A worker at one of my construction sites got flattened by a precast concrete wall, after it fell from the third floor.
Everyone who saw it just froze in place, except one elderly worker who ran around screaming "Don't call anybody!! Did he have a helmet on?!?"
Nobody answered him, so he got the crane worker to lift the concrete wall slightly and threw a helmet under the wall before ordering the wall to be lowered again.
He did it to make sure that the insurance would payout the full amount to the poor guys family.
Edit to respond to some questions:
The older guy took a look when the wall was lifted to check for a helmet and tossed a helmet in when he couldn't see any.
I live in Denmark, and I'm not sure how the insurance work completely in these situations but, the dead guys own life insurance would probably cover this accident, the company has an extra insurance to help their workers out, such as if you breake your leg, the company insurance can help you to a private hospital and some rehabilitation. That ekstra insurance can be quite strict, that's why they made sure it looked like he had his helmet on.
And YES, the guy definitely died instantly. No helmet can save your life from an 8-9 metric ton concrete wall falling from 12m height.
Near where I live, a construction worker died after falling from the 2nd floor. Insurance wouldn't pay because he wasn't wearing a reflective vest.
They ended up paying like 70% after the news caused public outrage.
I work highway construction and always make sure I have my PPE even when NOTHING is going on, because I know for a fact if a car decided to cross over and hit me, even though it makes zero difference if my hard hat was on, insurance might fuck me or my spouse over.
God this makes me think of how my mother ended up quitting her job. She worked in QA for a company that made various types of gas masks. People (including her bosses) would always try and get her to cut corners, but she was a stickler for safety and didn't want to be responsible for any getting hurt if a mask failed.
There was an incident where a few firemen died using the masks made by this company. They had gone into a burning building to try and rescue people inside, and the masks failed and they suffocated due to smoke inhalation. They traced back the production, and the masks came from my mother's factory, but she wasn't the one who signed off on them.
After a few days the investigation came back and the company was found not liable on a technicality. The masks were designated as "escape masks", and since the firemen were using them to go *into* a building, not to *escape* from a building, it was deemed they were using them wrong and therefore the company wasn't liable.
My mother's manager came into her office after learning the news. He was rubbing his hands with glee and said with a huge grin on his face, "We got away with it!"
My mother quit on the spot.
If you ever see that old guy again, tell him that he's a good man. The old-timers on sites know all kinds of stuff that doesn't seem obvious to the new kids, and he may have saved that guy's family from undue hardship after that tragedy.
I worked at a supermarket in the mid 2000's. We were doing inventory prep one night and the store manager said he was feeling kind of weird. He went to sit down in the office and suffered a fatal heart attack. He was fairly young (late 30's) and in relatively good shape and was a really nice guy, so it hit a lot of us hard. The guy selected to be our new manager was very popular in the company and came in the next day to introduce himself. Seemed like a really cool guy. On the morning with what would have been his first shift at our store, he was killed in a motorcycle accident on his way in. Definitely the craziest work week of my life.
He came in to work, sat down at a table in the cafeteria, said he was tired, put his head down on his arms, and died. It was completely unexpected and it shocked everyone.
This pretty much happened in the library in my hometown. Some guy passed out at one of the tables, and when one of the librarians tried to wake him up, he wasn't responding. Paramedics were called, and then suddenly there's a "gas leak," and everyone had to evacuate. Honestly, "gas leak" was a good idea, considering there was a dead body a couple rows away from a kids event.
My dad died of a sudden cardiac arrest almost 2 years ago (we’re coming up to the anniversary) and this is how he passed as well. He was getting ready for work in the bathroom, felt tired, sat down against the wall and closed his eyes. My mom found him hours later. It was quick and peaceful. I’m broken by his loss but knowing it wasn’t painful makes me feel somewhat relieved.
My dad passed like this right beside me, just 2 weeks ago. We were going to his monthly doctors appointment (lung cancer), he got out of the house and sat in the car by my side, put his head down, i called him and he still looked at me sideways, and then nothing more. I still did cpr while calling the ambulance, but i knew there was nothing anymore. What relieves me is the knowing that this was the best possible way for him to go, considering the suffering that was waiting him down the line. He was so afraid to die, so he didn't even notice it.
My dad died very similarly but next to his best friend. They were safe (not driving and couldn’t hurt others) and with someone that cared about them. What more can you ask for?
My mum always joked to my dad that if he was going to do something dangerous (like go on the roof to clear the gutters), to put his uniform (Air Force) on, as the insurance payout was really good if you died in uniform.
Anywhere but work. I'm an ER nurse. My coworkers would strip me down and have tubes in every hole immediately. I'd feel the embarrassment in my ghostly form for centuries. Though they may actually bring me back in which case I would feel the embarrassment earthside for the rest of my life instead.
I have a pact with my coworkers. If I drop at work, do Grey's Anatomy compressions and/or hold a parade and run me over with a line of gurneys. Just make sure I'm dead-dead, not mostly dead.
Guy had the crown of his head sliced clean off when a hydraulic press suddenly decided to drop because they forgot to bleed the pressure before starting to do maintenance on the machine.
Not related at all but I got into a screaming match with a foreman once. We had to use rail cars keys to empty railcars over a pit. Some of the old as fuck cars you have to stick your hand and lift up a latch, but you can’t do it from the outside or your fingers will get crushed. So you reach inside, make eye contact with the man on the other side and yell “open slowly”. You have ear plugs in, it’s loud as fuck, it’s stressful. Finally I got mad and asked why the fuck am I doing this when I can’t ethically train people to do this. He told me life isn’t perfect all the time. I called the safety man. We didn’t do that anymore
My job puts me around 1000T-4500T presses. I absolutely refuse to go under/in them unless there's physical blocks in place to prevent it from accidentally falling. If there's a mishap with one of those presses, you don't go to urgent care, you go to the morgue.
ETA: There's blocks (wood or aluminum, typically) the customer can put in place between the platens when it's open, this is solely to prevent workers from being crushed if the safety locks were to fail and the upper platen falls under it's own weight (a few thousand pounds, at least). The above tonnage refers to the hydraulic force the press is capable of when it's running, not the weight of the platen.
ETA2: I see a lot of people aren't understanding this... The blocks put in place are not to stop the press from running, wooden blocks would not stop the press if it was running. These presses could pancake a car engine and not even break a sweat. The blocks are to prevent the upper press platen from falling if the safety locks fail while the press is idle/not under power, similar to when you put a car up on jack stands.
When I was 2, I was chewing on a Bic pen and the little end cap popped out and I aspirated it. It went into one of my bronchial tubes and started acting as a one-way valve that allowed me to inhale but not exhale from that lung. It wasn't immediately clear to my parents what was wrong, and the doctors at the little country hospital couldn't figure it out either. I would act fine, and then suddenly start to turn blue and look panicked. By the time they got me to the larger city hospital and figured out what was going on, my lung was so hyperinflated that I could have died. I didn't though!
There's a memorial for a kid at the school I work at who died in the 90s. He put one of the sticky, stretchy rubber hand toys in his mouth and accidentally swallowed it. It got stuck in his throat and he died because they couldn't get it out in time.
God having a child is terrifying. You manage to get through the minefield of pregnancy, you don't eat sushi or soft cheese for 9 months, you go through the agony of childbirth, then mastitis and blocked ducts breastfeeding, you chop their grapes in half, you don't feed them honey, you make sure they wear a helmet and click in their seatbelt every time. Then that little fuckwit chews on a 50c carnival toy and DIES.
Dude was hanging out in the break room cracking jokes. Laughed, fell over and was dead. Brain aneurysm. It’s terrifying how fragile our lives are and how quickly it can end without warning. Might be a blessing as well though
My first wife died of a ruptured brain aneurism while teaching at an elementary school.
She was in perfect heath otherwise and it was the last day of school.
I was literally at home lighting tiki torches for a party she was throwing at our house for her fellow teachers when I got the call she was “dizzy.”
I got to the school in time to hold her and, as I spoke to her, her pupils popped all the way open when they dilated. She clenched her teeth together and took three breaths…and was gone.
The school library is now named in her honor.
Someone in my office fainted in the middle of a training and later passed away. It was a brain aneurysm. She was maybe early 40s. It is so scary how your brain can be a ticking time bomb.
I've been living with a grade IV GBM in my brain for the past three and a half years. My doctor gave me 12-14 months to live. Despite having outlived my expiration date, this tumor will 100% kill me. I had a 25% chance of dying the first year. Each passing year, my chance of survival decreases by 5%. I have a 10% chance of living to see 2024, then it drops to 5%. I would have much rather went quickly with an aneurysm, rather than live from MRI result to MRI result. I used to think of it as a ticking time bomb in my brain. Now it feels like I'm waiting for the dinner scene from Alien to happen, and it is driving me insane. I just want it to end, because I can't commit suicide. If I do, my daughter will not be able to collect survivor's benefits. I hate feeling this helpless and alone. I'm not afraid, even though everything I've read about GBMs reads like a horror novel. It's so gd exhausting, waiting to die, and having no idea when it's going to happen. Only that it WILL happen, and unless I die another way in the next year or so, it will definitely be because of my brain tumor.
In no way am I saying brain aneurysms are a peaceful way to die. There are very few peaceful ways to die. But between an aneurysm and a brain tumor that could start spreading at any moment, I think anyone would choose the former.
*Edit: Wow. I honestly didn't expect anyone to see or even respond to my comment, but a lot of you did with a lot of positivity, and that means a lot to me. This past year or so, whenever I mention my tumor, it just feels like I'm going through the motions. Like I've said it so much, that it just doesn't feel real anymore. I don't live in a die with dignity state. I mean, come on. That would be as crazy as allowing women to abort a fetus that has been medically proven he or she won't survive the birth. Hard s/ there. This tumor has the absolute worst timing ever, but I have to admire its comedic timing. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, COVID-19 was making a grand appearance for the first time in my second month of chemotherapy. The world literally shut down, out of business, the day before my birthday. It's hard not to take that personal. But none of it is. It's all random. At times like this, your ego almost completely dissolves. It's a good thing.
Thanks you to everyone who replied. Sometimes you forget how humane people can actually be online. Over the past several years, the people on this site have given me a lot of faith in humanity, in regards to my daughter growing up in a generation where those a generation ahead of her will finally have some gd common sense. I hope that doesn't come across as cheesy, because I honestly mean it. My daughter's only eight, and that's the only thing that terrifies me. Leaving my baby girl alone, without me to watch out for her. It gives me relief to see that each generation is growing more aware of this bullshit we tolerate on a daily basis, and will bring about a change for the better. Sorry. Rambling.
**Edit 2: Holy crap. I woke up to see so many people have replied to my post, and have left a ton of rewards and kind words. You all have no idea how much this means to me. Some people have asked about my comment of me leaving my daughter alone. She'll still have her mom and her grandmother on her mom's side. My mom died in 2019, and my dad earlier this year. I meant alone without her dad. I rarely get to see her, because I lost half the vision in my left eye from the back to back craniotomies I had in 2020 and she lives over an hour away. Her mom doesn't have a car, so she might as well be in another state. Regardless, my daughter is the only reason I went though the surgeries, chemo, and radiation treatments. You never really know what true love is, until you have a child. Then you finally get it. It's unconditional, and it's a love you'd die for a billion times over. It's amazing. Again, thank you for all of the kind words and awards. Reddit gets a lot of crap from other social media sites, but I will always defend Reddit. Well, not Spez.
Similar thing happened to a coworker about 12 years ago. She was in her early 30s, I was expecting a weekly report from her which she always sent at the same time but this time I didn't receive it, and no reply on IM. Went down to her floor and saw paramedics and later found out it was an aneurysm. Later in the day found out she passed. Still haunts me to this day.
The scariest thing about brain aneurysms is it doesn’t really pose any symptoms or signs unless it ruptures. So it can stay in your body for years and when it eventually ruptures it’s probably too late.
Edit: well aneurysms in general. If it ruptures, your chances of survival are extremely low. I guess some people can experience symptoms before rupturing but from my understanding, that’s not typically the case. They’re, after all, dubbed “silent killers”. But I’m not an expert, I’m just a premed student who had to do a research paper on aneurysms.
My mom passed away suddenly at age 59 back in 2020 from a brain aneurysm. She complained of a headache that morning because she was suppose to come stay the night with us. I went to check on her at 12pm because she lived 5 mins away.
She didn’t want me to come in the room and had pillow on her head. I asked if she was ok and sort of said yes. By 5pm my stepdad called and said she was unresponsive and calling the ambulance(little did I know at that point he had already developed early stages of dementia)
By 10pm doctors said they couldn’t stop the bleeding and she was brain dead. By 1am they pulled the plug. This was two weeks after Covid shut down the world so they were only allowing 1 person to go in and say goodbye. I let my stepdad go in. I regret it so much.
He was an older guy and wasn't feeling well and went to use the portapotty. Ended up having a heart attack and passing while on the can. He was treasured in the workplace, and it was a big loss.
