Hmmm, I'm sure there's an element of the Guardian giving Amazon a kick, because it's Amazon but just wondering whether anyones place a work has procedures in place for this?
In this case, it seems the employee died of natural causes whilst at work so not an industrial accident.
I'm guess businesses above a certain size and/or type would not want to shut down for (multiple?) days or hours but what is acceptable?
Loads of folk die at your place of work if you're a nurse...
We did have on-site deaths at my work - natural causes. At least a couple while I was there. Business carries on as normal.
Wot Scotroutes says 🙂 at a guestimate 500 or so 🙂
Amazon can’t be kicked enough.
Mrs Vlad used to work at a cancer hospice, so just about every shift 😔
But outside of healthcare...
A friend started a new job and was being walked round to meet the team.. "and this is bill's office. Good morning Bill. Bill? BILL!". Poor old Bill had croaked after getting to work that morning,sat at his desk.
A friend started a new job and was being walked round to meet the team.. “and this is bill’s office. Good morning Bill. Bill? BILL!”.
Well, that was some foresight by the employee! Or was it something more sinister?
They could have posted him back home rather surround him with boxes. Prime of course - only the best service.
In the 80s I worked at Portsmouth Polytechnic. Someone jumped off the roof of the 9 storey building. Don't think it was an employee though.
Once witnessed a guy asking a lady when she was due to give birth... she wasn't.
I think he hoped he'd died, rather than live with the embarrassment.
That's quite tough. They clearly had to wait for a coroner so couldn't move the body. They absolutely had to hide it from view, that's just decency. The only real question is whether or not they should have shut down the section with workmates but that may not even have been possible without shutting everything down.
If it was natural causes and a huge organisation i would expect things to keep moving. In a small org where everyone knows each other i would expect everything to stop for a while. If not natural causes then it's different
We've had a few 🙁
work in a psych unit, we've had 2x staff have heart attacks, 1 major, he was dead, fortunatley resused, using equipment/trained staff on the ward, literally anywhere else, and he would be dead, other she was just very unwell and it was diagnosed in hospital
We had a passenger die on a long haul flight I was operating once, we were rolling down the runway at the time of the incident, CPR etc was administered but he was long gone. The aircraft continued onto the destination as planned with his wife by his side. That was a long 13 hours.
We had a waggon driver have a heart attack driving past a job we were on. Crashed into the welfare unit. For all accounts he was dead. Our forman jumped into the cap and gave CPR. Saved him...
We had a passenger die on a long haul flight
That's a super tough one but not unheard of i guess. Are there standard procedures as to what to do then?
At an office I used to work in one of the staff murdered a colleague, then bundled her body into his car in the garage where I used to keep my bike. Pretty grim to think about.
That’s quite tough. They clearly had to wait for a coroner so couldn’t move the body. They absolutely had to hide it from view, that’s just decency. The only real question is whether or not they should have shut down the section with workmates but that may not even have been possible without shutting everything down.
A few years ago I was at a Hogmanay/NYD do at a Highland hotel. When we went down for breakfast in the morning, one of the residents had passed away, sitting in the hallway. After trying CPR etc we had to move furniture around the body just to keep it out of sight while we awaited the ambulance, GP and then the undertaker. There's only one undertaker covering the area North of Inverness on NYD so the body was there for quite a while. The hotel had to function as normal while all of this was going on.
That’s pretty grim Newretrotom.
We had a member of staff commit suicide, multi-storey office, the jumper went from the 04th floor onto the atrium floor.
In the military we had one of the guys on guard duty take his own life as well. Shot himself while inside a sangar. Thankfully I wasn’t on duty, really felt for the guys who had to go in and sort the mess out with that one.
Probably not what was being asked, but my company also lost 295 staff in New York on 9/11. We had a floor in the WTC.
Quite a few. Occupational hazard unfortunately, lessons often learned, kit developed/procured to try and reduce the risk.
Sadly some are far more preventable than others, they're the ones that leave mark more than the others.
Quite a few. Occupational hazard unfortunately
I guess that is true unfortunately. Are you given training on how to handle it (emotionally) in advance or is that pretty much impossible?
We had a member of staff commit suicide, multi-storey office, the jumper went from the 04th floor onto the atrium floor.
Bristol by any chance? RIP Bob.
Not technically a place of work but an event I was working on as a Ride Leader - one of the riders was killed by a driver. Stupid overtake, pulled in, clipped her and she went down. We were the second group on the road, passed by and the group who'd been with her had surrounded her, one guy administering CPR.
Nothing I could do but take the group I was with onto the next stop, update the staff there. The first group had already called 999.
The rider passed away in hospital. 😥
Really sobering for the whole ride team and everyone else on the ride - a lot of whom had got held up behind the road closure that had been out in place to deal with the incident.
I guess that is true unfortunately. Are you given training on how to handle it in advance or is that pretty much impossible?
There's a whole host of training for various key appointment/roles, plenty of briefs on operational stress and the like, but no amount of courses lessens the blow of losing someone you may have spent a considerable amount of time living, working, suffering and socialising with.
