Ever work in an office/workplace where a co-worker just vanishes?

In My Humble Opinion
21

When I was younger I worked as a pizza delivery guy. The job involved smoking a lot of pot. We got a new guy in who was greener than the grass over the septic tank, and incredibly clean cut. We called him Ricky because of his resemblance to Ricky Schroeder from the then current TV show Silver Spoons.
Ricky was totally taken aback and scared by the casual drug use by the other drivers, but other than stuttering and shaking in our presence, generally kept his mouth shut.
One day (early in his employment) he got a joint as a tip, and brought it back to the restaurant with the intention of giving to the cops (who ate for free in the restaurant part of the business)… and he was going to report the people who gave him the joint. Fortunately one of the 50+ year old (not pot smoking) Greek waitresses headed him off at the pass, and convinced him to just give the joint to one of the cooks.

Fast forward about 2 weeks and he is giving me and my buddy free samples of pot to test for him (he didn’t smoke it himself) so that he can be sure of the quality of it before he sells it at his school.

Fast forward 2 weeks more, and he is telling us how he is buying “drugs” with his Dad’s credit card… soon afterwards he tells us about getting his drugs ripped off and owing somebody money.

Then, he missed work one day because someone had slashed the tires on his car.

Finally, he didn’t show up for a shift and was never heard from again.

This all happened in under 6 weeks.

22

Twice with the same guy.
A number of years ago a fellow was hired the same day as a few others. All graphic artists. We went out to lunch, came back; but the guy never showed up for the afternoon. Disappeared over lunch. The guy who went out to lunch with him was real freaked-out because he didn’t say anything. Just never came back.
He didn’t totally vanish, because he knew at least one of the other co-workers. But it took us a while to find out that he just decided he didn’t like what he would be doing with us and split.
Fast-forward eight years later. We’re looking for some new crew. Same guy shows up looking for work. Same guy who hired him before, hires him again. Lunch time comes around. Same deal. Another empty work station after lunch. This time nobody even tried to find out what happened.
Eight hours in eight years. I never asked if they mailed him a check each time.

23

That’s right! Wasn’t that the high drama though? I was glued to it like a soap opera.

24

I WAS this coworker.

When I worked at Walmart, I had to get rides to work from my boyfriend; my parents would take me occasionally but they couldn’t always. One day my boyfriend got sick and had to get his appendix taken out. My parents took me the day after, but they couldn’t do it forever and I couldn’t keep begging return rides (I took a bus back on weekdays, but I worked Friday and Saturday nights too), from my coworkers, esp since none of them lived really close to where I did. So I just stopped going, and gave no word.

Should I have called and told them I wasn’t coming back ever? Probably, but at that point I didn’t want the hassle. I was already on the outs with Walmart for missing a number of days already and writing a snarkyass essay about my love for the company (yes, if you get in trouble for missing work you have to write an ESSAY), and I knew they didn’t really want me back. I may have caused problems for the people I worked with directly, but that’s all water under the bridge now. It’s not like any of them tried calling me or were even worried about where I was, even though I said my boyfriend might be DYING. They were like “so how will this affect your work?” Assholes.

25

Oh, and I had the reverse situation happen too: I was working as a waitress at this diner for three weeks and when I went back after Xmas (it was in a college town and the diner closed for the entire college break because there would be no business) it was still closed, this time for good (all the tables were gone, though the sign stayed up, and is still up AFAIK). They never called me, and when I called THEM the number was disconnected. I didn’t get to know any of my coworkers well enough to get their numbers so I could call them and figure out what happened. The place was only open from the beginning of term in September, but it seemed to do pretty good business, being the only non-chain restaurant in town.

My boyfriend thought it was a mob operation. I like that story because it’s exciting, although I know the reality is probably more mundane.

26

I don’t know if this qualifies, but I had a co-worker who didn’t show up for work one day after about 2 weeks on the job. Called in one morning to say he was running late, and about 2 hours later the cops called for the boss.

On the 6 pm news, found out where he was, as he was the top story. Apparently he was busted for luring young men to his house and forcing them to disrobe (he’d been arrested before on similar charges, had done a year in prison). He’s doing 7 years, last I heard. :eek:

27

Anyone else thinking of that one episode of Seinfeld?

(A guy from the telephone company is fixing Elaine’s phone.)

