YOUR own stories of missing co-workers

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Inspired by Auntie Em’s missing co-worker thread. Rather than drag in all of our own stories into that thread, I figure we should do our own thread for the dirt.

A few years back a woman who works at my company went missing. After an extensive search with much manpower, they finally found her after about a week. She had been stuffed in the trunk of her car murdered. The car was parked in the company parking lot. About a year later, they arrest her husband for her murder. He also works for our company. Not very many questions were forthcoming since the whole thing was hushed up.

Lot of unanswered questions. Why did it take so long to find her body? Did he do it just for the money or was there another woman?

2

Well there was this one time, when Christoper Walken gave a coworker of mine a lift to the airport after she complained that George Burns was getting more men then her…

3

I am hoping other having funny stories of missing co-workers. Unfortunately I have boring co-workers who are always at work well except for that guy and his wife.

4

Well, I’ve had some co-workers that I wished would go missing . . .

5

Well, there’s the temp who left to go to the restroom (ostensibly) and never came back.

We noticed after a half-hour or so.

That’s more an example of “how slackers quit” than a real mystery disapearance.

With my current job, last year one of our reps just became unavailable for a month or so (didn’t answer calls when we were setting him up to go out on the road). Turns out he was in the middle of a spectacular breakup and busy quasi-stalking his ex. Don’t know all the details, but he’s the one who ended up on parole, so he was definitely contributing to the dysfunctional side of that trainwreck.

The amazing part is they let him come back to work. (I’d have fired his ass for abandonment and let someone who’ll actually show up have the job). The sequel is, he’s now having trouble with his current girlfriend and keeps trying to get extra time off. Either he’s only attracted to psychos or he’s one himself. I’m guessing a little from column A, and little from column B…

6

Heh. Same thing happened THREE times at a place I worked at, over the course of about 6 weeks. The temps would go to lunch and … never returned!

7

I didn’t want to share my missing co-worker story in auntie em’s thread because mine is awful. No reason to freak folks out right? Since you asked though, mine’s similar to yours deb.

Joanne was my supervisor years ago in a local retail chain. She was sort of a mentor to me, and I wound up taking a promotion to the same position as hers, which included a transfer. We’d often talk on the phone during work and started becoming friends outside of work, too.
She was an amazing woman who deserved more respect than I could ever express. She epitomized personal responsibility and the good ol’ pulling oneself up by the bootstraps ideals that seem to be so out of fashion. After years of hard work and self-improvement, she finally decided to end a horrible marriage.
Thursday night she called me during a slow period at work, we worked together over the phone trying to fill out this ‘divorce in a kit’ she’d gotten at a bookstore, she couldn’t afford to hire a divorce attourney. We said goodnight around 9 that night, and it was the last time I ever spoke to her alive.
She was scheduled to be at work at 9:00 am, when she didn’t show up the other manager called her house. No answer. He waited a few minutes in case she was between the house and work, then called again, still no answer.
Knowing we were pals, he then called me at the other store to ask if I knew where she might be, I hadn’t a clue. This was incredibly unlike her, and I knew her two kids were visiting their grandparents for a week and her husband had moved out, so I immediately began picturing her lying at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck, alone and unable to call for help.
The manager called again, then dispatched a stockboy to her house (1/2 mile away) to check. The stockboy reported back that the doorbell went unanswered, the car was cold in the driveway, and that the locked house showed no signs of activity.
Her contact number was found in her file and the manager called her brother and asked him to come to the store, not her house. Brother and manager then went together to the house, where they forced the front door open to find her estranged husband’s body in the foyer.
The husband, who’d never evinced violent tendancies or even much objection to the break-up, had bought a gun for the first time in his life, broke in a back window, shot her in her bed then killed himself. The police found the reciept in his pocket.
Husband’s co-workers later reported he’d somehow seized on the idea that she was involved with another man, apparently that’s what pushed him into the abyss.

What a call for the grandparents and the two kids to get. It was the weirdest funeral service I’ve ever attended. Rose pink casket for her, iron grey for him, both families hatred for the other coming off in thick waves. The kids would be in their early twenties now, I often wonder about them.
On a different, lighter note~the factory I work at often has new people leave on their first day, usually they simply fail to return from lunch break. Never once found out what happened to any of those missing co-workers.

