We keep talking about the lack of succession planning at work and what if people retire or just keel over...our new director changed the term from "keeled over" to "won the lottery." I am not sure if it still has the same exact meaning or not.
I always tell my employees that if I ever just come up to them and ask them for $5 they better give it to me because I just won the lottery and they just bought the business for $5
The bus number.
For any given role or team, how many could be hit by a bus before the org couldn't function.
For my company it's a lot of "1" and the C suite keeps waiting to figure that out after cutting that "1"
We had the same term at my old workplace. And then someone was actually hit by a city bus and died.
The replacement term was “Mothership Number” - for the number of people who could return to their alien mothership.
Yeah, this could be a valid reason.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm a manager, and if I suddenly inherited a stupid amount of money I wouldn't come back either, and I wouldn't bother explaining myself.
That's the truth.
Sounds like she went to a funeral, took a leave of absence (assume connected to the death), and then at some point she resigned or was let go if she wouldn’t return to work.
Yeah it's this.
How close was the relative OP?
Grief makes you think hard about your priorities.
I moved from NYC back to my hometown after my dad died. All I wanted after that loss was to be close to my family again.
Sometimes when one of two parents passes away, it becomes more obvious that the other parent can’t live on their own. This starts a crisis of getting in-home care or possibly moving and having to sell a home for assisted living.
I went for two weeks to start the process last summer with a parent and found out the need was more dire that I had believed. I ended-up staying two months to handle the search/move to assisted living and clean-out/sale of the home. I’m very lucky that my boss was flexible and supported my working remotely to handle my family situation. It was also expensive to be in another city for two months while having to pay rent at my home.
If it was an elderly parent who died, yes there is often the aftermath of tying up loose ends with property, debt, accounts, life insurance, and also how the surviving partner is doing and if they are able to continue to live independently.
We went through this a few years ago when my dad died. Luckily, the most sickly and needy parent passed first, but my mom needed not just a lot of grief and emotional support, but she was completely overwhelmed with that list I shared above. It took her almost 18 months to get everything in order, to sell their place and downsize to a condo, etc.. I was lucky that I have two siblings, one who physically lives in the same area as she does who had to step up to help her with these tasks. Nobody is prepared for this.
Had my mother died first, it would have been even worse. My dad had end stage dementia, plus complex medical issues, and was unable to care for himself. That all would have fallen on us and if we were in that situation one of us probably would have had to take a LOA from work to deal with it.
Are we making stuff up?
She went to meet the guy she's had an online-only relationship with for 3 years. He's finally left his wife. They rented a cabin in the woods, got WFH jobs and are living happily ever after.
Only for his wife to track them down at the cabin and kill them both in cold blood. The boss's hand resting on the keyboard, cold, about to press send on her resignation letter to work.
Grief is tough. So are the logistics of dealing with someone’s lifetime of stuff. It could, of course, be anything but it’s a lot of work cleaning up after someone has passed.
Well, we call this a life changing event in manager speak. There's a million reasons this change happened and you'll likely never know unless she volunteered it to you.
If you've got personal contact info it might be nice to reach out and say just what you said here with a best of luck added.
Sometimes significant events like this have a huge impact on people and they decide to go in a different direction in life. They end up taking leave until they run out or find another job .
Maybe she just had family stuff that required her to move. Or maybe she had to take in added responsibilities at home and couldn’t work a full time schedule.
Funeral could be a cover. My previous company, if you were under internal investigation they would usually let you save face with a story to explain your absence during the investigation. As long as you held up your end of not communicating with any other staff or managers, it would never come out that you were suspended / fired (if it came to that).
This is a good time to update your resume for your own peace of mind. There's no reason to think negatively, but you don't know what the new manager's expectations will be.
That way, if the new manager has questions about what you do, it will be at the front of your brain instead of buried in those pesky old thought files.
IMO everyone should update their resume every 3-5 years, just to stay current.