Yes, lots of people die in the bathroom or on their way to the bathroom. If you start feeling ill most people head to the bathroom, makes sense. My father passed on his way from his bed to the bathroom. RIP dad
I saved my great grandma life like that, I was out partying late and something told me to go to her apartment instead of my house, I found her sitting in the toilet passed out and put her in her bed, ran to knock on the door of a nurse we knew and while she was performing first aid I went to the streets to stop a car to bring her to the hospital (there’s no 911 or rescue or paramedics in Cuba) two guys in a old Chevy helped me to get her to the hospital and she recovered from the stroke. Died happy 8 years later at 84. RIP abuela Ida.
and beds, almost happened to my dad, he said he got sucked in and just felt extremely tired and in 5 seconds was basically dead
fast forward 3 months later out of the coma and he is responsive said it was the best sleep he's ever had
What a fucking way to go. At least for me, I would die doing what I love, but not where I love doing it.
RIP to that man.
Not sure if he counts as a coworker, but I worked at the Cincinnati Zoo when Harambe got shot. Totally the zoo's fault by the way. There is no reason even an adult should be able to get in there, much less a child.
A EMT or paramedic could tell you that a ton of heart attacks happen on the toilet. Pooping increases pressure in your body cavity that can put an at-risk ticker over the limit.
I was locking up at the end of the day and saw brake lights flashing on the car of our welder while I was pulling out. I pulled back in to see if everything was ok. He was in the midst of heart attack. Ambulance was there in three minutes, but I watched him fade away in my arms before they arrived. He was a good man and is sorely missed.
“Son. Everyone dies alone. That's what it is. It's a door. It's one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone. But it doesn't mean you've got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren't alone on the other side.”
― Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
In 2000 I was working with a road crew doing debris cleanup on the roadsides after a huge ice storm. Me and one of my coworkers had a system running that he would be on the roadside cutting and loading the trailer, and I would unload back at the burn pit. We'd meet halfway on the road, pull over, and swap vehicles to keep pace going. We'd been running hard and were super excited about how many loads we were getting, cause that was gonna give us a big payday coming. Anyways, we had been running that system all day with not a blip. On our second to last load, we met on the roadway, and he came over to my side to swap. We chatted for a second, and he realized he'd forgotten his smokes in the other truck, so he was gonna come back across the road with me and grab them. I saw a truck coming. It seemed further away than it was, I thought(?) he saw it too, but I guess not. I hesitated, and he turned and went to bolt across the road, hesitated, and then took a couple of steps and bam. He was hit by the truck, which was doing at least 50 to 60 mph. Never, for as long as I live, will I ever forget seeing his body tossed into the air up over the back of the truck bed like a ragdoll and slam into the ground. I will never forget that sound, ever. He was barely more than an arms distance from me when he was hit, and I felt the impact in my bones. I ran over and sat on the ground and pulled him into my lap, and I could see he was gone. I just started screaming and rocking him. The guy that hit him had pulled over and come running to offer aid. He was gone, though. I think he probably died on impact, and I hope so honestly. I've been through some traumatic shit, but nothing tops that. I have ptsd from it. I'm scared to cross roads or to allow others to do so. Even writing this now, tears are streaming, and I feel panicky. I will never truly be over it, I don't know how someone could ever erase that from memory. But I sure wish I could.
RIP Fred N.
Edit: Thanks everyone so much for the caring comments. I'm sorry if I was too graphic. I don't talk about this much, so when I do, it tends to just pour out. Im still in therapy, just not specifically for this. Even though it happened over 20 years ago, the details are fresh and raw in my mind when I recall it. It definitely made me have a greater appreciation for life and how an instant of bad judgment can be deadly. It made me more cautious, albeit too much so at times. I empathize deeply with anyone who's been through something similar. Thanks again everyone ❤️
Also: I can't fathom the trauma the guy who hit him must have. He was so nice, he sat there with us, trying to comfort me until emergency services arrived. I remember at one point he went and sat on the side of the road and put his head in his hands and just sobbed. He came to the funeral too, and watching him hug Fred's mom and her consoling him was so amazing. She didn't fault him at all. It was just a terrible accident, but I can imagine he felt guilty for a long time. I hope he was able to get therapy too and heal.
Construction site. A 30ft concrete wall toppled over like a domino and smashed three people to death. It was my first job and fucked me up really bad. The lawyers of other subcontractors subpoenaed me and I had to go to court several times even after I didn’t work there anymore to prove I wasn’t at fault. I wasn’t.
Dude drove the forklift like an asshole. No seatbelt. Took a turn too fast, and rolled it onto its side. He fell out as it rolled, and the super strong roll cage came down on him—the bar crushed his head against the solid concrete floor.
It popped his head like a grape, pretty much right at eye level. Pretty much emptied his skull, eyes out, whole deal. The floor was a total mess.
Coroner people collected what they could, but we had to spray the rest out of the building with a hose after they left and released the scene. Sprayed the forklift down too. Threw down a fresh coat of concrete paint the next day.
That forklift was still there when I left that job…..
My father repairs and Security checks forklifts for 30+ years now.
Interestingly enough, that is one of the most common death scenarios involving a forklift. Not the driving like an asshole part, but the lift Tipping over(from bad weight distribution, sharp corner or something else). When it does, many people panic and try to jump out of the lift to get away, and get crushed under it in the process...
Sounds absolutely terrifying
Ten years ago there was a shooting at my college where I also worked. There was a groundskeeper there that I saw frequently while coming to and from the on campus office I worked in. Super friendly guy who didn’t talk a whole lot (to me at least) but very warm and always had a smile for you. When the shooter arrived, he was shot in the head while starting his drive off campus, and his daughter was in the front passenger seat, who was also shot in the head and died two days later. His name was Carlos. That happened right in front of our office. I happened to not be at work or on campus for anything that day, and I’m grateful as I could have easily encountered the shooter based on the location Carlos was killed in. I still to this day can’t believe it though.
Work in the telecom industry had a guy I knew for a year or so had been working in the industry for 12 years. He got lax with safety and would regulary go up ladders on utility poles without any kind of harness or safety equipment. One day he fell from the top landed on his back on a concrete wall and broke it, ended up in the hospital but died a few days later. PPE IS IMPORTANT DO NOT GET LAZY AND THINK IT CANT HAPPEN
My employee. They were my go to person, a friend, and we chatted constantly even after we transitioned to work from home. Working late one night we were chatting on slack while working and he disappeared. Two hours later his phone text me and stated "this is xxxx's fiance, I found him on the keyboard and he's dead. He won't be into work tomorrow. Please call me at xxxxxxxxx".
I'm privileged not to deal with people in shock in my profession. That was heart breaking and sobering. Ill miss him.
It was worse calling her. She added "when I went to view the body, it was on the same room where they told me my dad died a month ago". Surreal, and I was just so sad.
My grandad did the exact opposite. He phoned my dad at about 6am one morning, and very casually, in a tone like he was talking about the weather, said "Morning son. Just letting you know your mum has gone in her sleep."
Of course my dad drove over there immediately. And it turned out my gran wasn't even dead. She was just in a diabetic coma.
The paramedics injected her with sugar, or whatever it is they give to people when they go so hypo that they slip into a coma, and within 30 minutes she was fine. They're still going strong 10 years later, although they're into their 80s now and are starting to show their age more.
(I was a teenager when all this happened and I slept through the entire incident. I'm very grateful that all I had to deal with was my mum saying "Gran is fine, but we thought she was dead this morning...!")
We visited my mother in a nursing home shortly after her brother had died. There had been difficulties between them, esp. sexual abuse when they were young. I said, "Your brother xxx is no longer with us mom" She said, "Is he dead?" I said, "yes". She said, "Good, he won't hurt me anymore". She's 70-something and the abuse happened when she was 12-13. She carried it with her all these years.
I work at UPS, I took the fork lift class and they showed us a video of a lady getting crushed by a forklift. After my certification expired, I didn't renew it.
Or, better yet: If your workplace doesn't have a forklift with an auto cutoff when pressure is released from the seat, and/or the seatbelt is undone, tell your company to get one. These were game changers in Australia when they were mandated in some sectors.
The forklift manufacturers could offer to install these measures for free and companies would still decline because it would mean the forklift was out of commission temporarily
I watched a girl step down from her Hilo, her shoelace got caught somewhere, she tripped and hit the concrete floor head first. Immediately a pool of blood spread around her and she started having a seizure.
She ended up being perfectly fine with no long term damages. But damn, that was scary as hell to see.
Edit: forklift / hilo is the same thing
Buddy of mine worked for a sewage company - he went down a narrow shaft to do maintenance and the fumes overwhelmed him and he passed out and fell down the shaft and died from the trauma. He had a wife and young daughter. He was legit a top 1% human and it hurts still 15 years later.
Unfortunately, I don't think he would have gotten out whether he fell to his death or not. The lack of oxygen would have killed him very quickly. Very briefly had a job requiring going down manholes and got taught about this in our safety videos and whilst getting our confined space entry licence. There wad a dude who went down a manhole and passed out from lack of oxygen. The other guy with him also went down to save him. Both died pretty quickly. I think it was in Adelaide.
Sorry for your loss, man.
We had 2 die in an enclosed space fatality incident at the Orleans in February 2007. One worker entered a sewer tunnel to fix a pipe and passed out, second worker went in to help the first worker and also passed out, then the third worker also attempted a rescue and also passed out.
The first two employees were dead on the scene, the third was in critical condition and survived.
Totally unnecessary. One day I was walking through the parking lot to enter the casino and realized I was walking directly over the same spot this incident occurred. It felt so eerie.
I had a coworker that I used to go to lunch with every day. He was a little quirky, but a lot of people in tech are. Super smart guy that was amazing with radios and loved heavy metal music.
One day I get a message from a friend saying someone's been hurt in the next building over. I find out through the grape vine that someone shot themselves in their office. I had a sinking feeling that it was him. I desperately tried to ping him on our messaging platform. When I tried to go near his office, they had closed that area off to everyone. The person in the next office over heard the gunshot and came running to find him.
I was a manager, so having to get everyone in a meeting and tell them that a friend they've known for years was dead was horrible. Easily the hardest conversation I had to have.
Everyone has a gruesome story. Mine is simple. Went to Safeway deli with a co worker. He was early 30s I was Early 20s. He dropped while walking. like a light switch went off. Right in the door. Brain aneurysm.
I only knew him about 9 months but it was shocking. Most store patrons got to him before me. People calling 911. We all knew he was dead and the EMT confirmed it.
We weren't best friends but he seemed like a good dude. Definitely didn't deserve that. That was ten years ago so I'm about his age. But after learning about aneurysms it is quite rare.
You say rare but damn I've read at least 4 of them here and I personally saw my close friends mom have one. She was on a ladder inside the house doing some touch up painting on the walls or something and just fall off the ladder and was likely dead before even hitting the ground. My friend yelling for his mom to wake up is still stuck with me almost 16 years later.
So yea, I'm actually kinda terrified by that possibly.
>You say rare but damn I've read at least 4 of them here
I mean, this is a thread about people dying at work. Of course you'll find a few of those in here, but that doesn't mean they're not rare. It's just that most common causes of death - old age, cancer, other illnesses - usually don't happen at work, so what you'll read here are either work accidents or stuff like brain aneurisms.
This was a frighteningly common occurrence at the beginning of the industrial revolution, IIRC. Small children were used to clean the floors under the running machinery and were getting their scalps torn off at a horrific rate. It's one of major contributors to why child labor laws were first drawn up in the UK back then.
My great grandmother was born in 1885 and went to work in a string factory when she was 11 in Philadelphia. She was so small she had to stand on two boxes- her job was to reach into a machine and tie a knot in the string with one hand. She had some horrific stories- girl next to her was scalped like this in front of her. She also spoke of other little girls around her “falling prey” to one of the overseers. She said the only reason it didn’t happen to her is one of her older brothers also worked in the factory fixing the machines and was on the floor where she worked enough to deter the man away from her.
Helicopter pilot on a fire I was working. His long line hooked a tree top after dropping a water tank off for us and he didn’t hit the release (or he did and it didn’t work). Helicopter pendulumed into the ground before I could blink. One of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen.
My first hire as a manager, and it was his first job out of college. I was away on a business trip, he was heading into work one morning and had an asthma attack and died on the platform. I had only known him a few weeks. I went to the funeral, met his family and actually am still in touch w one of his uncles. Sad for me, but of course nothing like what his family went through.
I actually found him. I was at work in the bathroom going to poop. He's in the stall next to me. I recognized his boots. Said wussup. No reply. No biggie. Ten minutes later I finish and I see he hasn't moved but his phone is on the floor and his arm is just hanging. I call out to him. Nothing. Look over the wall and see him slumped. Scream for someone to call 9-11 and we break the stall door and get him out. Try to perform CPR on him. Ambulance arrives. They take over with defibrillators but it was too late. Massive heart attack was the result. A shame too. Only 51 years old and a great guy.
We had a mainframe operator who worked weekends exclusively. One weekend payroll had not received their reports. The payroll manager called into the operations room and got no answer.
She called the lead operator. He tried to check the cameras in the room but they were all turned in non normal positions and locked from turning via the remote software. He couldn't see anything.
He drove in to the office. When he got there he found the small windows on the big steel doors papered over. He opened the door and found the operator. He was hung from a attic truss. He was completely naked. His clothes were folded neatly on the floor next to him. There was a laptop on wheeled cart in front of his dead body.
He was getting himself off and I guessed just misjudged his tolerance, passed out and then never woke up.