Elaine (inner monologue): I wonder if this guy has a life. Probably not, just lives by himself. If he went out on a job and never came back, no one would know what would happen to him. I bet I could kill him and no one would ever know…(grabs a large blunt object, telephone guy turns around)

Guy: OK, you’re phone’s all set, here’s your new number.

Elaine: But it’s not a 212.

Guy: We’re out of 212s. You have to have 646.

Elaine: You know, I could have killed you and no one would know!

Guy: I could kill you and no one would know.

Elaine: Damn.

(Later, another guy come back to give her a 212 number)

New Guy: You’re all set.

Elaine: What happened to the other guy?

New Guy: No one knows. He went out on a job and just never came back.

28

We had a guy who left early one day to go to a funeral, and never showed up again (insert funeral jokes here). The customers whose money he had taken did show up, and we had to replace it. He was living with his mother, who called us looking for him.

Months later I was on the same bus with him! I asked him where he’d been, but he just looked at me, didn’t answer, and got off at the next stop.

29

My last job. We managed a Support Team in Bangalore, India. A couple guys actually went missing. One guy, Suresh, (and I swear I’m not making this up) went looking for a family member who had gone missing, and Suresh disappeared. The feedback we got from other members of the team was that this is not uncommon in India. I presume that’s because there is not well-established communications channels outside of the large cities.

30

This story is my favorite.

31

Wow. I like that one.
I was reading it, and I’m like… maybe he met a REALLY nice lady at the front of the store, and they just decided to run away to Alaska together. Right then and there.
Either that, or he really WAS D.B. Cooper, and the feds came and got hime while you weren’t looking. Then the agents found all his money and decided it’d be easier to keep the money if they didn’t bother taking him back to the office…

32

Last year around Christmas time, we had our usual Christmas party and one of the receptionists who had been there for about 2 months didn’t show up for dinner. We had a running “Christmas Party Voodoo” joke about missing the party (the year before a girl in a similar position didn’t show up for the party or work the next Monday ) so we were relieved when she did show up about an hour late. Her daughter was ill with strep and we didn’t think much of it.

That immediate Tuesday, she got called by her mom at work that her daughter was very ill and she was taking her to the hospital. I told her to go ahead and take whatever time off she needed and keep us posted. That was the last we spoke to or heard from her. We thought something horrible had happened to the kid, but when we called the receptionists mother she said that she had left town but would be back the next day. The kid was fine. We call the next day and the day after- no word from her. Considering her child was sick and she had told us her mother had terminal cancer- it was very odd. Finally, we just left a message with her mother that we were very worried about her, but her mother never called us back. It was the first day of the pay period, so she had no check to speak of and never came looking for it. One year later, we still have no idea what happened to her.

33

I’ve been that cow-orker too. :slight_smile:

In my last job, our department was closed down and we were all made redundant. While giving us our notices (on a Friday), my boss said to me “You’ve got a lot of holiday time built up - take a couple of weeks off, put together your CV, get some applications out”. OK, sounded like a good idea to me. I entered the time into the company’s holiday spreadsheet on the central server, filled in my timesheet for the week, and took off rather earlier than I usually would have done. After a happy afternoon and evening in the pub celebrating, and an - inactive - weekend, I spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of the next week at home, seeing to the paperwork.

Thursday evening. The police arrive at my flat. Apparently, my boss hadn’t expected me to take his remarks literally, and hadn’t bothered to check the spreadsheet. He’d assumed I’d killed myself (a reasonable assumption, as it happens, but not true this time) at the bad news…

34

I don’t have quite as mysterious a story as the rest of you. But where I work now, there have been three different receptionists who only worked there for a very short time, each one carted out the front door in handcuffs by policemen. None of them worked there long enough for us to get to know their names, and we never did find out why they were arrested and removed. It had to be prior warrants out for them, which they conveniently forgot to mention on the job application. Two Novembers ago, my supervisor disappeared, and it took us months to learn by snooping on the web that he had failed to mention on his application that he was a registered sex offender. The management never said a word about it. And none of us has seen him since.