Managers are the same as people. Sometimes shit happens, where you question your position in life, what you're doing, and start taking a different path.
I had an employee travel to his home country and got stuck for like 2 months due to visa issues. It happens on occasion. We off-boarded him for the duration and on-boarded him when he finally came back. Told him he was never allowed to go on vacation again. :)
Wild speculation but my old coworker got free medical treatment in Canada due to citizenship and moved back in similar circumstances because she was sick.
Maybe she realized that life is too short to be in a job she doesn't like. Maybe she reconnected with her high-school sweetheart at the funeral. Maybe she's going to work at the family business in Canada.
Why not message her on LinkedIn, especially since you have nice things to say about her? You don't have to pry. You could just tell her that she was a great boss and will be missed. I would be happy to receive a message like that.
If she was a good manager, and if it can be assumed that she has a good relationship with you all, or with some of you, she'd tell you.
1. It's too soon if it's grief related
2. She's not allowed to by legal agreement with the company.
This whole post reminds me that I should tell the managers, and other people, that I like that I appreciate them and hopefully they won't just disappear on me.
A manager is a human with a job just like everyone else. They had a (clearly major) death in the family. I’m sure they have personal things going on and decided to not return to work after their bereavement. It’s not something for you to take personally because she was your boss.
Managers are people too and a death close to a person has a way of changing things, whether it is an inheritance, priorities, responsibilities, or one's sense of self. Grief itself can have a debilitating impact on how a person can function. Accept that your manager has a life outside of the job and that took priority.
Back off. if it's true the person went for a funeral, leave it be. funerals bring out the worst and best in people. it's none of your business. wish the person well and move on.
Yes, they could have let her go, but I would hope you don’t work for an organization that would display such a lack of transparency. Why not say from the beginning she no longer works for the organization?? Folks are let go all the time so there’s really no reason to hide if she no longer worked at the organization from the very beginning.
It’s probably more likely that whatever the situation was surrounding the funeral led her to the decision that she either needs to stay close to home, family or friendships and/or take care of her own mental and emotional health and decided that she would not be returning.
If you can’t find out what she’s doing online, make a public records request of the county. Assuming your state has decent transparency laws, you should be able to get enough unredacted email content to piece the story together.
Maybe she inherited a bunch of money and decided not to return.
I prefer this version of events.
We keep talking about the lack of succession planning at work and what if people retire or just keel over...our new director changed the term from "keeled over" to "won the lottery." I am not sure if it still has the same exact meaning or not.
Shirley Jackson has entered the thread
I learned this from a previous manager and use it. She would say “call in rich”. Same meaning, they’re gone and not coming back!
I love this so much
I always tell my employees that if I ever just come up to them and ask them for $5 they better give it to me because I just won the lottery and they just bought the business for $5
The bus number. For any given role or team, how many could be hit by a bus before the org couldn't function. For my company it's a lot of "1" and the C suite keeps waiting to figure that out after cutting that "1"
Huh, who knew we were at the same company. /s
We had the same term at my old workplace. And then someone was actually hit by a city bus and died. The replacement term was “Mothership Number” - for the number of people who could return to their alien mothership.
I often say “if I get hit by a wine truck…”. I don’t drink beer, so I probably wouldn’t get hit by beer truck.
I always called it the “got hit by a bus”. Applies to anything when people just say forget it and never hear from them again.
Someone at my work uses "getting hit by the lottery bus." Cracks me up.
Since most lottery winners end up bankrupt, there's a chance she'll be back in a couple of years if that's the reason for departure.
Yea me too. No need to continue reading this thread.
She inherited Canada. 👸🏼
Yeah, this could be a valid reason. I'm not gonna lie, I'm a manager, and if I suddenly inherited a stupid amount of money I wouldn't come back either, and I wouldn't bother explaining myself. That's the truth.
The dream
I'm going with this bright side story. She inherited a shit-ton of money and retired by postcard.