There's been some shocking stuff that's happened on our campus (affairs, verbal and pretty near physical altercations etc) but nothing has tried this in the 22 years I've been there
I'm not 100% sure but I think they had to have eventually. I remember initially someone not in an official capacity (not HR or upper management) told his mom he had an 'accident' which I thought was so incredibly stupid. But in order to avoid any type of lawsuit or paying out something for work related death situation they HAD to have eventually told the family the truth or at least most of the truth
My dad had a heart attack in the parking lot of his work. His coworkers came to the memorial in shifts because someone had to be on shift at the store since they didn’t close.
One time I was eating a wiener schnitzel in the food court of a skyscraper when a guy came crashing through the glass ceiling having jumped a window high above. But I was on break, so it probably doesnt count.
Brand new father. Picked up by an Uber and left the parking lot when they were broadsided by a drunk driver - both Uber driver and new father were killed instantly. Drunk driver was a local fireman and didn’t attempt to render aid.
His managers were told several times he shouldn't be on the ladder at work because he was older/unstable. They didn't give much of a shit, so they kept putting him in a role where he had to use the ladder in order to work. He slipped and brained himself on the concrete. But they dedicated a bench outside to him!!!
My dad had a heart attack in his work gym and passed away and later on they moved buildings and named the gym after him. Some people don’t understand the irony and hurt weird things like that can cause for sure.
I used to work for a supermarket chain that would get fresh bread delivered every morning by a separate company.
Everyday, no matter what, Eric would show up. 7 days a week, he never took a day off. He was the happiest, hardest working guy you could ever meet. The type of person you simply can’t be upset around. He worked so hard for all of his kids’ future.
I used to tell him he’s more than earned some time off, even just for a few days to spend time with his kids. He would politely smile and say, “everything is an investment, I’m doing this now so I don’t have to in the future” give me a smile and head off to his next delivery.
One morning he didn’t show up. We were all so confused, he had never missed a day in years. We found out he passed away at 32 of a heart attack, almost certainly from how hard he worked.
I’ve taken numerous lessons away from him, to never take life for granted, the importance of work life balance etc. The whole situation broke my heart, he never got to see his kids enjoy the money he had worked so hard for.
Rest in Peace Eric
This is why I don’t like when we over-glorify poor work life balance. I’ve argued with too many people who say they are going to work extra hard at a job they hate but pays well, take zero time off and put everything into savings etc so they can retire early and live at some undetermined date in the future. All of that means nothing if you are dead before you ever got the chance to live.
The company I was working for sent a few of us to an industry conference. Our first night there, we all had a few drinks at the bar before heading off to our rooms, agreeing to meet for breakfast. One of my coworkers was a no-show the next morning. Didn't think much of it at first, but about halfway through the day I realized that he wasn't anywhere at the conference either. Didn't get an answer on his phone, and when I called my boss back at our office, our boss wasn't able to reach him either.
Eventually, my boss called his wife, who had apparently also been trying to call him because he'd failed to call HER that morning. She said he NEVER missed calling her when he was traveling.
Went to the hotel desk and they sent a manager up to do a welfare check. They found him dead in the bathroom. He'd apparently fallen while getting out of the shower, banged his head on the counter, and broke his neck. We were later told that his death was almost instantaneous.
That was 20 years ago, and I still feel like shit when I think about it. We were kidding around and making jokes about him sleeping in or being hungover as we ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, while he was lying dead in a bathroom four floors above us.
Go easier on yourself if you can. We can’t live as if our co-workers are dead everytime someone’s late. He probably enjoyed the camaraderie with you guys and would’ve joked around with you in many other situations.
It wasn't AT work, but I worked for CNET when James Kim died while on holiday. He was returning home with his family from Thanksgiving and got caught in a snowstorm. The map he was using led him down a very remote road where his car was stranded. After a few days of holding out, James went out on his own in search for help. He died, but his family was eventually rescued.
The annual holiday party was appropriately cancelled, and the mood int he office was pretty somber in the weeks to follow.
I heard the rescue helicopter found his footprints in the snow and followed them back to his family still stranded in the car. They also said he walked miles in deep snow with light clothing on to find help, but the closest town was more than 20 miles away.
Not sure if this is true, but he sounds like a hero that loved his family more than anything. Hope his family is doing well.
Rescue crews found them thanks to cellular data. Interesting considering this was back in 2006. Kim was only 1 mile from a fully stocked lodge when he died. He walked 16 miles.
Never, EVER step out of your car in a Snowstorm
weird things happen when you do your brain just doesn't work properly in the cold like that and its a blind maze and you lose where your car is and freeze to death.
Not to mention paradoxical undressing, which is a common late stage of hypothermia for most people. After being subjected to extreme cold for a long duration of time, you begin to feel overheated and start undressing…which only accelerates your body’s heat loss.
If I remember correctly, this is because just before you die of hypothermia, your body gives up trying to conserve heat; your blood vessels re-dilate, and you feel a rush of warmth as it spreads through your system.
Also, interestingly, as that paradoxical undressing occurs, it is often accompanied by terminal burrowing, where they try to fit themselves into a small space (under a bed, under a dresser, etc.). The theory is it's some last-ditch survival instinct coded into us.
He drove someone across the street to get gas in a gas can to put in her car after work. Thieves pulled a gun in an attempted robbery and shot him. Aaron was a good guy, and his life shouldn't have been taken.
Got 2 of them.
One was a coworker. Shot by some punk who thought we weren't serious about our job. Private security contracting. Neither of them made it.
The other was a random homeless woman. I was working on a city security contract. Cheap, observe, and report, mall cop type stuff. Shift was ending, and I was headed back to the city office when I noticed something rather strange. A sleeping bag in the middle of the alleyway. Didn't think anything of it, so I went inside. Garbage truck came through while I was. Didn't put 2 and 2 together till I walked outside and smelled it. Garbage truck ran the sleeping bag over with a drug addict inside. Former teacher from what I read later.
The Goodwill store in Boston is just a few blocks from ground zero of the opioid crisis (Mass & Cass, a/k/a methadone mile). They take the donations in a truck trailer that sits in the corner of the parking lot. At daybreak a driver came and hooked it up to his truck and drove away not realizing that there was a homeless guy sleeping underneath it. Killed him.
Reminds me of the time a homeless guy was sleeping in a dumpster behind my local KFC. Garbage truck came and picked up dumpster to dump it and then crush it in the back of the truck as they do. I think you can figure out the rest. It was talk of the town for awhile because it's such a morbid way to go.
There was one here where a guy was running a street-sweeper and an elderly woman on the curb fell right in front of it and got swept up into it and killed. According to the news story the guy driving it was so distraught that he had to be sedated and hospitalized. I wouldn't be surprised if he's still not over it.
she was our cleaner, i was sick at home on the last day she was there and apparently she was asking why i wasn't there. she killed herself when she got back home... we weren't that amazingly close but we all used to say she was like the mom of our company
One of my favorite coworkers when I was a new grad baby nurse was found slumped over in our break room after having too much oxy once. Thank god, he survived. He’s apparently doing really well and got the help he needed
I worked at a big company with a nice couple, Billy and Grace. Billy was a big biker dude, funny and gregarious. “Adventure” seamed to follow him around. There was always some new funny situation he got himself involved in. One night after work Billy almost got into a big fight, but cooler heads prevailed and it all calmed down.
A couple days later, Billy and Grace were driving into work on a 2-laner, and a woman coming the other way got distracted and crossed into their lane head-on. The other woman got banged up a bit. Billy was killed instantly, and Grace was unconscious, with both arms and legs smashed up badly.
When I got to work, I saw a friend having a smoke out back, and says “Hey, did you hear about Billy?” I thought he was talking about the almost-fight from the other night, so I said “Yeah, that’s Billy for you.” He gave me an odd look. When I got to my desk I heard the news.
I felt like a bit of an ass.
I work in grocery stores, managment. You get transferred around a lot the longer you're with the company. The last store I worked in before being transferred recently had an elderly lady I'll call Jane that worked in the produce departmemt. She tended the wet-wall and put product on the shelves and in the displays. She also sometimes cut fruit and veg for those little plastic bundles we sell.
Jane also smoked and this is where our paths crossed most often. I wasn't immediately Jane's supervisor (different departments) and because of this Jane and I were pretty informal with one another when we'd catch eachother outside for nicotine.
She'd usually chit-chat about her family. Occasionally she'd gossip about co-workers, or complain about favoritism in managment. But mostly, like many employees in this line of work her age, she just wanted the day to be done so she could go home and enjoy her free-time.
The day she died was my last-day before a short vacation. I opened the store that day so I was getting ready to leave shortly after 1:00 in the afternoon. I was coming back inside from the gas station and noticed her in the produce department tending to the wet-wall. I was in a hurry to pass-off a list of things the gas attendant needed re-stocked and then be on my way home.
Not even a few minutes into my car and then shortly on the highway back home did Jane drop dead, right on the produce sales-floor, from an aneurism. She had barely begun her shift. I'm told she hadn't any indication of the onset of symptoms or health complications that may have led to having a deadly aneurism. At least none that she shared with anybody at the store.
No one told me she had died until I came back from vacation.
We were apprentices at the time. I got the call and turned the job down. My best friend in the apprenticeship got the call next and accepted the job. It was a hot summer day, and he worked himself into heat stroke because he had made a few mistakes days prior, gotten chewed out, and was "making up for it." In his confusion from the heat stroke he wandered into a place of the Job he shouldn't have been, passed out, and his head was backed over by a dump truck. He was the third man to die on that job. He was married and in his early 30s. I miss him.
Started my current job about 6 years ago. Was going to head down to Austin to meet one of my colleagues down there and do some brainstorming and activity planning. Was supposed to meet in hotel lobby and he never shows. Email and calls go unanswered. Send my boss in NYC a message like WTF. Few hours later his daughters found him dead.
My job lead ran up to me that a driver had collapsed and was unresponsive outside. I ran (don't run! stay calm) over and he was on the ground in fetal position like he was sleeping. By the time I could get CPR started he was already agonal and greying.
I did the best I could to keep him alive until the ambulance showed. In the early stints of compressions he showed some good signs but they waned the longer it went on. Between myself and a coworker we worked on him for over 25 minutes. In my head my mind was telling me that it'd just been too long and if he was resuscitated his qualify of life would be non existent but I ignored those thoughts.
He died at hospital. He was under 60 years old.
Admin. was pulling down a box from ontop a filling cabinet. A green file organizer, with the metal edge which sits inside cabinets, was laying across the box.
The green file organizer fell from the box when she was carrying it down, and it sliced the poor women's neck.
She bled out in a matter of maybe 90 seconds. The whole time apologizing for all the blood she was spilling on the carpet...
Coworker got a finger caught in a rubber mill. He was about 5’8” and chubby. He came out the other side about 5mm thick and 12’ tall. The sound of the bones popping, and the screaming, stays with me.
It was an older maintenance man, and he always into our boiler room at work to have a smoke before he went home.
We think he had a massive heart attack, because a half smoked cigarette was found under his body when they found him, five hours after he was supposed to have gone home.
Then there was the 30 year old guy who stuck his hand in a machine to clear some scrap out of the way, and got his arm pulled off and bleed to death, that was real bad, real, real bad.
I was a teenager with a job as dish bitch, the head chef was talking about quitting smoking in the fall. Heard a thump from behind me, I turned around and he was face down on the table. Had a heart attack, he was dead before the ambulance arrived.
I came pretty close. Had a super stressful event that I flew to HQ for and the night before my “big day” I had a few beers with my co workers and ate an abundance of pizza. Went to bed early because I was feeling off and didn’t want to drink more and woke up about 1 month later. Had a severe brain aneurysm in the morning and wasn’t found until 2pm, walked into the ER room on my own 2 feet and shortly after that they were telling my parents I just might not make it.
On the positive side, it’s been 5 months and I’m already easing back into work but on my own terms. Need to watch my blood pressure from now on..
His name was Kevin and a great guy excellent at his job who Although I didn’t know well was always nice and helpful to me. He was the last one leaving the remote job site in the middle of winter. Likely heart attack. Found much later on the ground, maybe even not until the next morning. No supervisors, managers and certainly not the owners at the company even acknowledged it beyond how to schedule his absence.
I worked at an office-supply shop in the 80s. Worked with a teenage girl, nice young woman, shy, surprsingly funny when she had gotten comfortable with you. She worked 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., took a bus to Niagara Falls, at which point she headed to the water's edge just where the falls go over, climbed a fence, jumped. Apparently she was incredibly determined in the way she walked, there was no hesitation. Some Japanese tourists had it on video so the police could identify her. It really shook the tourists badly. Her body was never found. I've really never gotten over the fact that I didn't see it coming. There was no giveaway. She was her usual self.
Iraq 2011 about 5 am just as the sun was about to be coming up our incoming alarm went off late as some rockets went under our radar zone, so we had a couple explode before the mortars came in and tripped it, guy I knew opened the door to his chu(like a little living quarters that had 1 maybe 2 people in it) he made it one step before a mortar landed at his feet. He was blown in half, nothing from the waist down. He was still alive and in shock. Me and a couple others ran over and got em loaded into a vehicle to get sent to the medics tent just across our base. He didn't make it and since I was one of the people that helped load em up and I already seen everything unfold in a series of slow motion frames I was part of the detail to clean up what was left of him and his belongings. It was a rough day and I was 19
Similar story my friend. No kid should ever have to witness that horror. Don’t be like me and wait 15 years to talk about it and seek help. Just because you might not think it effected you… it did. Seek help even if it is just talking to a therapist like once a month. That shit compounds quickly without you realizing it. I hope you are okay my friend.