Oddly there is still a pang of loss when you may not even know them. There's something about the shared profession, probably very similar in other uniformed services no doubt.
But the bond of the team along with the various organic support options help lessen the blow. It becomes a little stickier when it's an accident or suicide.
The thing two things I saw get in the way of helping people overcome the trauma is when individuals decide they know better than the support processes put in place and decide not to support someone who needs it through said process and individuals masking whats going on for them.
The latter is part of the human condition I think. The former is terrible leadership.
loads every day, but I do work in a hospital. quieter now the dept isn't next to the mortuary though
At an office I used to work in one of the staff murdered a colleague, then bundled her body into his car in the garage where I used to keep my bike. Pretty grim to think about.
Was that Suzanne Pilley?
Aren’t they absolutely enormous places and I suspect American ones even bigger. I wonder what the real story is?
Was that Suzanne Pilley?
Yes, it was.
Everyday people die at my work.
over the last couple of years we also had more than one staff member die. Was it the work environment that caused their death or COVID in the community… who knows
Was that Suzanne Pilley?
Just reading about that case. Seems his family are still maintaining his innocence.
Was that Suzanne Pilley?
Yes, it was.
I listened to the Body of Proof podcast when it came out. Interesting and disturbing case - especially as they’ve never found her body. He must be an evil bastard not to let her parents recover her body to bury her.
One of the butchers I worked with in Safeway (A giant guy called Neil, really nice bloke too) fell down some concrete stairs and died of a brain hemorrhage. We dont know though if it was the fall that caused it, or whether he had this hemorrhage and that caused the fall, but results are the same.
He was a nice guy indeed, always a big beaming smile. Damned unfortunate, and he'd have been mid 50's i think.
Every single day. Mostly patients, but there's been a few colleagues and volunteers - one recently on a flight and he was far too young.
There's a team next to me that manage the investigations into preventable deaths and I sometimes review their reports. It's eye opening stuff (npi) just how little we know for certain about human bodies.
One member we call the 'death lady' does the coordination of death certificates and coroner business.
The bike locker and the changing rooms are next to the mortuary at one of the hospitals i work at. So there's often bodies coming and going when i'm getting changed or locking/unlocking my bike.
Sad news at the Nestle factory today when a member of staff was seriously injured when a pallet of chocolate fell more than 50 feet and crushed him underneath...
He tried in vain to attract attention but every time he shouted "The milky bars are on me" everyone cheered
I'm a first aider at a large government office complex. Not had anyone die on me yet, but training and procedures are to clear people out the way for dignity and privacy while we do CPR/defib before the professionals arrive.
We're an open plan office, so we might clear the wing (200 people at most), but the rest of the building would carry on as normal.
Had a colleague suffer a seizure that resulted in severe brain damage - I’d come in briefly on my day off and ended up trapped inside as we were locked down whilst the paramedics spent a long time doing CPR. The sudden loss was akin to them dying as they never recovered/ permanently disabled and pretty distressing for family and friends.
Members of the public on the hill mostly and the occasional soldier on training/selection.
Heart attacks, exposure, lightning strikes, crash landings.
I'll stick below the tree line where it's far safer with chainsaws, winches, cranes and falling trees.
When we went down for breakfast in the morning, one of the residents had passed away
I saw the documentary about this case on TV
A new guy in my team started, a few days later he went home at the end of day, didnt come back the next day. Died of heart attack on the bus in the next morning.
Not as far as I’m aware, but we had a very close call a while back, when we had a late shift; we had a couple of car transporters parked in the arrivals yard, and it was dark. One of the drivers walking around his rig heard an odd noise, so had a look between his rig and the one next to his, and discovered the other driver, partially underneath his trailer. He’d fallen from the middle deck, so roughly six or seven feet! Emergency services were called, the Wiltshire Air Ambulance was dispatched as it’s literally a couple of minutes flight time away and it landed in the car park, after a bunch of cars were quickly cleared out of the way.
It’s fortunate that we had the space at the time to allow it to land on site. AFAIK, the driver didn’t sustain life-threatening injuries, if he’d been on the top deck, it would have been a different story, that’s about twelve feet…
An ex-work colleague died at work at a GP's surgery.
soldier on training/selection.
A little part of me died every time I ended up at Brecon.
MCTD- is that QEH or 1AS..?
One of the (2) Facilities Mgmt staff, more commonly known at the time as Maintenance Mick, he had a fatal cardiac in the gym area attached to the office block; maybe 25 years ago now. So there weren't many people nearby at the critical moment, and he was gone by the time he was found. Classic heart attack case, middle aged, rather overweight, doing some atypical cardiovascular exercise at the time. All handled very respectfully at the time as I recall, and it resulted in 'panic cords' being installed in the gym. Presumably they were linked back to some display on the Reception desk.
A member of staff jumped off the roof of our seven storey office. The poor receptionist was first on the scene.
