Working Hard

Worker dead at desk for five days

From the New York Times: Bosses of a publishing firm are trying to work 
out why no one noticed that one of their employees had been sitting dead 
at his desk for five days before anyone asked if he was feeling okay. 
George Turklebaum, 51, who had been employed as a proof-reader at a New 
York firm for 30 years, had a heart attack in the open-plan office he 
shared with 23 other workers.

He quietly passed away on Monday, but nobody noticed until Saturday 
morning when an office cleaner asked why he was working during the 
weekend.

His boss, Elliot Wachiaski, said, "George was always the first guy in 
each morning and the last to leave at night, so no one found it unusual 
that he was in the same position all that time and didn't say anything. 
He was always absorbed in his word and kept much to himself."

A post mortem examination revealed that he had been dead for five days 
after suffering a coronary. George was proofreading manuscripts of 
medical textbooks when he died.

You may want to give your co-workers a nudge occasionally. The moral of 
the story: Don't work too hard. Nobody notices anyway.