8

Scarlett67 I have some too, so don’t try to sluff on your extras onto me :slight_smile:

snermy The temps missing heehee. The rep sounds creepy but also like a family member of mine.

Queen Tonya what a sad thing to happen. Especially since it was a close friend of yours. (The story you told and the one I told was the reason I started this thread, cause don’t want to creep out the Auntie Em thread)

9

Couple stories of my own:

[ul][li]I’ve also seen temps go to lunch and never return. I was tempted to do that once with an employer who treated me like some sort of abomination (found out later she did that to every single temp she got, but for some reason they kept sending them to her anyway - I managed to hold out for a week as a favor to the agency).[/li]
[li]Not quite a missing co-worker story, but I was once asked to fill in for a receptionist while she went on a week’s vacation. On Friday, they asked me to come back in on Monday, as they’d decided I was perfect and she was less so. I showed up at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, by which time she’d returned from her vacation, they called her in, fired her, had her clean out her desk, and escorted her out of the building. :eek: I felt a little guilty about that for a long time…[/li]
[li]My mother also got up and walked out of her workplace when she finally decided to retire. She had asked her boss to drop from full-time to part-time, and her boss said she could, but also asked if she could continue working full-time for another six months, “as a favor to the company.” My mother, a team player, agreed, and six months later went down to part-time. The following year she asked about her vacation time, and they said that because she’d dropped from full-time to part-time, she was getting one less vacation day. After a long, long history of pulling this piddly bullshit on her over the years (and keep in mind she’d been there for 8 years and was the only remaining original employee from that time other than the General Manager, so it’s not like she wasn’t a hard worker and didn’t have some kind of loyalty), that was it for her. In tears, she went home. The following morning her boss asked if everything was ok, and my mother said, “Oh, yes, everything’s fine. I’m just going to sit down and type my resignation letter.” Her, her boss and the GM went into a meeting room to discuss this, and they thanked her for her two weeks’ notice, but they said she couldn’t “badmouth management” while she was here for those two weeks - and kept stressing it over and over and over. The meeting ended, she went back to her desk, sat down… got back up, went back into her boss and said, “You know, I don’t think I can stay quiet for the next two weeks. I’ll just clear out my desk and leave.” :smiley: (Having friends in the company helped, because she got to hear about the chaos that followed her departure, and she chuckled evilly about it.) And that was it - she considered herself retired, started collecting social security, and is happily enjoying her golden years with my dad.[/li]
[li]Just recently had two co-workers where I am now just call up one day and say, “I quit” - no explanation, never saw them again. My boss called me in after the second one to make sure everything in the office was ok that she might not be aware of, and that I wasn’t going to do the same thing![/ul][/li]
Good times…

Esprix

10

I had a co worker who was famous for absences with poor excuses, or would swithc job lines and then say she got the days off mixed up. She didnt come to work for 2 weeks after 9/11 because her first husband is middle eastern (she’s Canadian mixture including part Native, not sure how much and if she has treaty status) and she felt “persecuted” (funny none of the Iranian workers stayed away, or other Muslim/ middle eastern employees felt persecuted…or if they did, they didnt miss work)

She would miss work because she was upset when her son got cut from basketball. (apparently he has talent and was being scouted?)

Once her kitchen caught fire… three days absence. House was fine, just some lino melted and smoke damage.

She took a posting working weekends. Missed more weekends than she was there, always doing shift exchanges, or calling in.

So one Friday she called in and asked for a leave of absence. One day. Told the person taking the calls she had weekend off …vacation.

Saturday she doesnt show up, and was not booked off. I was nurse in charge, and no answer at her house. Actually phone out of service. I couldnt replace her that day, so we worked minus one care aide. Everyone else got two extra residents. As you can imagine, that made everyone else dance with joy. I mean getting nine people with Alzheimers washed dressed toileted fed etc is not nearly enough. Eleven really gives people some quality time with the residents.

I replaced her for sunday, she failed to show monday (boss got to deal with that one) she missed the next weekend too.

Two people on my floor booked off the second weekend, because they didnt want to have the extra workload incase she wasnt replaced.n But they called in time and were replaced. The MIA co worker was also replaced, well for sunday. Saturday I got someone in at 930 to cover her shift.