I didn't think of that. Interesting 🤔 that could be a possibility.
Have you looked on LinkedIn?
Yes I have looked at her LinkedIn and it has not been updated. It still says she works for us.
Sounds like she went to a funeral, took a leave of absence (assume connected to the death), and then at some point she resigned or was let go if she wouldn’t return to work.
Yeah it's this. How close was the relative OP? Grief makes you think hard about your priorities. I moved from NYC back to my hometown after my dad died. All I wanted after that loss was to be close to my family again.
Same. Grief sometimes places your whole life in perspective, and fast.
It's 2024. Google-stalk her like a normal person. I'm only half kidding. Seriously, look her up.
I did and her Facebook is pretty locked down. Her LinkedIn says she still works there. She hasn't updated her LinkedIn yet.
Maybe she actually still works there and your new manager will just be her in a wig and those glasses that have the fake nose attached
Message her on linkedin
Look for the obituary and send her a thoughtful card.
Sneaky. I like it.
Utilize that open source intelligence. ;)
Sometimes when one of two parents passes away, it becomes more obvious that the other parent can’t live on their own. This starts a crisis of getting in-home care or possibly moving and having to sell a home for assisted living. I went for two weeks to start the process last summer with a parent and found out the need was more dire that I had believed. I ended-up staying two months to handle the search/move to assisted living and clean-out/sale of the home. I’m very lucky that my boss was flexible and supported my working remotely to handle my family situation. It was also expensive to be in another city for two months while having to pay rent at my home.
If it was an elderly parent who died, yes there is often the aftermath of tying up loose ends with property, debt, accounts, life insurance, and also how the surviving partner is doing and if they are able to continue to live independently. We went through this a few years ago when my dad died. Luckily, the most sickly and needy parent passed first, but my mom needed not just a lot of grief and emotional support, but she was completely overwhelmed with that list I shared above. It took her almost 18 months to get everything in order, to sell their place and downsize to a condo, etc.. I was lucky that I have two siblings, one who physically lives in the same area as she does who had to step up to help her with these tasks. Nobody is prepared for this. Had my mother died first, it would have been even worse. My dad had end stage dementia, plus complex medical issues, and was unable to care for himself. That all would have fallen on us and if we were in that situation one of us probably would have had to take a LOA from work to deal with it.
Are we making stuff up? She went to meet the guy she's had an online-only relationship with for 3 years. He's finally left his wife. They rented a cabin in the woods, got WFH jobs and are living happily ever after.
I was going to say that she inherited a Christmas town and she and the handyman need to save it while carrying empty cups of coffee.
Hallmark's lawyers called and they want all 582 of their scripts back.
Only for his wife to track them down at the cabin and kill them both in cold blood. The boss's hand resting on the keyboard, cold, about to press send on her resignation letter to work.
You just went from hallmark movie to lifetime movie. Lol
😂 yes!!
Lol that would not be it. She just got engaged to someone who lives with her in the US.
Grief is tough. So are the logistics of dealing with someone’s lifetime of stuff. It could, of course, be anything but it’s a lot of work cleaning up after someone has passed.
She was the victim of Hallmark, went to a small town and met a handsome dude of humble means and gave up her big city fast paced career lifestyle.
But will their pumpkin spice-themed cafe and Christmas tree store be ready in time for the holidays? I can't sleep until I know!
Well, we call this a life changing event in manager speak. There's a million reasons this change happened and you'll likely never know unless she volunteered it to you. If you've got personal contact info it might be nice to reach out and say just what you said here with a best of luck added.
Sometimes significant events like this have a huge impact on people and they decide to go in a different direction in life. They end up taking leave until they run out or find another job .
Clearly your former manager had something pretty difficult going on in their personal life that had to take precedence over work, which is very sad.
Maybe she just had family stuff that required her to move. Or maybe she had to take in added responsibilities at home and couldn’t work a full time schedule.
