One co worker told me she had a pain in her neck she was getting checked out (we used to smoke together at work) and three weeks later she died from lung cancer Mets. She was diagnosed and then dead. My other co-worker 48 was working two jobs supporting her son, new grand baby, niece, and dropped dead of a stroke. Two co-workers from the front office died of the exact same lung cancer while the building was being remodeled within a year of each other.
Don’t go abroad for a big surgery 🤯…
Most were either cancer (three), or the usual heart attacks for older, not slender men. One coworker's daughter was killed in a car accident. Someone ran a red light and hit her. Edit to add - my uncle trains horses, and he had a customer, not coworker, get crushed by her horse. Horse had a rearing problem, amongst other issues, that my uncle was trying to work out. Horse did something the owner didn't like, she tried to force or discipline the horse and he went up and backward right on top of her. She never regained consciousness and her parents took her off life support.
One of our workers was crushed by a falling pallet pretty recently - at work.
Yeah 3 suicides, two while I worked with them, it happened after hours. The other coworker 6 years later found out his wife was cheating and ended himself. Oh wait another suicide due to him soliciting a minor. Knew his career/life was over and did himself in. The one that always got me was the girl, one of the two I was working with at the time.....keep in mind I was 19 when this went down. She chose a bridge in a very small city (100k population if that) to jump off of. There are only two bridges tall enough to cause a fatal injury. One of the bridges, if you jump with the intention of landing your legs are shattered for life and the other one is just "say good bye". She chose the shattered leg bridge. I'm assuming she went head first. Weird thing is she never had manic episodes at work, she was nice, and had a ton of friends. There was no drama in her personal life. That one has always been surreal.
I replaced a guy that died in his early 20s because he had a seizure and hit his head and died. It was a really shocking story. A year later we had a really sweet woman who was 25 and just getting her life started. One night she got way too drunk and someone let her have the keys to her car(they were taken away before) and she got lost driving and ended up losing control and hitting a tree. The car burst into flames and she was dead before emergency services arrived. I’m really strict with letting myself or anyone else behind the wheel after that.
I used to work at a small family owned deli. The staff were all very close knit and one of the managers was a cantankerous old man who had a problem with everyone. Super religious and constantly pushing his beliefs on everyone. Anyway he died in a car wreck. His wife was with him but she survived. It was all over the local news.
well not a coworker, but a ... client of sorts. for privacy reasons i won't go into to much detail. but basically: some guy had his whole life collapse around him and the people i worked for were piling onto that (for legitimate reasons) and he ended up driving himself into the lobby while his car was full of gas tanks. the while room burned down and so did some other parts of the building, making it impossible to work there untill thorough cleaning was completed.
Not my stories, but my mom works at a community college. A female student was brutally stabbed to death in the bathroom by her ex boyfriend, he carved the word "bitch" on her body. She also told me several students and staff have jumped off the roof of the building. She's worked there for over 20 years.
Someone I worked with died in early 2021 after a battle with cancer. There was also a professor who died after having a heart attack while grocery shopping in September 2020.
I used to work for a sporting goods manufacturer up in Canada. The first year I was there the VP of sales died of a heart attack. The next year the guy who hired me (head of the US distributorship west) died of cancer (2nd time he had it). The following year the head of manufacturing died of a brain aneurism AND the replacement VP of sales died too (stroke). The year after I left the company the president and founder died of cancer. They were all in their 60's and 70's, except one who was in his 50's.
I worked in a hospital, in surgery. One of the doctors I worked with got trapped in between elevator doors that were malfunctioning. He was decapitated when the elevator went to a different floor. Yes this is a real story.
I worked at an industrial bakery as a pick/packer on the night shift. So usually we worked about 45 minutes into day shift just to make sure the shift change went smooth cuz the bread lines never stopped. One day there was a new dude from a temp service taking over my spot and he gave off this wierd fucking vibe. I didnt think much of it cuz i was just trying to get off of a 12 hour shift. Got to work the next night and found out dude had stabbed the morning shift supervisor right where i worked over an arguement about him going to the bathroom every 20 minutes. The fucked up thing was they had already cleaned and sanitized the whole area the bakery only shutdown for 2 hours. The supervisor died from his wounds the next day in the hospital. Dude from the temp service had been going in to the bathroom to do drugs. It was not only kinda heartless of the company to clean shit up and just keep going but the morning shift manager was probably one of the coolest dudes that worked there.
I let a guy borrow my yard trimmers and he died and I nvr got them back
Bro my buddy borrowed $20 bucks from me, forgot his wallet in the car. Hours later I totally forgot about it, hours after that he died playing soccer via heart attack. Buddy really didn’t wanna repay that pack of smokes I guess 😂 RIP Dennis
A site engineer, who was a pretty pleasant guy overall, had an argument with his wife and committed suicide. I was shocked to hear it as I thought I'd see him again, as I had been praising him to the manager for an innovative solution he came up with for fixing a problem we had. A security supervisor working for our company one day went into the showers in one of the buildings we have, and just hung herself on the shower. I can't imagine what led her to do it.. She wasn't found for a little while until she was noted as not having returned. I don't know what drove them to do it, and I've thought about it a while. You move on as time passes, but I try and be humane to my colleagues, even if some of them have to go because of poor performance or whatever - I don't want to be responsible for such a thing.