When she showed up after blowing 8 shifts… the story?

support check bounced therefore the Rent bounced, they were living in a UHaul truck (not sure why) the oldest son went to 7-11 to get a pop and somehow got arrested, they couldnt get in touch with him for x # of days, mean while daughter in Costa Rica was deathly ill, so she was worried… had to send last of her money to her for medicine and doctors…

Which still doesnt explain why she didnt call in, or even come in, since her minivan was still working… and her son (in jail, maybe or maybe the other one) has a Jaguar…

I mean if you are in that desparate shape would you blow your job that pays 20 dollars an hour?

Yes she was fired, and yes it is being appealed by the union… my boss and others never put anything in her file in writing about her absences, so technically they cant fire her without giving her warnings. Maybe.

11

When I was younger I witnessed a very remarkable decline in one of my coworkers… we were pizza delivery drivers.
His name was Rick, but we called him Rickey because he resembled the Silver Spoons era Rickey Schroeder. He was also amazingly naive.
On one of his first days at the job, he was tipped a joint. He returned to the restaurant determined to hand it over to the cops who used to eat there. He had to be convinced by one of the middle aged waitresses that he should just give it to one of the cooks.
Flash forward about 2 weeks and he approaches myself and another driver saying he has some pot he would like to sell, but since he’s never smoked any, perhaps we’d like to “test” it for him. No problem.
2 more weeks later, he’s buying cocaine with his father’s credit card, and selling it to people at his school. Not too long after this he tells us that he has been ripped off, and owes his father and his supplier money… and someone has slashed the tires of his car.
Less than a week later, he was scheduled to work one night (it was also payday), but didn’t show.

And we never saw or heard of him again.

12

This is just… weird. In light of auntie em’s thread, I mean. I got a call this afternoon from a friend of mine. Our friend Nick has gone missing. (He and I are both college students in Portland and staying with our families in Spokane for the summer.) Nick lives a few minutes from his girlfriend’s house. He left her house on Tuesday night around eight o’clock in his car and never made it to his dad’s house. He hasn’t been seen since.

This evening, two nights later, we learn that there’s a charge on one of his credit cards that’s from a store in Richman (Richland?), Idaho. We have no clue what’s going on, whether he’s been robbed and is hitching back, whether he’s been killed and they’re running around with his credit card, or whether a summer without a job or classes just got too boring for the guy and he took off. He’s Mr. Reliable usually, and not a party guy. We’re baffled.

13

Here in BC, we had a woman on the temp list at work who was apparently not too happy with the amount of work she was getting. Immediately after 9/11, she passed the word that her daughter had been caught in one of the buildings, so she had to go to New York, but had no money for the fare. The college set up a donation fund to get her a plane ticket (and lots of money left over). A few days after she left, we heard from her daughter, living peacefully at home in Winnipeg. I never heard of any further contact with her.

14

First of all, I sort of have BEEN the missing coworker in the past on jobs that I really hated and saw no way out of. I just sort of vanished. I do howveer have a story of a girl I went to camp with who vanished and for years I wondered what happened to her.

She was 11 and rode on the bus with me and we’d sit together and talk. She was a bit odd, I remember. One day she wasn’t there anymore. Or the next day or the next. She never came back to camp. After a couple of days I asked the bus driver what happened to her and he said he had no clue and it was being investigated. When I asked what he meant he said he went to pick her up the first day she vanished and HER ENTIRE HOUSE WAS GONE.
I still wonder about that.

15

My sister was a temp who went to lunch her first day and never came back. She worked at a fish packing plant.

My other missing co-worker story is not at all humorous.

Call her Mary. She worked in the cube next to me and was on the same team as I. She had a cabin up North, and one Friday afternoon mentioned to us that she was going up there for the first time that year (this was in March).

Monday morning rolls around, and Mary did not show up. I was not a manager at the time, and assumed (as did our real manager) that she was taking a long weekend. No major deadlines pending, so no problem.