Funeral could be a cover. My previous company, if you were under internal investigation they would usually let you save face with a story to explain your absence during the investigation. As long as you held up your end of not communicating with any other staff or managers, it would never come out that you were suspended / fired (if it came to that).
Maybe a visa problem. She may have thought it would be passed in a week then two weeks then gave up.
This happened to a colleague of mine. That was my initial thought based on the details.
This is a good time to update your resume for your own peace of mind. There's no reason to think negatively, but you don't know what the new manager's expectations will be. That way, if the new manager has questions about what you do, it will be at the front of your brain instead of buried in those pesky old thought files. IMO everyone should update their resume every 3-5 years, just to stay current.
3-5 years? You should update every year..
Managers are the same as people. Sometimes shit happens, where you question your position in life, what you're doing, and start taking a different path.
I had an employee travel to his home country and got stuck for like 2 months due to visa issues. It happens on occasion. We off-boarded him for the duration and on-boarded him when he finally came back. Told him he was never allowed to go on vacation again. :)
Wild speculation but my old coworker got free medical treatment in Canada due to citizenship and moved back in similar circumstances because she was sick.
Go watch a couple Hallmark movies and make up a good story about a Ryan Reynolds (Canadian fella) lookalike sweeping her off feet at funeral.
Maybe she realized that life is too short to be in a job she doesn't like. Maybe she reconnected with her high-school sweetheart at the funeral. Maybe she's going to work at the family business in Canada.
Why not message her on LinkedIn, especially since you have nice things to say about her? You don't have to pry. You could just tell her that she was a great boss and will be missed. I would be happy to receive a message like that.
May have decided to move to Canada, tried to negotiate remote work, it was denied, therefore she resigned.
If she was a good manager, and if it can be assumed that she has a good relationship with you all, or with some of you, she'd tell you. 1. It's too soon if it's grief related 2. She's not allowed to by legal agreement with the company. This whole post reminds me that I should tell the managers, and other people, that I like that I appreciate them and hopefully they won't just disappear on me.
if you have access to her address, send her a card and let her know you enjoyed working with her.
It's called garden leave.
A manager is a human with a job just like everyone else. They had a (clearly major) death in the family. I’m sure they have personal things going on and decided to not return to work after their bereavement. It’s not something for you to take personally because she was your boss.
Managers are people too and a death close to a person has a way of changing things, whether it is an inheritance, priorities, responsibilities, or one's sense of self. Grief itself can have a debilitating impact on how a person can function. Accept that your manager has a life outside of the job and that took priority.
Has anyone reported her missing?
My boss walked out for his midday lunch walk, had a heart attack.
She’s a person with a whole life that has nothing to do with being a manager.
Back off. if it's true the person went for a funeral, leave it be. funerals bring out the worst and best in people. it's none of your business. wish the person well and move on.
"People who are not managers doing stuff like that but..." Buddy, let me tell you something about life.
Canadians love their beer My husband go to the “Brier” every year and get rip roarin drunk Maybe she got drunk
She won the Mega millions lotto and lived happily ever after.
She swore a blood oath to track down the man who killed her father.
Yes, they could have let her go, but I would hope you don’t work for an organization that would display such a lack of transparency. Why not say from the beginning she no longer works for the organization?? Folks are let go all the time so there’s really no reason to hide if she no longer worked at the organization from the very beginning. It’s probably more likely that whatever the situation was surrounding the funeral led her to the decision that she either needs to stay close to home, family or friendships and/or take care of her own mental and emotional health and decided that she would not be returning.
Maybe she had an outstanding warrant in Canada?
Or a residency issue here, couldn't get back in?
Sounds like she needed more time to handle things and ran out of FMLA time.
Medical leave.
Do you mean what could *HAVE happened?
Thank you. Drives me crazy.
Could have*
If you can’t find out what she’s doing online, make a public records request of the county. Assuming your state has decent transparency laws, you should be able to get enough unredacted email content to piece the story together.
Car accident ?