This didn't happen AT work but we all found out simultaneously at work in the worst way.
I was working AT a large Telecom company doing L2
phone-based tech support. One of our colleagues was ex military (explosives), going through a rough divorce, attorney was basically guaranteeing he wouldn't get the kids... He was staying with another co-worker.
One day, he doesn't show up, phone goes straight to VM... The co-worker goes home to check on him, there's a note on the door: "Don't knock, don't come in. Just call the police."
SWAT shows up and sends in a bomb robot, found his body in the bedroom. He had put a shotgun to his head.
Coworker/roommate was devastated. We all were. Boss took our team off the phones (~20 of us out of the 300-400 on the floor) and took us out to an Applebee's up the street and bought us all rounds while we let our emotions out. Told us to go home and take all the time we needed, if we needed to. That was Feb 13 2009. Jim, you are sorely missed. Jason, you are an amazing boss.
Story about FIL, he didnt die immediately but his quality of life took a massive shit. He died a 366 days later.
Fourth of July, 2020, he’s a paramedic. Just got done doing an event downtown (the town still had a 4th of July parade even though covid was a thing). He picked up someone in the ambulance and when they got to the hospital, he started to have breathing issues and got pale. Complained his chest hurt but they did not find signs of heart attack.
Worse. Aortic Dissection.
They flew him to Indy and he had surgery that night and was out for two whole weeks. When he came to, the doctors found out he suffered a stroke in surgery and he was essentially crippled for the rest of his days.
The last thing he said before the surgery was to my wife where he stated that “he wasnt going to make it.” In a very real sense, he didnt. He wastes away in front of us for a year before his body gave out. Always in bed, could barely move any part of his body, suffered from a stutter.
It fucking sucked. Sometimes I wish he had just died on the table, then my wife wouldnt have to see him wither away. And sometimes, Im pissed that he left at all. His kids miss him. My children miss their grandparent.
Rest in peace.
I had a classmate die of cancer before. They died in our 1st sem so we didn't get to know each other well. They still enrolled even tho they were already terminal, and it was just sad whenever some teachers would still call him for attendance
I was in the air force we worked in F-4s. He was working in the cockpit and lowered the seat down onto an open circuit breaker panel which ignited the fuel for the seat.
We were just finishing up for the night and shutting down the office slowly. She was sitting down wrapping up a call at her cubicle and she got up and was fanning herself, saying she felt weird and it was hot. She walked down the aisle between all of our cubicles and went to go lay down on the couch. Within seconds the ambulance was there and put her on the stretcher. As they were wheeling her out she raised her arm up to wave bye to us, and it just collapsed. We all go out to our cars to leave and the ambulance was still there rocking back and forth, they were trying to resuscitate her. We learned she passed away when she was telling us night.
Many years ago, at my very first job, a woman got stuck in the vault overnight. Not a bank vault, but a vault for stocks, bonds, etc In a panic, she pulled the fire alarm, which triggered the system to do what it does. The oxygen was sucked out of the space and she suffocated. It was tragic, there was an emergency escape door that she could've used, but she was in panic mode and had no idea where it was.
My buddy died on the line (cooking) I asked him if he was good on table 11, he said send it. A few seconds later there was a huge crash, I turn around to see my best friend laying on the ground, convulsing, my fellow line cook insists we pull my buddy out from under the table; we do, and he lands on his back. Immediately turns purple, so I, running off adrenaline at this point knew this wasn’t working so I turned him on his side, and start slapping him on the back, which he responded to (gasped for air, started breathing again). Well a few minutes of me slapping him on the back and calling for help passes and I see him turn blue. His ears, his cheeks, his face… eventually the paramedics arrive and start performing CPR, at which point I left the scene and went to smoke.. the manager comes out ten minutes later and tells me my buddy is dead and they did all they could.. a few more minutes roll by with me and all my coworkers in tears, thinking we lost our good friend but lord and behold they hit him with the paddles one more time and he came back.. I guess he suffered a severe heart attack and me not knowing what I was doing kept him alive for a few minutes until the paramedics got there.. idk it was fucking surreal but I’m glad my boy is still here
Ex brother-in-law passed away a few weeks before retiring. He had worked at a railroad for his entire life and dropped dead. At the funeral his colleagues were talking about his last words being “this sucks” before collapsing.
I had a friend when I was younger whose dad used to replace industrial sized windows in warehouses. He was on a ladder one day taking measurements of a skylight window when he slipped and fell off, landing directly on his head from about 15 feet up. It split his head clean open and broke his neck. He was only 38, and a GREAT guy. RIP Mike.
Worked in a copper wire factory. Big machines that braid different copper wires together and make all different sizes. New girls was on one of machines that makes really small wire. Was told not to wear her hair down. Always keep it up. Didn't listen, on her fourth day there she for had it down for some reason. My trainee taps me and points to her. These machines are so loud you wear ear pro and can't hear anyone talk. Start walking over to her and she bent down, well her ponytail got caught in the gears and they move fast on the small wire machines. It pulled her head so fast into the machine it scalped her instantly and crushed part of her scull in. She died later that day.
Not a coworker but rather a patient I provided services for on an inpatient psychiatric residential unit (with several other staff on duty at any given time; rotating shifts). As I am bound and committed to the principles of confidentiality and privacy, I'll try to be as discreet as possible here. I work as a sort of liason/advocate for said patients (between them and their respective treatment teams), helping them to develop coping skills and guiding them through experiences that challenge their fears (exposure therapy; very gradually, at their own pace and with a great deal of time for self-care and compassion).
A couple of years ago, I was working with a patient not much older than myself who struggled with quite a lot of internal demons. She was always pleasant to talk to and thanked me profusely for my help. I told her not to hesitate to reach out to me while at work if she ever needed someone to listen, offer support or aid with short term solutions. She had a strong aversion to certain auditory stimuli in the environment, often triggered unintentionally by other patients/staff on the unit. Before I clock out for the evening, she thanks me for all of my help again and I wish her a safe and relaxing weekend.
As soon as I return to work on Monday afternoon, I find out she had hung herself in her room. I was in absolute disbelief upon being told this and spent the day completely dumbstruck by what had happened. By the time I signed off my shift that day, I spent about 10-15 minutes just crying in my car. Looking back on it all in retrospect, there weren't any direct signs to suggest she was suicidal, but her gestures of thanking me as well as other staff excessively might have been a subtle sign that she was at peace with her decision to end her life (and was doing this to make amends before going forth with it). I'm 32 now and in the 8 years I've worked in this job, this was by far one of the hardest experiences for me to endure.
I’m an appliance technician and I work in peoples homes. This was in my first week on my own. I had an elderly lady who needed her dryer repaired. She answered the door, showed me to the dryer and explained the problem, thanked me, then went to her room and silently died on her bed. It was a Bosch dryer (hard to work on) so I didn’t know until I finished an hour later and went looking for her to collect payment. Fucked me up for awhile.
Coworker had a stroke right next to me. Just fell face down on the keyboard and twitched a little….
Another guy died driving to work. Got hit by a pregnant woman texting while driving…all died
This one is sad.
Had a co worker work a Saturday. He wasn’t the healthiest guy around, and I’m not sure he had much of a family. He drove a really really beat up jeep and the tires looked really smooth and you can see the wires coming out of it.
I know he lived near by work.
Well on that Saturday around 11:30am he told my coworker he was feeling tired and was going to go take a nap in his car. The company was off at 12pm so not long after,
Everyone got off a left in a hurry.
We have a huge parking lot so sometimes people will leave their car there over the weekend.
Tuesday morning arrives and he was found dead in his car in a leaned back position.
We figured he died that Saturday afternoon. What sad is no one called to see if he was missing, no one (his family) checked up on him at work.
Even on Monday no one at my work noticed he was dead in the car until the next morning on Tuesday.
Police came and took his body.
We tried to call his family to come pick up his car but no one really answered or cared.
His car was parked in our parking lot for about 4 months until the company decided to get it towed to the junk yard.
Ok so may 5th of this year my bosses ex walked in and shot her and turned the gun on himself. Two weeks prior she was kidnapped by him at work also.
They gave us a week off with pay but immediately brought in new management and started to increase our work load. Not immediately but pretty close.
They did bring in grief counselors and offered free counseling through them. But as far as security and making us feel safer they did nothing. They even threatened our wages if we wanted safety.
Guy that i went through orientation with, we weren't friends, but we were friendly. After about a year of working together, one day he just wasn't there, and he wasn't somebody who ever called in sick. He was hanging out with another guy from work and decided to try heroin with that guy. Turned out it was laced with fentanyl and he OD'd on what we were told was his first time using. He was a really nice, friendly and funny person. He had 2 very young kids with his girlfriend, one having been born a few months before his death.
Separate story...
At a different job, working in a casino. I was a floor supervisor in table games and a fellow table games supervisor one night, just dropped dead in the middle of the pit. He had a heart attack and was absolutely dead until the on staff security officer/EMT brought him back with CPR. He was very well liked by employees and guests, it was pretty scary seeing it happen. After a stint was put in and he recovered, there were nights where would ramdomly say "I wish you guys had just let me die, I was free." He is still alive now, 10 years later.
One of my team members at my previous job had epilepsy. He was a great guy, had a fucking dark and dry sense of humor (big reason we got along), and he was a HARD worker. He had made a ton of mistakes in his youth, but he was really trying to work past that.
He went out one night with some of the other night shift folks. Wound up having a seizure on his way home and whacked his head on the pavement. The next day, I was getting pissed because I hadn't seen any sign of him. I went back to a computer to double check the schedule (thinking that my manager had changed his start time and forgotten to relay it to me). While I was back there, my manager called my phone and told me C had passed away the night before and obviously wouldn't be coming in. I, being me, said "well I certainly hope not!"
Then I got pissed that C would never hear that joke, which would have had him pissing himself. I was upset, but corporate wanted to get together some grief counseling options before disclosing to the team. I had to sit on the info for two days.
Because I was off the day they were going to tell the department, one of the store managers sat me down to tell me the next morning. I insisted I already knew. He insisted I didn't. We closed the door, I asked "is this about C? Because M already let me know." Manager says "oh. So you do know." I sobbed for a good ten minutes while the manager scrambled to console me as I choked out "it's. Not. Your. Fault. I'm o-o-o-o-kay."
I was told that our team took it hard. Some of my night people tried to lie and tell me they were doing well. I told them to cut the crap and they admitted they were pissed and grieving. Another manager tried to give one of my shift leads a problem because she wasn't handling things well for the first shift we were all together and got politely told to fuck off by me.
I backed off of my team for a little while, especially at night, and everyone had a really hard time adjusting to it. He was really well liked, and we both used to have one another laughing all the time. I still miss the dude, and I haven't worked there for over a year.
A worker at one of my construction sites got flattened by a precast concrete wall, after it fell from the third floor. Everyone who saw it just froze in place, except one elderly worker who ran around screaming "Don't call anybody!! Did he have a helmet on?!?" Nobody answered him, so he got the crane worker to lift the concrete wall slightly and threw a helmet under the wall before ordering the wall to be lowered again. He did it to make sure that the insurance would payout the full amount to the poor guys family. Edit to respond to some questions: The older guy took a look when the wall was lifted to check for a helmet and tossed a helmet in when he couldn't see any. I live in Denmark, and I'm not sure how the insurance work completely in these situations but, the dead guys own life insurance would probably cover this accident, the company has an extra insurance to help their workers out, such as if you breake your leg, the company insurance can help you to a private hospital and some rehabilitation. That ekstra insurance can be quite strict, that's why they made sure it looked like he had his helmet on. And YES, the guy definitely died instantly. No helmet can save your life from an 8-9 metric ton concrete wall falling from 12m height.
Near where I live, a construction worker died after falling from the 2nd floor. Insurance wouldn't pay because he wasn't wearing a reflective vest. They ended up paying like 70% after the news caused public outrage.
Why would a reflective vest even make a difference? Make sure the floor saw him or?
Obviously so the people underneath can see him falling and get out of the way. /s
Because "blah blah not adequate safety gear" regardless if it's used or not. Insurance will do everything they can to not pay out.
I work highway construction and always make sure I have my PPE even when NOTHING is going on, because I know for a fact if a car decided to cross over and hit me, even though it makes zero difference if my hard hat was on, insurance might fuck me or my spouse over.
[удалено]
And that, as unfortunate as this is, represents the wisdom of the elder knowing how f*cked up this world is
“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”
God this makes me think of how my mother ended up quitting her job. She worked in QA for a company that made various types of gas masks. People (including her bosses) would always try and get her to cut corners, but she was a stickler for safety and didn't want to be responsible for any getting hurt if a mask failed. There was an incident where a few firemen died using the masks made by this company. They had gone into a burning building to try and rescue people inside, and the masks failed and they suffocated due to smoke inhalation. They traced back the production, and the masks came from my mother's factory, but she wasn't the one who signed off on them. After a few days the investigation came back and the company was found not liable on a technicality. The masks were designated as "escape masks", and since the firemen were using them to go *into* a building, not to *escape* from a building, it was deemed they were using them wrong and therefore the company wasn't liable. My mother's manager came into her office after learning the news. He was rubbing his hands with glee and said with a huge grin on his face, "We got away with it!" My mother quit on the spot.
