So an employee died at work tonight…

I’ll talk about myself and moving to Rome and Herb’s later on, but as this blog is about death I don’t feel right talking about myself.  I’ll only do so to give background for the story:

I currently work at Herb Philipson’s in Rome NY.  Herb’s is an Army/Navy, Outdoor, Adventure, etc type store.  We sell guns and camouflage and Carhartt jackets along with related items.  One of the services the store provides is an on site seamstress.  Many people want a certain pair of pants, but they might be a 31 length and can only find pants at 32. So you buy the pants, tell us what length you want, and it goes back to the seamstress room.  It’s a room that’s down a hallway which no one would go down unless you had reason to, like hemming clothes.  As she is the only one who does this, she is many times the only one that walks down that hall, thus she is alone most of the time.

As far as I can tell (and I warn that I may be wrong on this, as I’m piecing it together from what little I was told or overheard) the woman’s sister came to pick her up or get a ride from her, saying she was late.  Two of the guys in the store went to check on her, found her unresponsive on the floor.  They started CPR, and the first I knew that anything was going on was when all of the emergency officials came in (two EMTs, two officers, two detectives).  When I saw 5 of them leave, but not the sixth nor the stretcher I knew it was bad.  This was also the first night of work for our new manager.  She’s been part of the chain for awhile, but just got brought to this store as a manager.  First night, and young, and now she has to figure out what to do with a store full of employees, customers, and four more open hours. 

Everything was kept quiet, she was brought out a back door of the building, which was probably the most sensible thing to do.  I was, I’m almost sure, the oldest person working the front of the store and even I didn’t have a clue what to do.  I’m sure the manager will second guess every decision she made that night, but I find no blame or fault in anything she did.  There’s no “How to deal with a dead body” chapter in the handbook.  Its one of those things where after the fact you think of what could and should be done, but you need that experience in life to know what to do.  Hopefully it never happens again though.

I feel bad for the young girls in the store, all about 18-24, who have probably never been near a death like this before, if any death at all.  There’s been a lot of death this year, in my own world and the world at large.  I’ll comment on that later too.

Very disturbing night.  Today is a day off, so when I’m back at work I’ll know more.  I’d be willing to bet there’s no work night anytime soon, if ever, that will be as disturbing.