Tuesday rolls around - still no Mary. Our manager asks me if I have heard from Mary - no, I have not. Our manager (Kathy) calls Mary’s home to talk to her. Mary is not there, but her teen-age son says that Mary has not returned from her cabin up north. The son calls the cabin - no answer. The son calls the people living in the cabin next door to Mary’s, and asks them to look in the window and see if anyone is home. The neighbor does so, and reports back that there is a car parked outside, and although the curtains in the bedroom are drawn, they can see that someone is in the bedroom - but not moving, and not responding to the doorbell.

The son, seriously worried at this point, calls the police, and asks them to break down the door. What the police find is not pretty.

This, as I say, was the first time that Mary had been up to her cabin this year. She apparently brought her boyfriend up north, turned on the water again, and turned on the thermostat for the first time that year. The outside temperature was not low enough during the day to cause the furnace to kick on. During the night, it was.

Apparently, over the winter a mouse had built a nest in the flue of the gas furnace for the cabin, which blocked the flue almost completely. During the night, when both Mary and her boyfriend were asleep, the furnace turned on, and carbon monoxide began building up in the cabin.

Mary was still in bed. Her boyfriend had fallen partially out of bed, and was found lying face-down on the floor. He apparently had pressure sores on the side of his face from lying there from Friday night to Tuesday afternoon.

Both were evacuated via helicopter to our local medical center. The doctors did what that they could, but the boyfriend died without regaining consciousness. They put Mary into a hyperbaric chamber to try to help her recover, and I went to visit her on that Thursday. She did not look well, to say the least. Friday night, she had a heart attack and died.

Regards,
Shodan

16

When I worked at OfficeMax there was a co-worker who told me one morning, “is it all right if I go to Starbucks?” Thinking he’d only be gone for a few minutes since there was a Starbucks about a block away, I told him, “sure, go ahead.” After 20 minutes had passed I began to wonder where he was. After 30 minutes I was getting suspicious. After an hour I determined that he bailed on us for good. This turned into an inside joke at our store, where any employee who quit in the middle of his shift was said to have “gone to Starbucks.”

17

One of my co-workers called in to report his absence. He said he’d been abducted by three women who had stolen a case of Viagra. He was gone the rest of the week.

18

… and she had - A HOOK HAND!

:eek:

Esprix

19

There were two cases where I work. I didn’t know either one. The first one never returned. She worked in purchasing and had a troubled marriage. One day she just disappeared. This was 10 years ago. More recently, her husband was somehow associated with the death of a girlfriend and he was certainly suspected of having killed his wife as well, but there was never enough proof to charge him.

The other one was the woman who had my job before me. She’s apparently bipolar and perhaps schizophrenic. One day she gave the girl across the hall certain instructions regarding her home and pets and went to lunch and disappeared for days. She had been acting strangely for awhile and so they found another position for her which she felt was beneath her dignity and she left. Nobody knows where she is now.

20

I’ve got a sad one too.

I used to work for the Navy and one of my military co-workers, who had been found to be HIV-positive, ended up getting a medical discharge from the Navy and taking a job with a contractor that had offices in the building next to ours. He was a great guy - after finding out he had HIV, he joined the local AIDS Task Force and also did some volunteer work doing HIV prevention training for the Navy. He had said he wanted something positive to come out of what had happened to him. He was terrific to work with - friendly, conscientious, talented and knowledgeable. We became pretty good friends.

Then one Monday he didn’t show up for work, which wasn’t like him at all. His boss called his apartment and got no answer, so he then called my friend’s parents in Florida. They called around and no one seemed to know where he was, so they called the cops. By Friday we learned he’d been murdered.

Turns out he’d befriended a guy he’d met through his volunteer activities who was also HIV positive and starting to have real health problems. He’d let the guy borrow a laptop computer from him, but the guy kept giving excuses about when he was going to give it back. The guy ended up taking my friend hostage - he took my friend’s car, stole some computer equipment from his apartment, and then forced him to take out some money from his account at an ATM machine. He then drove my friend over the state line to a farmer’s field and shot him in the face with a shotgun. He abandoned the car back in town.

The cops estimated that he’d been shot either late Wednesday or early Thursday, but he hadn’t shown up for work on Monday. I shudder to think what might have happened to him between Monday and Wednesday. I guess that was the thanks he got for befriending someone who was in trouble and trying to help them.

The legal system ended up allowing a plea bargain because the murderer was already dying of AIDS.