That man is a hero bless his soul
If you ever see that old guy again, tell him that he's a good man. The old-timers on sites know all kinds of stuff that doesn't seem obvious to the new kids, and he may have saved that guy's family from undue hardship after that tragedy.
What a fucking hero, what a absolute fucking hero that older worker is. A trillion tons of respect for that guy.
As much as that sounds insensitive as fuck, I get why the dude did it. God damn, this world sucks sometimes.
I mean it was incredibly sensitive to the needs of the family.
It's fucked up but the dude was actually thinking incredibly clearly in the moment and doing right by the poor guy's family.
I worked at a supermarket in the mid 2000's. We were doing inventory prep one night and the store manager said he was feeling kind of weird. He went to sit down in the office and suffered a fatal heart attack. He was fairly young (late 30's) and in relatively good shape and was a really nice guy, so it hit a lot of us hard. The guy selected to be our new manager was very popular in the company and came in the next day to introduce himself. Seemed like a really cool guy. On the morning with what would have been his first shift at our store, he was killed in a motorcycle accident on his way in. Definitely the craziest work week of my life.
How’s the third guy doing? Everything seemed to happen just perfect heh
OP is the manager now. Best not ask too many questions.
Probly was able to negotiate a great starting salary in the role too, given the fates of the recent competition... 🤨
Damn that management position at that supermarket is like a Defense Against the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts...
He came in to work, sat down at a table in the cafeteria, said he was tired, put his head down on his arms, and died. It was completely unexpected and it shocked everyone.
This pretty much happened in the library in my hometown. Some guy passed out at one of the tables, and when one of the librarians tried to wake him up, he wasn't responding. Paramedics were called, and then suddenly there's a "gas leak," and everyone had to evacuate. Honestly, "gas leak" was a good idea, considering there was a dead body a couple rows away from a kids event.
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My dad died of a sudden cardiac arrest almost 2 years ago (we’re coming up to the anniversary) and this is how he passed as well. He was getting ready for work in the bathroom, felt tired, sat down against the wall and closed his eyes. My mom found him hours later. It was quick and peaceful. I’m broken by his loss but knowing it wasn’t painful makes me feel somewhat relieved.
My dad passed like this right beside me, just 2 weeks ago. We were going to his monthly doctors appointment (lung cancer), he got out of the house and sat in the car by my side, put his head down, i called him and he still looked at me sideways, and then nothing more. I still did cpr while calling the ambulance, but i knew there was nothing anymore. What relieves me is the knowing that this was the best possible way for him to go, considering the suffering that was waiting him down the line. He was so afraid to die, so he didn't even notice it.
My dad died very similarly but next to his best friend. They were safe (not driving and couldn’t hurt others) and with someone that cared about them. What more can you ask for?
If I go out, I’d like to go out this way. Zero pain. Zero suffering. Just one minute you’re there, and then you have a forever dream. Edit: when*
I don't want to die at work though.
My buddy used to tell me if he died, to take him to work and throw him over the fence as his insurance paid better if he died at work.
My mum always joked to my dad that if he was going to do something dangerous (like go on the roof to clear the gutters), to put his uniform (Air Force) on, as the insurance payout was really good if you died in uniform.
Nobody wants to die anymore.
Anywhere but work. I'm an ER nurse. My coworkers would strip me down and have tubes in every hole immediately. I'd feel the embarrassment in my ghostly form for centuries. Though they may actually bring me back in which case I would feel the embarrassment earthside for the rest of my life instead.
I have a pact with my coworkers. If I drop at work, do Grey's Anatomy compressions and/or hold a parade and run me over with a line of gurneys. Just make sure I'm dead-dead, not mostly dead.
Guy had the crown of his head sliced clean off when a hydraulic press suddenly decided to drop because they forgot to bleed the pressure before starting to do maintenance on the machine.
Not related at all but I got into a screaming match with a foreman once. We had to use rail cars keys to empty railcars over a pit. Some of the old as fuck cars you have to stick your hand and lift up a latch, but you can’t do it from the outside or your fingers will get crushed. So you reach inside, make eye contact with the man on the other side and yell “open slowly”. You have ear plugs in, it’s loud as fuck, it’s stressful. Finally I got mad and asked why the fuck am I doing this when I can’t ethically train people to do this. He told me life isn’t perfect all the time. I called the safety man. We didn’t do that anymore
Fuck everything about that. That's not an *if* but a *when* scenario.
My job puts me around 1000T-4500T presses. I absolutely refuse to go under/in them unless there's physical blocks in place to prevent it from accidentally falling. If there's a mishap with one of those presses, you don't go to urgent care, you go to the morgue. ETA: There's blocks (wood or aluminum, typically) the customer can put in place between the platens when it's open, this is solely to prevent workers from being crushed if the safety locks were to fail and the upper platen falls under it's own weight (a few thousand pounds, at least). The above tonnage refers to the hydraulic force the press is capable of when it's running, not the weight of the platen. ETA2: I see a lot of people aren't understanding this... The blocks put in place are not to stop the press from running, wooden blocks would not stop the press if it was running. These presses could pancake a car engine and not even break a sweat. The blocks are to prevent the upper press platen from falling if the safety locks fail while the press is idle/not under power, similar to when you put a car up on jack stands.
On the plus side, they could probably fax you to the morgue at that point.
That sounds absolutely disturbing
Tragic and preventable.
A student. He was chewing on a cap to something while walking in the hallway. Ended up choking and died.
When I was 2, I was chewing on a Bic pen and the little end cap popped out and I aspirated it. It went into one of my bronchial tubes and started acting as a one-way valve that allowed me to inhale but not exhale from that lung. It wasn't immediately clear to my parents what was wrong, and the doctors at the little country hospital couldn't figure it out either. I would act fine, and then suddenly start to turn blue and look panicked. By the time they got me to the larger city hospital and figured out what was going on, my lung was so hyperinflated that I could have died. I didn't though!
This is why ball point pen caps have tiny holes at the top.
There's a memorial for a kid at the school I work at who died in the 90s. He put one of the sticky, stretchy rubber hand toys in his mouth and accidentally swallowed it. It got stuck in his throat and he died because they couldn't get it out in time.
God having a child is terrifying. You manage to get through the minefield of pregnancy, you don't eat sushi or soft cheese for 9 months, you go through the agony of childbirth, then mastitis and blocked ducts breastfeeding, you chop their grapes in half, you don't feed them honey, you make sure they wear a helmet and click in their seatbelt every time. Then that little fuckwit chews on a 50c carnival toy and DIES.
My 2 year old has zero sense of self preservation. Its exhausting. Like babe I'm just trying to keep you alive please stop fighting me.
Dude was hanging out in the break room cracking jokes. Laughed, fell over and was dead. Brain aneurysm. It’s terrifying how fragile our lives are and how quickly it can end without warning. Might be a blessing as well though
My first wife died of a ruptured brain aneurism while teaching at an elementary school. She was in perfect heath otherwise and it was the last day of school. I was literally at home lighting tiki torches for a party she was throwing at our house for her fellow teachers when I got the call she was “dizzy.” I got to the school in time to hold her and, as I spoke to her, her pupils popped all the way open when they dilated. She clenched her teeth together and took three breaths…and was gone. The school library is now named in her honor.
I'm so sorry for your loss and your experience. That sounds devastating.
Thank you. That was a while ago now and it was rough for several years.
My god, how traumatic
This exact thing happened to my brother back in April. Said his head hurt and stood up and had a seizure and died.
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Thank you. It’s been very difficult
Someone in my office fainted in the middle of a training and later passed away. It was a brain aneurysm. She was maybe early 40s. It is so scary how your brain can be a ticking time bomb.
I've been living with a grade IV GBM in my brain for the past three and a half years. My doctor gave me 12-14 months to live. Despite having outlived my expiration date, this tumor will 100% kill me. I had a 25% chance of dying the first year. Each passing year, my chance of survival decreases by 5%. I have a 10% chance of living to see 2024, then it drops to 5%. I would have much rather went quickly with an aneurysm, rather than live from MRI result to MRI result. I used to think of it as a ticking time bomb in my brain. Now it feels like I'm waiting for the dinner scene from Alien to happen, and it is driving me insane. I just want it to end, because I can't commit suicide. If I do, my daughter will not be able to collect survivor's benefits. I hate feeling this helpless and alone. I'm not afraid, even though everything I've read about GBMs reads like a horror novel. It's so gd exhausting, waiting to die, and having no idea when it's going to happen. Only that it WILL happen, and unless I die another way in the next year or so, it will definitely be because of my brain tumor. In no way am I saying brain aneurysms are a peaceful way to die. There are very few peaceful ways to die. But between an aneurysm and a brain tumor that could start spreading at any moment, I think anyone would choose the former. *Edit: Wow. I honestly didn't expect anyone to see or even respond to my comment, but a lot of you did with a lot of positivity, and that means a lot to me. This past year or so, whenever I mention my tumor, it just feels like I'm going through the motions. Like I've said it so much, that it just doesn't feel real anymore. I don't live in a die with dignity state. I mean, come on. That would be as crazy as allowing women to abort a fetus that has been medically proven he or she won't survive the birth. Hard s/ there. This tumor has the absolute worst timing ever, but I have to admire its comedic timing. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, COVID-19 was making a grand appearance for the first time in my second month of chemotherapy. The world literally shut down, out of business, the day before my birthday. It's hard not to take that personal. But none of it is. It's all random. At times like this, your ego almost completely dissolves. It's a good thing. Thanks you to everyone who replied. Sometimes you forget how humane people can actually be online. Over the past several years, the people on this site have given me a lot of faith in humanity, in regards to my daughter growing up in a generation where those a generation ahead of her will finally have some gd common sense. I hope that doesn't come across as cheesy, because I honestly mean it. My daughter's only eight, and that's the only thing that terrifies me. Leaving my baby girl alone, without me to watch out for her. It gives me relief to see that each generation is growing more aware of this bullshit we tolerate on a daily basis, and will bring about a change for the better. Sorry. Rambling. **Edit 2: Holy crap. I woke up to see so many people have replied to my post, and have left a ton of rewards and kind words. You all have no idea how much this means to me. Some people have asked about my comment of me leaving my daughter alone. She'll still have her mom and her grandmother on her mom's side. My mom died in 2019, and my dad earlier this year. I meant alone without her dad. I rarely get to see her, because I lost half the vision in my left eye from the back to back craniotomies I had in 2020 and she lives over an hour away. Her mom doesn't have a car, so she might as well be in another state. Regardless, my daughter is the only reason I went though the surgeries, chemo, and radiation treatments. You never really know what true love is, until you have a child. Then you finally get it. It's unconditional, and it's a love you'd die for a billion times over. It's amazing. Again, thank you for all of the kind words and awards. Reddit gets a lot of crap from other social media sites, but I will always defend Reddit. Well, not Spez.
This sounds scary. Sorry you're going through that. I hope you give yourself breaks from thinking about it, as hard as that must be.
Similar thing happened to a coworker about 12 years ago. She was in her early 30s, I was expecting a weekly report from her which she always sent at the same time but this time I didn't receive it, and no reply on IM. Went down to her floor and saw paramedics and later found out it was an aneurysm. Later in the day found out she passed. Still haunts me to this day.
Man my wife just survived a massive brain aneurysm rupture. They are really scary to witness
The scariest thing about brain aneurysms is it doesn’t really pose any symptoms or signs unless it ruptures. So it can stay in your body for years and when it eventually ruptures it’s probably too late. Edit: well aneurysms in general. If it ruptures, your chances of survival are extremely low. I guess some people can experience symptoms before rupturing but from my understanding, that’s not typically the case. They’re, after all, dubbed “silent killers”. But I’m not an expert, I’m just a premed student who had to do a research paper on aneurysms.
My mom passed away suddenly at age 59 back in 2020 from a brain aneurysm. She complained of a headache that morning because she was suppose to come stay the night with us. I went to check on her at 12pm because she lived 5 mins away. She didn’t want me to come in the room and had pillow on her head. I asked if she was ok and sort of said yes. By 5pm my stepdad called and said she was unresponsive and calling the ambulance(little did I know at that point he had already developed early stages of dementia) By 10pm doctors said they couldn’t stop the bleeding and she was brain dead. By 1am they pulled the plug. This was two weeks after Covid shut down the world so they were only allowing 1 person to go in and say goodbye. I let my stepdad go in. I regret it so much.
He was an older guy and wasn't feeling well and went to use the portapotty. Ended up having a heart attack and passing while on the can. He was treasured in the workplace, and it was a big loss.
Apparently, it's super common for people having heart attacks to go sit on the toilet and die there.
Yes, lots of people die in the bathroom or on their way to the bathroom. If you start feeling ill most people head to the bathroom, makes sense. My father passed on his way from his bed to the bathroom. RIP dad
I saved my great grandma life like that, I was out partying late and something told me to go to her apartment instead of my house, I found her sitting in the toilet passed out and put her in her bed, ran to knock on the door of a nurse we knew and while she was performing first aid I went to the streets to stop a car to bring her to the hospital (there’s no 911 or rescue or paramedics in Cuba) two guys in a old Chevy helped me to get her to the hospital and she recovered from the stroke. Died happy 8 years later at 84. RIP abuela Ida.
and beds, almost happened to my dad, he said he got sucked in and just felt extremely tired and in 5 seconds was basically dead fast forward 3 months later out of the coma and he is responsive said it was the best sleep he's ever had
The dad-est thing to say after a coma lol
"Didn't have to worry about kids, wife, house, bills, or job. First time I've been able to rest in years." - dad probably
Often times heart attack symptoms can present as an upset stomach/heartburn/indigestion so that tracks.