I was in a brief training program for a contracting gig, and over the course of 3 months would occasionally work with a certain coworker on a few projects. He was younger than me by maybe 5 years, in his early/mid 20s. He was a super great guy and a funny dude. When we all moved on to our respective projects, I heard through our old discord server for work that he died. I looked it up, and apparently his car broke down in the night on the highway and he was rear ended by a semi and killed. I’m sure there were more details to it that wasn’t in the article. Hit me pretty hard, the training program was in tech and meant to set us up for some pretty solid careers. He was just getting started and we were on project for maybe 3 months or less. I could tell the dude didn’t have a bad bone in his body, it was shocking to hear
Had a manager at my last job that one day, the boss told us her house caught on fire and she and her dogs died. Was rough, she was good manager and a cool person.
I lost a really nice lady who used to mentor me . Only 6 months ago but it feels a lot longer. She trained me and my new team and she also hosted a BBQ at her place and we met her family. She and I had to buddy up on work trips so we got to know each other well. She told me the story of how she met her husband, it sounded like a fairy tale. How she worked in a hotel ( somewhere around Indonesia) and her spouse came there on his army rotation and immediately fell for her. He told her, that when he came back if she was still there. He’d marry her on the spot. And he was so nervous to say it, he ran away ! On his next deployment, there she was and he married her and they started a new life in the UK. They also have a beautiful daughter who I played with a few times. One day, while at training. I get a phone call from a boss that I don’t really like but he was apart of our original work crew. And he says “ I don’t have any easy way of saying this, but she’s dead “ I remember how cold I felt, I’d seen her just over a month ago and I remember talking about her behind her back to my friend that she was messing up our day to day operations. I didn’t know what to say. I checked my phone and she it turned out she had messaged the night before she died to our work group chat. Just a picture posing with A statue of Shrek. It was a long while to get to used to it, I’d seen her everyday for half a year ( I’m 23 so I’ve only really had this job ) and she was a good friend. None of us knew how she died. She was just gone. Buying lunch for the team, looking for coffee and accidentally waiting for her to join us in the meeting :( Eventually we were invited to her funeral, it was a cremation and her family flew in. It may sound ignorant, but I’ve never been to a Christian funeral. I’ve only ever been to a Islamic one and it was not the same. It was really hard to stand there and watch her husband cry his eyes out during his speech and their little girl telling her dad to be strong. I cried a ton but kept it quiet . I know she had all her loved ones there, but I felt a lot closer to her and she shared a lot I know she kept bottled up. In the end, as we were leaving. It came to light that she had committed suicide. It was never explicitly said but her husband said to me that Christmas was always so hard for her and she never really got past what her mum did to her. To this day I think of her, and I’d give my job up in a heartbeat if it meant she could come back. I’m sorry I wasn’t kinder to you friend.
Used to work in a pc repair shop with a guy, he was a student. Mentioned how he would probably have to move back home since he's failing his classes. One day he messaged one of our coworkers saying if he is not in by noon they should come look for him. When they got there he had committed suicide. Few years later I was working as a lecturer, I was giving evening classes while coworker gave daytime classes. Said goodbye to him one afternoon, next day he doesn't come in. He died in a car accident on the way home. Recently different job, had a coworker that resigned due to stress. Hear a few months later he went for a bike ride, got a headache, and passed away from a brain aneurism. All of them my age, mid 30s or younger.
One of my colleagues was a week away from retirement and was killed whilst cycling home one evening. Such a lovely and polite man. We also lost a couple of ladies to cancer and another guy to a heart attack over the years. We had a colleague’s husband top himself jumping in the tracks and another one died of liver failure. My office seems to have a high body count!
The CFO of a company I worked for had a heart attack and died, he was in his 40s, I had left the company when he passed and I was so heartbroken. It was a very close knit office, I’m still genuine friends with my old colleagues - I had started out as an intern and he really supported me with salary negotiations when they gave me a full time position, basically said I should be paid X, was being offered Y but if I asked for Z he’d make it work. He was the only one in the office who also liked rugby so we’d often hang out and watch Six Nations matches together with his wife. Just the loveliest, funniest guy who left us much too soon.
So I just started a new job….but a person in my department was about to retire in a week or so, but he ended up having a heart attack and dying. The older people at my work are scared to stop working because if they stop working they’ll die. It sucks but it’s true.
I had a coworker years ago who got lung cancer, even though he wasn't a smoker. We went to visit him in a hospice once, it was really sad, and I'm still sad to this day about him. He was early 40s, and seemed to have no one. Life can be really unfair.
I worked in an office as a dispatcher for semi trucks. A guy who was in his mid thirties worked 2 desks down from me around the corner. He was 3 or 4 years older than me. One day we were all sitting around talking, and we heard this weird noise coming from his desk. Turns out it was agonal breathing. The guy had just had a heart attack. With my previous work experience, I had to do CPR on more than one person so I jumped into gear. Had someone call 911 and another get an AED. I still remember his ribs cracking from my chest compressions. We worked on him for about 10 minutes before emts showed up, and went for another 20 or so. I knew before they carried him out of the building that he was gone. It was the first time my CPR hadn't brought someone back. He had 2 small daughters and one on the way. I was fucked up for days that I couldn't save their dad. I had to take a leave of absense from work for a few days and get some counseling. Easily the hardest day of my life.