On a different note, those of you who've known me awhile are aware that, slash-fic aside, I'm kind of a prude. (I know some of you are out there going, "This is news?")
Something happened at the office yesterday that pushed a lot of my easily-disturbed buttons. Around Halloween last year, one of my coworkers suddenly died of a heart-attack. He was only 55, and it was a real shock. I didn't know him well, but he was nice and everyone liked him. Well, yesterday one of our problem-detecting tools sent out a mass email that identified the problem source as this man (i.e, his cubicle). Ouch. I sent a private email requesting that the cubicle information be updated, because it hurt seeing the man's name again. But other coworkers sent mass replies about problems reaching from the grave, and sending ghostbusters in to fix it, and... I just can't find that funny. It seems unfair to joke about him that way, and I realize some people cope with things like that by using gallows humor, but it still bothered me. It seemed disrespectful, as if his dying was something that could be taken lightly.
Someone else's mass reply said, "We need to update that. This is gruesome." And that bothered me too! I work with engineers, so word-choice is something few of them notice, but 'gruesome' has so many negative connotations (grossness being one of them). It made it sound as if the man was deliberately offending us by being dead, as if it were his fault for dying, and... ugh.
Am I nuts for thinking that? I'm not raining down "Shame!" and "Thou shalt not" on the other people so much as just remembering that we lost him, and that it hurt, and that this response just makes it hurt more. *sigh* Is it just me?