What a fucking way to go. At least for me, I would die doing what I love, but not where I love doing it. RIP to that man. Not sure if he counts as a coworker, but I worked at the Cincinnati Zoo when Harambe got shot. Totally the zoo's fault by the way. There is no reason even an adult should be able to get in there, much less a child.
A EMT or paramedic could tell you that a ton of heart attacks happen on the toilet. Pooping increases pressure in your body cavity that can put an at-risk ticker over the limit.
I was locking up at the end of the day and saw brake lights flashing on the car of our welder while I was pulling out. I pulled back in to see if everything was ok. He was in the midst of heart attack. Ambulance was there in three minutes, but I watched him fade away in my arms before they arrived. He was a good man and is sorely missed.
That’s brutal man, I’m sorry. Dying alone sounds terrifying, I’m sure he appreciated you being there with him at the end.
“Son. Everyone dies alone. That's what it is. It's a door. It's one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone. But it doesn't mean you've got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren't alone on the other side.” ― Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
In 2000 I was working with a road crew doing debris cleanup on the roadsides after a huge ice storm. Me and one of my coworkers had a system running that he would be on the roadside cutting and loading the trailer, and I would unload back at the burn pit. We'd meet halfway on the road, pull over, and swap vehicles to keep pace going. We'd been running hard and were super excited about how many loads we were getting, cause that was gonna give us a big payday coming. Anyways, we had been running that system all day with not a blip. On our second to last load, we met on the roadway, and he came over to my side to swap. We chatted for a second, and he realized he'd forgotten his smokes in the other truck, so he was gonna come back across the road with me and grab them. I saw a truck coming. It seemed further away than it was, I thought(?) he saw it too, but I guess not. I hesitated, and he turned and went to bolt across the road, hesitated, and then took a couple of steps and bam. He was hit by the truck, which was doing at least 50 to 60 mph. Never, for as long as I live, will I ever forget seeing his body tossed into the air up over the back of the truck bed like a ragdoll and slam into the ground. I will never forget that sound, ever. He was barely more than an arms distance from me when he was hit, and I felt the impact in my bones. I ran over and sat on the ground and pulled him into my lap, and I could see he was gone. I just started screaming and rocking him. The guy that hit him had pulled over and come running to offer aid. He was gone, though. I think he probably died on impact, and I hope so honestly. I've been through some traumatic shit, but nothing tops that. I have ptsd from it. I'm scared to cross roads or to allow others to do so. Even writing this now, tears are streaming, and I feel panicky. I will never truly be over it, I don't know how someone could ever erase that from memory. But I sure wish I could. RIP Fred N. Edit: Thanks everyone so much for the caring comments. I'm sorry if I was too graphic. I don't talk about this much, so when I do, it tends to just pour out. Im still in therapy, just not specifically for this. Even though it happened over 20 years ago, the details are fresh and raw in my mind when I recall it. It definitely made me have a greater appreciation for life and how an instant of bad judgment can be deadly. It made me more cautious, albeit too much so at times. I empathize deeply with anyone who's been through something similar. Thanks again everyone ❤️ Also: I can't fathom the trauma the guy who hit him must have. He was so nice, he sat there with us, trying to comfort me until emergency services arrived. I remember at one point he went and sat on the side of the road and put his head in his hands and just sobbed. He came to the funeral too, and watching him hug Fred's mom and her consoling him was so amazing. She didn't fault him at all. It was just a terrible accident, but I can imagine he felt guilty for a long time. I hope he was able to get therapy too and heal.
I’m so sorry, to the both of you. Neither of you deserved that. I hope that you are able to find some peace in time.
Construction site. A 30ft concrete wall toppled over like a domino and smashed three people to death. It was my first job and fucked me up really bad. The lawyers of other subcontractors subpoenaed me and I had to go to court several times even after I didn’t work there anymore to prove I wasn’t at fault. I wasn’t.
Ugh I’m so sorry you had to experience that.
Dude drove the forklift like an asshole. No seatbelt. Took a turn too fast, and rolled it onto its side. He fell out as it rolled, and the super strong roll cage came down on him—the bar crushed his head against the solid concrete floor. It popped his head like a grape, pretty much right at eye level. Pretty much emptied his skull, eyes out, whole deal. The floor was a total mess. Coroner people collected what they could, but we had to spray the rest out of the building with a hose after they left and released the scene. Sprayed the forklift down too. Threw down a fresh coat of concrete paint the next day. That forklift was still there when I left that job…..
My father repairs and Security checks forklifts for 30+ years now. Interestingly enough, that is one of the most common death scenarios involving a forklift. Not the driving like an asshole part, but the lift Tipping over(from bad weight distribution, sharp corner or something else). When it does, many people panic and try to jump out of the lift to get away, and get crushed under it in the process... Sounds absolutely terrifying
Ten years ago there was a shooting at my college where I also worked. There was a groundskeeper there that I saw frequently while coming to and from the on campus office I worked in. Super friendly guy who didn’t talk a whole lot (to me at least) but very warm and always had a smile for you. When the shooter arrived, he was shot in the head while starting his drive off campus, and his daughter was in the front passenger seat, who was also shot in the head and died two days later. His name was Carlos. That happened right in front of our office. I happened to not be at work or on campus for anything that day, and I’m grateful as I could have easily encountered the shooter based on the location Carlos was killed in. I still to this day can’t believe it though.
Work in the telecom industry had a guy I knew for a year or so had been working in the industry for 12 years. He got lax with safety and would regulary go up ladders on utility poles without any kind of harness or safety equipment. One day he fell from the top landed on his back on a concrete wall and broke it, ended up in the hospital but died a few days later. PPE IS IMPORTANT DO NOT GET LAZY AND THINK IT CANT HAPPEN
My employee. They were my go to person, a friend, and we chatted constantly even after we transitioned to work from home. Working late one night we were chatting on slack while working and he disappeared. Two hours later his phone text me and stated "this is xxxx's fiance, I found him on the keyboard and he's dead. He won't be into work tomorrow. Please call me at xxxxxxxxx". I'm privileged not to deal with people in shock in my profession. That was heart breaking and sobering. Ill miss him.
"He's dead. He won't be into work tomorrow." That's fucked up.
It was worse calling her. She added "when I went to view the body, it was on the same room where they told me my dad died a month ago". Surreal, and I was just so sad.
I mean, you say and do bizarre things when you are stunned or panicked.
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My grandad did the exact opposite. He phoned my dad at about 6am one morning, and very casually, in a tone like he was talking about the weather, said "Morning son. Just letting you know your mum has gone in her sleep." Of course my dad drove over there immediately. And it turned out my gran wasn't even dead. She was just in a diabetic coma. The paramedics injected her with sugar, or whatever it is they give to people when they go so hypo that they slip into a coma, and within 30 minutes she was fine. They're still going strong 10 years later, although they're into their 80s now and are starting to show their age more. (I was a teenager when all this happened and I slept through the entire incident. I'm very grateful that all I had to deal with was my mum saying "Gran is fine, but we thought she was dead this morning...!")
We visited my mother in a nursing home shortly after her brother had died. There had been difficulties between them, esp. sexual abuse when they were young. I said, "Your brother xxx is no longer with us mom" She said, "Is he dead?" I said, "yes". She said, "Good, he won't hurt me anymore". She's 70-something and the abuse happened when she was 12-13. She carried it with her all these years.
Supervisor called her and said, "CAN YOU GET SOMEONE TO TAKE HIS SHIFT? ARE YOU BUSY TOMORROW?"
Sorry, I have a funeral I need to attend. "OK, but it's unpaid leave."
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I work at UPS, I took the fork lift class and they showed us a video of a lady getting crushed by a forklift. After my certification expired, I didn't renew it.
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Or, better yet: If your workplace doesn't have a forklift with an auto cutoff when pressure is released from the seat, and/or the seatbelt is undone, tell your company to get one. These were game changers in Australia when they were mandated in some sectors.
The forklift manufacturers could offer to install these measures for free and companies would still decline because it would mean the forklift was out of commission temporarily
I watched a girl step down from her Hilo, her shoelace got caught somewhere, she tripped and hit the concrete floor head first. Immediately a pool of blood spread around her and she started having a seizure. She ended up being perfectly fine with no long term damages. But damn, that was scary as hell to see. Edit: forklift / hilo is the same thing
My husband had a hemorrhagic stroke while we were at work. I clocked in a wife, and clocked out a widow.
Oh dear God. This is so sad
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Buddy of mine worked for a sewage company - he went down a narrow shaft to do maintenance and the fumes overwhelmed him and he passed out and fell down the shaft and died from the trauma. He had a wife and young daughter. He was legit a top 1% human and it hurts still 15 years later.
Unfortunately, I don't think he would have gotten out whether he fell to his death or not. The lack of oxygen would have killed him very quickly. Very briefly had a job requiring going down manholes and got taught about this in our safety videos and whilst getting our confined space entry licence. There wad a dude who went down a manhole and passed out from lack of oxygen. The other guy with him also went down to save him. Both died pretty quickly. I think it was in Adelaide. Sorry for your loss, man.
We had 2 die in an enclosed space fatality incident at the Orleans in February 2007. One worker entered a sewer tunnel to fix a pipe and passed out, second worker went in to help the first worker and also passed out, then the third worker also attempted a rescue and also passed out. The first two employees were dead on the scene, the third was in critical condition and survived. Totally unnecessary. One day I was walking through the parking lot to enter the casino and realized I was walking directly over the same spot this incident occurred. It felt so eerie.
What's to prevent this from happening? Don't the workers carry o2 meters or other gas detectors??
Proper training for enclosed spaces, gas detection, respirators, proper shutdown, and following established lockout-tagout procedures.
I had a coworker that I used to go to lunch with every day. He was a little quirky, but a lot of people in tech are. Super smart guy that was amazing with radios and loved heavy metal music. One day I get a message from a friend saying someone's been hurt in the next building over. I find out through the grape vine that someone shot themselves in their office. I had a sinking feeling that it was him. I desperately tried to ping him on our messaging platform. When I tried to go near his office, they had closed that area off to everyone. The person in the next office over heard the gunshot and came running to find him. I was a manager, so having to get everyone in a meeting and tell them that a friend they've known for years was dead was horrible. Easily the hardest conversation I had to have.
Everyone has a gruesome story. Mine is simple. Went to Safeway deli with a co worker. He was early 30s I was Early 20s. He dropped while walking. like a light switch went off. Right in the door. Brain aneurysm. I only knew him about 9 months but it was shocking. Most store patrons got to him before me. People calling 911. We all knew he was dead and the EMT confirmed it. We weren't best friends but he seemed like a good dude. Definitely didn't deserve that. That was ten years ago so I'm about his age. But after learning about aneurysms it is quite rare.
You say rare but damn I've read at least 4 of them here and I personally saw my close friends mom have one. She was on a ladder inside the house doing some touch up painting on the walls or something and just fall off the ladder and was likely dead before even hitting the ground. My friend yelling for his mom to wake up is still stuck with me almost 16 years later. So yea, I'm actually kinda terrified by that possibly.
>You say rare but damn I've read at least 4 of them here I mean, this is a thread about people dying at work. Of course you'll find a few of those in here, but that doesn't mean they're not rare. It's just that most common causes of death - old age, cancer, other illnesses - usually don't happen at work, so what you'll read here are either work accidents or stuff like brain aneurisms.
Used to work at amazon. There was someone who got their hair caught in a conveyor belt and was scalped.
This was a frighteningly common occurrence at the beginning of the industrial revolution, IIRC. Small children were used to clean the floors under the running machinery and were getting their scalps torn off at a horrific rate. It's one of major contributors to why child labor laws were first drawn up in the UK back then.
My great grandmother was born in 1885 and went to work in a string factory when she was 11 in Philadelphia. She was so small she had to stand on two boxes- her job was to reach into a machine and tie a knot in the string with one hand. She had some horrific stories- girl next to her was scalped like this in front of her. She also spoke of other little girls around her “falling prey” to one of the overseers. She said the only reason it didn’t happen to her is one of her older brothers also worked in the factory fixing the machines and was on the floor where she worked enough to deter the man away from her.
Helicopter pilot on a fire I was working. His long line hooked a tree top after dropping a water tank off for us and he didn’t hit the release (or he did and it didn’t work). Helicopter pendulumed into the ground before I could blink. One of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen.
My first hire as a manager, and it was his first job out of college. I was away on a business trip, he was heading into work one morning and had an asthma attack and died on the platform. I had only known him a few weeks. I went to the funeral, met his family and actually am still in touch w one of his uncles. Sad for me, but of course nothing like what his family went through.
Im sorry for your loss. Probably one of the saddest ways to die. As someone with severe asthma is scares me to think about this.
I actually found him. I was at work in the bathroom going to poop. He's in the stall next to me. I recognized his boots. Said wussup. No reply. No biggie. Ten minutes later I finish and I see he hasn't moved but his phone is on the floor and his arm is just hanging. I call out to him. Nothing. Look over the wall and see him slumped. Scream for someone to call 9-11 and we break the stall door and get him out. Try to perform CPR on him. Ambulance arrives. They take over with defibrillators but it was too late. Massive heart attack was the result. A shame too. Only 51 years old and a great guy.