35

As a freelance cameraman, I’d think I wouldn’t have a story like this. I do. We were shooting a corporate industrial job years ago. It involved perhaps 8-10 professional actors, sitting around a very long conference table. They had tons of interactive dialogue. There was a group “leader” who had more dialogue, but they all talked to and fro. ( In retrospect, thank god there were no windows… )

I circled around and around, following the talk. Then shot many angles of coverage, so it could be cut any way they liked. It was a two day job. We shot a long first day, got a bit past half way through a bear of a script. Psychologically I dig that- we’re more than half way over the gig.

I was shooting this for a friend who was the Producer/Director. So, I was sleeping over at his house. Great man, wildly creative writer. I’m in the shower the next morning and I get out and he has an awful look on his face. He has a " the phone rang and my dog was hit by a bus" face. Deeply shocked. I asked what had happened.

The “group leader” had just called him up. She’d been thinking of quitting the business for some time now, and the pressures of having to “carry” all of those long dialogue bits was just too much and she decided to call it quits, so she wasn’t coming to work today. :eek:

He didn’t panic. I would have. He knew he’d cast real pro’s, and so we hustled off to work, picked up breakfast and coffee for all and got ready. When the van with the talent arrived, he got everyone into the break room where food was set up. He announced the truth, without embellishment or criticism. He did say exactly what she had said. The room was stunned into silence.

Then my pal the Director said, " We need a hero. Can one of you memorize all of her lines, because we now have to shoot this entire job today, with a new group leader. If any of you truly can handle that level of quick memorization, please come and talk to me. Don’t step up if you are unsure. You all will be paid for today, but if we cannot reshoot yesterday and all of what was left, we will wrap after breakfast, and I’ll handle this later today with her agent."

We had a Hero. He was unbelievable. He chomped through large bits of dialogue, rarely went up ( going up is blowiing your lines ), and generally took this problem very much to heart. He saved the day. We shot forever of course, but did get the whole gig done. Because of how we blocked it out, when he did go up, we knew we’d have a cut-away shot of someone else to use to cover it, and we just started again after cutting and letting him re-read. He kept his cool and saved our asses.

She never worked again. It was a S.A.G. shoot, so her agent, her union AND her attorney were involved with the fallout.

I’ve never heard of such a thing in this business.

Cartooniverse

36

I worked at a call center for a while. We had two guys that were good friends. They were very strange, but good workers. One of them just didn’t show up for work. His friend didn’t know anything. The next day he still didn’t show up, and his friend said he wasn’t at home. About 3 months later we finally found out that he had a big fight with his wife, and she had left him. She had called the cops and told them he had child porn on his computer. If she planted it, or if he really liked that stuff we never knew. All we know is he got arrested, and he was never heard from again.

-Otanx

37

Got a new guy to join our crew of 3. Middle of his third week with us, he starts to come in later and later. He does a couple no shows with a call. Then he disappears. No call, no show. About 9 months later we get some kind of petition for unemployment benefits from this guy. Turns out, his wife kicked him out of the house and they later divorced. He didn’t have anywhere to live around town and had to move in with a friend far away.

38

I’ve never had one at work, though a classmate of mine from high school disappeared from the US Navy Base at Guantanamo. He just went poof.

39

The hijakcer actually bought his ticket under the name “Dan Cooper”. The name “D.B. Cooper” was a reporter’s error.

40

Like some earlier posters, I’ve also had the experience of a missing co-worker who was found dead at home. This was a guy who never came in late, never called in sick, never even took vacation. He loved being at work, and was friends with everyone(I think he was actually lonely when he was home). We all knew it was a bad omen when he didn’t show up one morning. Our supervisor didn’t feel the need to go check on him–after all, he had some paperwork to do…WE ended up calling someone from the evening shift to investigate. I’ll always feel sorry that we sent that woman out to find her dead friend on his porch.

Another co-worker didn’t really disappear, she just sorta went over the edge on her 40th birthday. Became a different person. She was a smart,beautiful, vivacious, athletic married woman with a young daughter. Almost overnight, she became a space cadet. She would show up hours late, or not at all, sometimes go misssing for days. She left her husband and took her kid to live with some guy that nobody knew. She went from being a nice dresser to showing up in ratty clothes that barely fit. The sparkle in her eyes was gone. Rumour was that she was out partying and took something that fried her brain. It was a sad thing to see. This time, to management’s credit, they bent over backwards to help her, and eventually let her take early retirement, rather than fire her for non-performance.