In my working career, four that I know of.
Two guys that were deputy sheriffs the same time that I was. One in a car wreck, one from a heart attack.
An ex-boss. Old age and general cantankerousness.
Another former cow-orker. She left the job shortly before I did. We kept in touch for a couple of years, then she dropped dead one day from a massive brain blowout.
One. She was stabbed to death by her husband.
Since I’ve worked at my present job (2008), 29 people have died. The company is mid-sized (between 3-5 thousand people).
Edit: Come to think of it, one of my coworkers died after handing in her severance (so maybe two weeks after she was let go)? So the number is actually 30.
The week before I started at my first job, a guy had dropped dead of a heart attack after lunch in the front hallway. Glad I missed that particular event. Although it made things kind of awkward the first few days. Everyone was somber and melancholy but I was so excited to be there.
Same place, 5 or 6 years later, the lady who did payroll for the company was driving home late one Sunday night from an NFL game with her teenaged son and she fell asleep, crossed the highway and hit head on. They both died. She was the only one who knew the payroll system for over a thousand employees. Cross train, because you never know…
Same place, couple years later, the woman in the office next to mine was a single mom and her teenaged son shot himself in the head playing Russian roulette with a couple of his idiot friends, died instantly. That was so sad. I had met him a couple times. Typical 14-15 yo kid. What a waste!
At my last company, one of the managers I had worked for early on lost his son in some accident. I forget exactly how. Everyone at that place was really young, mid 30’s. I was there over 11 years and can’t remember any other death.
None, but they had an IT guy die the week before I was hired (I was hired for a different position, not his replacement). Glioblastoma multiforme. He lasted about 5 months from diagnosis, from what I heard.
Two jobs ago, I worked with a great person. She was friendly, helpful, just the right amount of sarcastic.
Last year, I was browsing around the website of the place I used to work. She’d been murdered. Found in her car about a mile from her home.
Still gives me the creeps (and makes me angry, for all that’s worth). She left behind a husband and teenage kids.
RIP, Susan.
Several, I’m sure, but the only one I remember specifically is from several years ago. The coworker was a woman in the 30’s, had a husband and four daughters. The whole family died in a car wreck. My boss called us all into the conference room, in tears, to discuss it.
A lot. I started teaching in 1985. Some of my fellow teachers were 30 years or more older than I was. People in their 50s and 60s have heart attacks, develop cancer, or other health problems. The number gets higher if we count the ones who died in retirement.
One young woman to murder. Two men to heart disease, one while driving at 65 mph on cruise control. His wife was able to wrestle the car to the shoulder, and the cop who was behind them lights and sirens due to erratic lane changes attempted CPR. Long ago, came to work to find my assignment for the night shift was a GSW through the temporal lobe who worked in the hospital- he’d used a .22 and it took him two days to die. I kept his heart tracing for years…he was 27, I think.
Started at this one job June 2013.
Feb-Co-worker in my dept, deat of heart attack, aged 70.
April-Electrical Tech-dead of heart, aged 52.
Last month-Plumber from maint., heart attack.
This week-Salesman, stroke.
I think that we lost at least 1 or 2 others, but, memory fails at the moment.
One year ago, nobody died, but, my department had 1 stroke, 1 heart attack, and 1 wife stroke, within a 3 wk. period.
HandsomeHarry- take your blood pressure medicine, your cholesterol medicine, control your blood sugar, minimize alcohol intake, treat any sleep apnea, and for Og’s sake don’t smoke. Oh, yeah, look both ways.
Well, I dunno…it seems that all the other guys were doing that…
I don’t wanna die!!
The ones I can think of, off the top of my head:
-The clerk who lived on cigarettes and coffee, and died of pancreatic cancer.
-The other clerk who had cancer, went into remission, and got sick again. She died last year.
-The older woman who had emphysema but refused to quit smoking literally till the day she died.
-At least two male employees who died of heart attacks.
-The lady on the top floor who dropped dead at her desk, also of a heart attack.
-Her friend, who saw her being taken out to the ambulance. She collapsed and was taken to the hospital as well, but survived. She was very obese, and had complications from diabetes which ended up killing her a few months later.
-The other lady who had diabetes, who didn’t do enough to keep it under control and died earlier this year.
I’ve been working there for 15 years, and am trying to take care of my health so I won’t be next.
Fourteen.
I’ve lost a few co-workers to Malaria. It is a easily preventable disease but some people still ignore the advice they recieve.
Many years ago, there were two colleagues I knew that died from complications of AIDS.
A lot. But not many in the last twenty years.
Years back, when I was right out of college (early eighties), I worked at a magazine publishing company best known for its fashion magazines. A disproportionate number of employees were gay men. And that’s when AIDS hit, and the toll was pretty terrible.
Since then, I actually can’t think of any. I know of a few older co-workers who retired and then died some years later, but that’s to be expected, I guess.
I was coming in here to type something almost identical. Except substitute movie studio for magazine.
I was stationed remote in the 70s. The nice enlisted guy who had no alcohol experience at all was treated to his first drinks by his ‘buddies’ who got him drunk and dumped him into bed. He drowned in his own vomit. The sergeants who got him drunk and left him alone should have been courts martialed for manslaughter. Not my call.
Other than that, several fighter crashes, a personal plane crash, one civilian plane crash. Car crashes, mishandling ordnance, fiddling w/ loaded weapons while drunk. No body in combat though.