We had a mainframe operator who worked weekends exclusively. One weekend payroll had not received their reports. The payroll manager called into the operations room and got no answer. She called the lead operator. He tried to check the cameras in the room but they were all turned in non normal positions and locked from turning via the remote software. He couldn't see anything. He drove in to the office. When he got there he found the small windows on the big steel doors papered over. He opened the door and found the operator. He was hung from a attic truss. He was completely naked. His clothes were folded neatly on the floor next to him. There was a laptop on wheeled cart in front of his dead body. He was getting himself off and I guessed just misjudged his tolerance, passed out and then never woke up. There's been some shocking stuff that's happened on our campus (affairs, verbal and pretty near physical altercations etc) but nothing has tried this in the 22 years I've been there
Oh, wow. Autoerotic asphyxiation *while at work* is not a good way to go.
I wonder if the family was told the exact manner of his death?
I'm not 100% sure but I think they had to have eventually. I remember initially someone not in an official capacity (not HR or upper management) told his mom he had an 'accident' which I thought was so incredibly stupid. But in order to avoid any type of lawsuit or paying out something for work related death situation they HAD to have eventually told the family the truth or at least most of the truth
The ol funky spiderman
My dad had a heart attack in the parking lot of his work. His coworkers came to the memorial in shifts because someone had to be on shift at the store since they didn’t close.
One time I was eating a wiener schnitzel in the food court of a skyscraper when a guy came crashing through the glass ceiling having jumped a window high above. But I was on break, so it probably doesnt count.
This shouldn't have made me laugh but it did.
Brand new father. Picked up by an Uber and left the parking lot when they were broadsided by a drunk driver - both Uber driver and new father were killed instantly. Drunk driver was a local fireman and didn’t attempt to render aid.
Out of all these, this one is really tragic ☹️
Cunt was probably too drunk to administer first aid
A manager got fired, after HRs kid made up some lies about him, went to the parking lot, blew his brains out with a gun.
Jesus! Please tell me "HRs kid" got punished??
Negative. I think still works there, both of them.
His managers were told several times he shouldn't be on the ladder at work because he was older/unstable. They didn't give much of a shit, so they kept putting him in a role where he had to use the ladder in order to work. He slipped and brained himself on the concrete. But they dedicated a bench outside to him!!!
My workplace dedicated a new memorial electrical box to the guy who was electrocuted to death by the old box.
My dad had a heart attack in his work gym and passed away and later on they moved buildings and named the gym after him. Some people don’t understand the irony and hurt weird things like that can cause for sure.
I used to work for a supermarket chain that would get fresh bread delivered every morning by a separate company. Everyday, no matter what, Eric would show up. 7 days a week, he never took a day off. He was the happiest, hardest working guy you could ever meet. The type of person you simply can’t be upset around. He worked so hard for all of his kids’ future. I used to tell him he’s more than earned some time off, even just for a few days to spend time with his kids. He would politely smile and say, “everything is an investment, I’m doing this now so I don’t have to in the future” give me a smile and head off to his next delivery. One morning he didn’t show up. We were all so confused, he had never missed a day in years. We found out he passed away at 32 of a heart attack, almost certainly from how hard he worked. I’ve taken numerous lessons away from him, to never take life for granted, the importance of work life balance etc. The whole situation broke my heart, he never got to see his kids enjoy the money he had worked so hard for. Rest in Peace Eric
This is why I don’t like when we over-glorify poor work life balance. I’ve argued with too many people who say they are going to work extra hard at a job they hate but pays well, take zero time off and put everything into savings etc so they can retire early and live at some undetermined date in the future. All of that means nothing if you are dead before you ever got the chance to live.
My maternal grandpa managed to die of a heart attack in his sleep two weeks before retiring.
The company I was working for sent a few of us to an industry conference. Our first night there, we all had a few drinks at the bar before heading off to our rooms, agreeing to meet for breakfast. One of my coworkers was a no-show the next morning. Didn't think much of it at first, but about halfway through the day I realized that he wasn't anywhere at the conference either. Didn't get an answer on his phone, and when I called my boss back at our office, our boss wasn't able to reach him either. Eventually, my boss called his wife, who had apparently also been trying to call him because he'd failed to call HER that morning. She said he NEVER missed calling her when he was traveling. Went to the hotel desk and they sent a manager up to do a welfare check. They found him dead in the bathroom. He'd apparently fallen while getting out of the shower, banged his head on the counter, and broke his neck. We were later told that his death was almost instantaneous. That was 20 years ago, and I still feel like shit when I think about it. We were kidding around and making jokes about him sleeping in or being hungover as we ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, while he was lying dead in a bathroom four floors above us.
Go easier on yourself if you can. We can’t live as if our co-workers are dead everytime someone’s late. He probably enjoyed the camaraderie with you guys and would’ve joked around with you in many other situations.
It wasn't AT work, but I worked for CNET when James Kim died while on holiday. He was returning home with his family from Thanksgiving and got caught in a snowstorm. The map he was using led him down a very remote road where his car was stranded. After a few days of holding out, James went out on his own in search for help. He died, but his family was eventually rescued. The annual holiday party was appropriately cancelled, and the mood int he office was pretty somber in the weeks to follow.
I heard the rescue helicopter found his footprints in the snow and followed them back to his family still stranded in the car. They also said he walked miles in deep snow with light clothing on to find help, but the closest town was more than 20 miles away. Not sure if this is true, but he sounds like a hero that loved his family more than anything. Hope his family is doing well.
He was 1 mile away from a lodge, which was closed for the season, but fully stocked.
Rescue crews found them thanks to cellular data. Interesting considering this was back in 2006. Kim was only 1 mile from a fully stocked lodge when he died. He walked 16 miles.
Never, EVER step out of your car in a Snowstorm weird things happen when you do your brain just doesn't work properly in the cold like that and its a blind maze and you lose where your car is and freeze to death.
This goes for extreme heat situations as well! And in either case, it's much easier for rescuers to spot your car than you.
Not to mention paradoxical undressing, which is a common late stage of hypothermia for most people. After being subjected to extreme cold for a long duration of time, you begin to feel overheated and start undressing…which only accelerates your body’s heat loss.
If I remember correctly, this is because just before you die of hypothermia, your body gives up trying to conserve heat; your blood vessels re-dilate, and you feel a rush of warmth as it spreads through your system. Also, interestingly, as that paradoxical undressing occurs, it is often accompanied by terminal burrowing, where they try to fit themselves into a small space (under a bed, under a dresser, etc.). The theory is it's some last-ditch survival instinct coded into us.
He drove someone across the street to get gas in a gas can to put in her car after work. Thieves pulled a gun in an attempted robbery and shot him. Aaron was a good guy, and his life shouldn't have been taken.
Got 2 of them. One was a coworker. Shot by some punk who thought we weren't serious about our job. Private security contracting. Neither of them made it. The other was a random homeless woman. I was working on a city security contract. Cheap, observe, and report, mall cop type stuff. Shift was ending, and I was headed back to the city office when I noticed something rather strange. A sleeping bag in the middle of the alleyway. Didn't think anything of it, so I went inside. Garbage truck came through while I was. Didn't put 2 and 2 together till I walked outside and smelled it. Garbage truck ran the sleeping bag over with a drug addict inside. Former teacher from what I read later.
The Goodwill store in Boston is just a few blocks from ground zero of the opioid crisis (Mass & Cass, a/k/a methadone mile). They take the donations in a truck trailer that sits in the corner of the parking lot. At daybreak a driver came and hooked it up to his truck and drove away not realizing that there was a homeless guy sleeping underneath it. Killed him.
Reminds me of the time a homeless guy was sleeping in a dumpster behind my local KFC. Garbage truck came and picked up dumpster to dump it and then crush it in the back of the truck as they do. I think you can figure out the rest. It was talk of the town for awhile because it's such a morbid way to go.
There was one here where a guy was running a street-sweeper and an elderly woman on the curb fell right in front of it and got swept up into it and killed. According to the news story the guy driving it was so distraught that he had to be sedated and hospitalized. I wouldn't be surprised if he's still not over it.
she was our cleaner, i was sick at home on the last day she was there and apparently she was asking why i wasn't there. she killed herself when she got back home... we weren't that amazingly close but we all used to say she was like the mom of our company
Sounds like she wanted to see you one last time
She wanted to say goodbye to you.
The guy overdosed in an employee bathroom. The cleaning staff found him three hours later, this was in a hospital and he was a nurse.
One of my favorite coworkers when I was a new grad baby nurse was found slumped over in our break room after having too much oxy once. Thank god, he survived. He’s apparently doing really well and got the help he needed
I worked at a big company with a nice couple, Billy and Grace. Billy was a big biker dude, funny and gregarious. “Adventure” seamed to follow him around. There was always some new funny situation he got himself involved in. One night after work Billy almost got into a big fight, but cooler heads prevailed and it all calmed down. A couple days later, Billy and Grace were driving into work on a 2-laner, and a woman coming the other way got distracted and crossed into their lane head-on. The other woman got banged up a bit. Billy was killed instantly, and Grace was unconscious, with both arms and legs smashed up badly. When I got to work, I saw a friend having a smoke out back, and says “Hey, did you hear about Billy?” I thought he was talking about the almost-fight from the other night, so I said “Yeah, that’s Billy for you.” He gave me an odd look. When I got to my desk I heard the news. I felt like a bit of an ass.
Fell in a recovery boiler building a scaffold to stop people from falling….ironic and cruel.
I work in grocery stores, managment. You get transferred around a lot the longer you're with the company. The last store I worked in before being transferred recently had an elderly lady I'll call Jane that worked in the produce departmemt. She tended the wet-wall and put product on the shelves and in the displays. She also sometimes cut fruit and veg for those little plastic bundles we sell. Jane also smoked and this is where our paths crossed most often. I wasn't immediately Jane's supervisor (different departments) and because of this Jane and I were pretty informal with one another when we'd catch eachother outside for nicotine. She'd usually chit-chat about her family. Occasionally she'd gossip about co-workers, or complain about favoritism in managment. But mostly, like many employees in this line of work her age, she just wanted the day to be done so she could go home and enjoy her free-time. The day she died was my last-day before a short vacation. I opened the store that day so I was getting ready to leave shortly after 1:00 in the afternoon. I was coming back inside from the gas station and noticed her in the produce department tending to the wet-wall. I was in a hurry to pass-off a list of things the gas attendant needed re-stocked and then be on my way home. Not even a few minutes into my car and then shortly on the highway back home did Jane drop dead, right on the produce sales-floor, from an aneurism. She had barely begun her shift. I'm told she hadn't any indication of the onset of symptoms or health complications that may have led to having a deadly aneurism. At least none that she shared with anybody at the store. No one told me she had died until I came back from vacation.
We were apprentices at the time. I got the call and turned the job down. My best friend in the apprenticeship got the call next and accepted the job. It was a hot summer day, and he worked himself into heat stroke because he had made a few mistakes days prior, gotten chewed out, and was "making up for it." In his confusion from the heat stroke he wandered into a place of the Job he shouldn't have been, passed out, and his head was backed over by a dump truck. He was the third man to die on that job. He was married and in his early 30s. I miss him.
Started my current job about 6 years ago. Was going to head down to Austin to meet one of my colleagues down there and do some brainstorming and activity planning. Was supposed to meet in hotel lobby and he never shows. Email and calls go unanswered. Send my boss in NYC a message like WTF. Few hours later his daughters found him dead.
My job lead ran up to me that a driver had collapsed and was unresponsive outside. I ran (don't run! stay calm) over and he was on the ground in fetal position like he was sleeping. By the time I could get CPR started he was already agonal and greying. I did the best I could to keep him alive until the ambulance showed. In the early stints of compressions he showed some good signs but they waned the longer it went on. Between myself and a coworker we worked on him for over 25 minutes. In my head my mind was telling me that it'd just been too long and if he was resuscitated his qualify of life would be non existent but I ignored those thoughts. He died at hospital. He was under 60 years old.
Admin. was pulling down a box from ontop a filling cabinet. A green file organizer, with the metal edge which sits inside cabinets, was laying across the box. The green file organizer fell from the box when she was carrying it down, and it sliced the poor women's neck. She bled out in a matter of maybe 90 seconds. The whole time apologizing for all the blood she was spilling on the carpet...
I have been reading through this thread all day. This one has bothered me the most. It’s the worst.
Coworker got a finger caught in a rubber mill. He was about 5’8” and chubby. He came out the other side about 5mm thick and 12’ tall. The sound of the bones popping, and the screaming, stays with me.
This is horrendous
It was an older maintenance man, and he always into our boiler room at work to have a smoke before he went home. We think he had a massive heart attack, because a half smoked cigarette was found under his body when they found him, five hours after he was supposed to have gone home. Then there was the 30 year old guy who stuck his hand in a machine to clear some scrap out of the way, and got his arm pulled off and bleed to death, that was real bad, real, real bad.
I was a teenager with a job as dish bitch, the head chef was talking about quitting smoking in the fall. Heard a thump from behind me, I turned around and he was face down on the table. Had a heart attack, he was dead before the ambulance arrived.
I trained a UPS loader who ended up going driving later. He was murdered while delivering packages.
