Apparently, He Didn’t Leave An Impression

My company hired a young man who took a desk near mine. He’s very personable and easy to talk with. One day, I’m called in to the boss’s office.

Boss: “[Coworker #1] was six hours overdue with what he was supposed to get done. He said you were distracting him by talking. Were you doing that?”

Me: “He’s a nice guy and we exchange some small talk now and then, but not six hours of it. Besides, I have my own work and I got it done.”

Boss: “Yeah, I guess that wouldn’t account for six hours.”

Me: “No, but I’ll watch that any talk doesn’t get out of control.”

Fast forward many months. We move to a new office and I am no longer near [Coworker #1]. Then, I wind up in the hospital, and when I return to work, I am buried. Finally, things slow down. I need to stretch, so I go to visit another coworker. It is a Friday and numerous employees take off alternate Fridays, so there are only a few people in the office. I look at the empty desk that I know belongs to [Coworker #1].

Me: “Where’s [Coworker #1]?”

Coworker #2: “We fired him a couple of months ago.”

Me: “Seriously?! Wow! I’ve really been out of it the last couple of months. Why was he fired?”

Coworker #2: “He was too slow. He was taking hours and days to do things that should take minutes.”

Me: “Back when he first started, he threw me under the bus. He blamed me for delaying him six hours on a project.”

Coworker #2: “Yeah. I’m not surprised. It was always someone else’s fault.”

But, seriously, despite an illness, how did I manage to not notice someone gone out of an office of only a dozen people?