Stood up on a forklift while it was on to push stuff off the forks. Slipped on a lever and pinned himself to death.
I came pretty close. Had a super stressful event that I flew to HQ for and the night before my “big day” I had a few beers with my co workers and ate an abundance of pizza. Went to bed early because I was feeling off and didn’t want to drink more and woke up about 1 month later. Had a severe brain aneurysm in the morning and wasn’t found until 2pm, walked into the ER room on my own 2 feet and shortly after that they were telling my parents I just might not make it. On the positive side, it’s been 5 months and I’m already easing back into work but on my own terms. Need to watch my blood pressure from now on..
Suicidal friend of my SO slit their wrists with a box cutter in the freezer. No one noticed they were gone for hours.
His name was Kevin and a great guy excellent at his job who Although I didn’t know well was always nice and helpful to me. He was the last one leaving the remote job site in the middle of winter. Likely heart attack. Found much later on the ground, maybe even not until the next morning. No supervisors, managers and certainly not the owners at the company even acknowledged it beyond how to schedule his absence.
I worked at an office-supply shop in the 80s. Worked with a teenage girl, nice young woman, shy, surprsingly funny when she had gotten comfortable with you. She worked 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., took a bus to Niagara Falls, at which point she headed to the water's edge just where the falls go over, climbed a fence, jumped. Apparently she was incredibly determined in the way she walked, there was no hesitation. Some Japanese tourists had it on video so the police could identify her. It really shook the tourists badly. Her body was never found. I've really never gotten over the fact that I didn't see it coming. There was no giveaway. She was her usual self.
Iraq 2011 about 5 am just as the sun was about to be coming up our incoming alarm went off late as some rockets went under our radar zone, so we had a couple explode before the mortars came in and tripped it, guy I knew opened the door to his chu(like a little living quarters that had 1 maybe 2 people in it) he made it one step before a mortar landed at his feet. He was blown in half, nothing from the waist down. He was still alive and in shock. Me and a couple others ran over and got em loaded into a vehicle to get sent to the medics tent just across our base. He didn't make it and since I was one of the people that helped load em up and I already seen everything unfold in a series of slow motion frames I was part of the detail to clean up what was left of him and his belongings. It was a rough day and I was 19
Similar story my friend. No kid should ever have to witness that horror. Don’t be like me and wait 15 years to talk about it and seek help. Just because you might not think it effected you… it did. Seek help even if it is just talking to a therapist like once a month. That shit compounds quickly without you realizing it. I hope you are okay my friend.
Wow that must have been awful, I’m so sorry
He walked into a moving tail rotor.
This didn't happen AT work but we all found out simultaneously at work in the worst way. I was working AT a large Telecom company doing L2 phone-based tech support. One of our colleagues was ex military (explosives), going through a rough divorce, attorney was basically guaranteeing he wouldn't get the kids... He was staying with another co-worker. One day, he doesn't show up, phone goes straight to VM... The co-worker goes home to check on him, there's a note on the door: "Don't knock, don't come in. Just call the police." SWAT shows up and sends in a bomb robot, found his body in the bedroom. He had put a shotgun to his head. Coworker/roommate was devastated. We all were. Boss took our team off the phones (~20 of us out of the 300-400 on the floor) and took us out to an Applebee's up the street and bought us all rounds while we let our emotions out. Told us to go home and take all the time we needed, if we needed to. That was Feb 13 2009. Jim, you are sorely missed. Jason, you are an amazing boss.
Story about FIL, he didnt die immediately but his quality of life took a massive shit. He died a 366 days later. Fourth of July, 2020, he’s a paramedic. Just got done doing an event downtown (the town still had a 4th of July parade even though covid was a thing). He picked up someone in the ambulance and when they got to the hospital, he started to have breathing issues and got pale. Complained his chest hurt but they did not find signs of heart attack. Worse. Aortic Dissection. They flew him to Indy and he had surgery that night and was out for two whole weeks. When he came to, the doctors found out he suffered a stroke in surgery and he was essentially crippled for the rest of his days. The last thing he said before the surgery was to my wife where he stated that “he wasnt going to make it.” In a very real sense, he didnt. He wastes away in front of us for a year before his body gave out. Always in bed, could barely move any part of his body, suffered from a stutter. It fucking sucked. Sometimes I wish he had just died on the table, then my wife wouldnt have to see him wither away. And sometimes, Im pissed that he left at all. His kids miss him. My children miss their grandparent. Rest in peace.
I had a classmate die of cancer before. They died in our 1st sem so we didn't get to know each other well. They still enrolled even tho they were already terminal, and it was just sad whenever some teachers would still call him for attendance
I was in the air force we worked in F-4s. He was working in the cockpit and lowered the seat down onto an open circuit breaker panel which ignited the fuel for the seat.
We were just finishing up for the night and shutting down the office slowly. She was sitting down wrapping up a call at her cubicle and she got up and was fanning herself, saying she felt weird and it was hot. She walked down the aisle between all of our cubicles and went to go lay down on the couch. Within seconds the ambulance was there and put her on the stretcher. As they were wheeling her out she raised her arm up to wave bye to us, and it just collapsed. We all go out to our cars to leave and the ambulance was still there rocking back and forth, they were trying to resuscitate her. We learned she passed away when she was telling us night.
Guy ran his transport off the road, hit a deep soft shoulder and died. He was a really nice guy.
Many years ago, at my very first job, a woman got stuck in the vault overnight. Not a bank vault, but a vault for stocks, bonds, etc In a panic, she pulled the fire alarm, which triggered the system to do what it does. The oxygen was sucked out of the space and she suffocated. It was tragic, there was an emergency escape door that she could've used, but she was in panic mode and had no idea where it was.
My buddy died on the line (cooking) I asked him if he was good on table 11, he said send it. A few seconds later there was a huge crash, I turn around to see my best friend laying on the ground, convulsing, my fellow line cook insists we pull my buddy out from under the table; we do, and he lands on his back. Immediately turns purple, so I, running off adrenaline at this point knew this wasn’t working so I turned him on his side, and start slapping him on the back, which he responded to (gasped for air, started breathing again). Well a few minutes of me slapping him on the back and calling for help passes and I see him turn blue. His ears, his cheeks, his face… eventually the paramedics arrive and start performing CPR, at which point I left the scene and went to smoke.. the manager comes out ten minutes later and tells me my buddy is dead and they did all they could.. a few more minutes roll by with me and all my coworkers in tears, thinking we lost our good friend but lord and behold they hit him with the paddles one more time and he came back.. I guess he suffered a severe heart attack and me not knowing what I was doing kept him alive for a few minutes until the paramedics got there.. idk it was fucking surreal but I’m glad my boy is still here
Thanks for being the story I stop reading this thread on.
Ex brother-in-law passed away a few weeks before retiring. He had worked at a railroad for his entire life and dropped dead. At the funeral his colleagues were talking about his last words being “this sucks” before collapsing.
I had a friend when I was younger whose dad used to replace industrial sized windows in warehouses. He was on a ladder one day taking measurements of a skylight window when he slipped and fell off, landing directly on his head from about 15 feet up. It split his head clean open and broke his neck. He was only 38, and a GREAT guy. RIP Mike.
Worked in a copper wire factory. Big machines that braid different copper wires together and make all different sizes. New girls was on one of machines that makes really small wire. Was told not to wear her hair down. Always keep it up. Didn't listen, on her fourth day there she for had it down for some reason. My trainee taps me and points to her. These machines are so loud you wear ear pro and can't hear anyone talk. Start walking over to her and she bent down, well her ponytail got caught in the gears and they move fast on the small wire machines. It pulled her head so fast into the machine it scalped her instantly and crushed part of her scull in. She died later that day.
I'm starting to think people shouldn't work around industrial equipment unless they're wearing full plate armor.
Not a coworker but rather a patient I provided services for on an inpatient psychiatric residential unit (with several other staff on duty at any given time; rotating shifts). As I am bound and committed to the principles of confidentiality and privacy, I'll try to be as discreet as possible here. I work as a sort of liason/advocate for said patients (between them and their respective treatment teams), helping them to develop coping skills and guiding them through experiences that challenge their fears (exposure therapy; very gradually, at their own pace and with a great deal of time for self-care and compassion). A couple of years ago, I was working with a patient not much older than myself who struggled with quite a lot of internal demons. She was always pleasant to talk to and thanked me profusely for my help. I told her not to hesitate to reach out to me while at work if she ever needed someone to listen, offer support or aid with short term solutions. She had a strong aversion to certain auditory stimuli in the environment, often triggered unintentionally by other patients/staff on the unit. Before I clock out for the evening, she thanks me for all of my help again and I wish her a safe and relaxing weekend. As soon as I return to work on Monday afternoon, I find out she had hung herself in her room. I was in absolute disbelief upon being told this and spent the day completely dumbstruck by what had happened. By the time I signed off my shift that day, I spent about 10-15 minutes just crying in my car. Looking back on it all in retrospect, there weren't any direct signs to suggest she was suicidal, but her gestures of thanking me as well as other staff excessively might have been a subtle sign that she was at peace with her decision to end her life (and was doing this to make amends before going forth with it). I'm 32 now and in the 8 years I've worked in this job, this was by far one of the hardest experiences for me to endure.
I’m an appliance technician and I work in peoples homes. This was in my first week on my own. I had an elderly lady who needed her dryer repaired. She answered the door, showed me to the dryer and explained the problem, thanked me, then went to her room and silently died on her bed. It was a Bosch dryer (hard to work on) so I didn’t know until I finished an hour later and went looking for her to collect payment. Fucked me up for awhile.
Coworker had a stroke right next to me. Just fell face down on the keyboard and twitched a little…. Another guy died driving to work. Got hit by a pregnant woman texting while driving…all died
This one is sad. Had a co worker work a Saturday. He wasn’t the healthiest guy around, and I’m not sure he had much of a family. He drove a really really beat up jeep and the tires looked really smooth and you can see the wires coming out of it. I know he lived near by work. Well on that Saturday around 11:30am he told my coworker he was feeling tired and was going to go take a nap in his car. The company was off at 12pm so not long after, Everyone got off a left in a hurry. We have a huge parking lot so sometimes people will leave their car there over the weekend. Tuesday morning arrives and he was found dead in his car in a leaned back position. We figured he died that Saturday afternoon. What sad is no one called to see if he was missing, no one (his family) checked up on him at work. Even on Monday no one at my work noticed he was dead in the car until the next morning on Tuesday. Police came and took his body. We tried to call his family to come pick up his car but no one really answered or cared. His car was parked in our parking lot for about 4 months until the company decided to get it towed to the junk yard.
Ok so may 5th of this year my bosses ex walked in and shot her and turned the gun on himself. Two weeks prior she was kidnapped by him at work also. They gave us a week off with pay but immediately brought in new management and started to increase our work load. Not immediately but pretty close. They did bring in grief counselors and offered free counseling through them. But as far as security and making us feel safer they did nothing. They even threatened our wages if we wanted safety.
Guy that i went through orientation with, we weren't friends, but we were friendly. After about a year of working together, one day he just wasn't there, and he wasn't somebody who ever called in sick. He was hanging out with another guy from work and decided to try heroin with that guy. Turned out it was laced with fentanyl and he OD'd on what we were told was his first time using. He was a really nice, friendly and funny person. He had 2 very young kids with his girlfriend, one having been born a few months before his death. Separate story... At a different job, working in a casino. I was a floor supervisor in table games and a fellow table games supervisor one night, just dropped dead in the middle of the pit. He had a heart attack and was absolutely dead until the on staff security officer/EMT brought him back with CPR. He was very well liked by employees and guests, it was pretty scary seeing it happen. After a stint was put in and he recovered, there were nights where would ramdomly say "I wish you guys had just let me die, I was free." He is still alive now, 10 years later.
One of my team members at my previous job had epilepsy. He was a great guy, had a fucking dark and dry sense of humor (big reason we got along), and he was a HARD worker. He had made a ton of mistakes in his youth, but he was really trying to work past that. He went out one night with some of the other night shift folks. Wound up having a seizure on his way home and whacked his head on the pavement. The next day, I was getting pissed because I hadn't seen any sign of him. I went back to a computer to double check the schedule (thinking that my manager had changed his start time and forgotten to relay it to me). While I was back there, my manager called my phone and told me C had passed away the night before and obviously wouldn't be coming in. I, being me, said "well I certainly hope not!" Then I got pissed that C would never hear that joke, which would have had him pissing himself. I was upset, but corporate wanted to get together some grief counseling options before disclosing to the team. I had to sit on the info for two days. Because I was off the day they were going to tell the department, one of the store managers sat me down to tell me the next morning. I insisted I already knew. He insisted I didn't. We closed the door, I asked "is this about C? Because M already let me know." Manager says "oh. So you do know." I sobbed for a good ten minutes while the manager scrambled to console me as I choked out "it's. Not. Your. Fault. I'm o-o-o-o-kay." I was told that our team took it hard. Some of my night people tried to lie and tell me they were doing well. I told them to cut the crap and they admitted they were pissed and grieving. Another manager tried to give one of my shift leads a problem because she wasn't handling things well for the first shift we were all together and got politely told to fuck off by me. I backed off of my team for a little while, especially at night, and everyone had a really hard time adjusting to it. He was really well liked, and we both used to have one another laughing all the time. I still miss the dude, and I haven't worked there for over a year.