Unfortunate things happen.Follow

A coworker of mine died last week while at home in the morning before work. Massive heart attack. He was getting his daughter ready for the school bus in the morning. She has cerebral palsy, is wheel chair bound and cannot talk. The man's adult son left the house at 7:00am. No one went back to the house until his wife returned at 8pm. She found her husband dead in the kitchen and her daughter in her wheel chair in the living room all ready to go to school.

I've only met one person with cerebral palsy, and his was relatively mild. But he was fully capable of thinking and understanding the world around him, just had motor control issues. I can't imagine what it was like for her to be trapped in the house if she knew something was wrong and be unable to do anything about it.

Work never called to figure out where he was.
Handicapped school bus driver never looked into why the usual handicapped pickup wasn't there.
School never looked into why the student didn't show up.

Not sure why no one tried calling anyone about the few oddities. Seems like a phone call could have saved some potential trauma.

Edited, Jun 3rd 2013 6:07pm by TirithRR

I was thinking the same thing. Better stop drinking the water.

I'm not sure of anything other than the wife not finding out until she got home from work at 8pm.

I understand the driver not being allowed to leave the school bus, but it seems to me that if calls were made they would have gotten around to them all eventually. I broke my finger in junior high and my entire phone list was called until someone answered. Included home, mom's work, dad's work, and grandparent's. And I was just a standard student, not a special needs student with serious potential medical issues.

I understand that it sucks and all, but all anyone would know is that someone didn't show up somewhere. In your case, they knew your finger was broken while in their care, so they had a procedure to follow. In this case though, the bus driver only knows that the daughter wasn't waiting to be picked up. He can't possibly know why, and I suspect it's not that uncommon for kids to just not be there at the bus stop for any of a number of reasons of which the driver himself is unlikely to be privy to. Bus drivers aren't generally informed about absences (planned or not).

Unfortunately, it's kind of the same thing with regard to work. Someone getting hurt at work triggers a response. Someone not showing up for work? Usually not. The most you're likely to get from work is a manager/supervisor calling the person to find out why they aren't there. Lack of a response doesn't typically result in launching into action to send people to the person's home to find out what happened. The usual assumption is that something came up, and the person isn't able to come into work and for some reason hasn't called. There are a host of possible reasons for why that would happen, and ultimately, as cold as this may seem, it's not your employers job to rescue you if something happens to you outside of work.

Obviously I'm not expecting the bus driver to stop everything he/she is doing and search until this unexpected absence is found... but when I didn't show up to school, the truancy officer from was making a phone call to the parents to find out why. At work, we usually don't call for one "no call, no show" but coworkers and friends will usually try to find out where they are by the first break.

My mother is legal guardian for a relative who is severely disabled. This person goes to a sort of, day work area for people like her. Do simple jobs and such, then go back home, etc. Any time she isn't going, my mom calls ahead to let them know, else they do get a bit worried that she didn't show up. They've also called my mom to throw up red flags about potential signs of abuse.

I guess I've just always assumed that these special needs care groups were much more active in monitoring their students and such.

Lifeline?

I'd ask the audience for help at that point.

I was away on a 10 day vacation from work and didn't know about the incident until after the fact.

Edited, Jun 13th 2013 7:01pm by TirithRR

There's some truth to all of that, but in this case, calling the house wouldn't have made a difference anyway. If either person in the house had been capable of using a phone, they would have called for assistance. I certainly don't blame the work for this at all. It's not like they maintain lists of numbers to call if someone doesn't show up. The school is a different story though. Schools tend to have a list of contacts to go through in the case of an emergency (or if a student doesn't show up). You'd think that this should have resulted in a call going to the mother and her investigating and discovering what had happened much sooner.

But it's possible that the school did try to call, but for some reason couldn't get a hold of the mother. There's too many things we don't know about what happened.

Having rode the sunshine bus to school in my senior yearSpoiler (yes, I am special) my experience was that the bus driver was quite involved, would help get the kids in wheelchairs into the bus with the parent etc. it wasn't like your typical school bus where the bus just stops and the passenger gets on. I would think a sudden absence woukd be noted... But anecdotal evidence yada yada

Yeah. I think I mentioned before that I doubt that the bus driver personally is going to do anything if someone isn't at the stop. The most obvious conclusion (especially for special needs kids) is that something came up and the driver wasn't informed that the child wouldn't be there for pickup. I'd imagine that happens frequently enough not to be alarming to the driver. What is a bit odd is that the school didn't notice the absence and run through their list of contact numbers. That's something you'd expect should happen if a student doesn't show up and there wasn't any notification of said absence. Again though, it's possible that the school did do this, but for some reason couldn't contact the mother. We don't have that information, so it's pure speculation.

I'll point out again that I don't expect a workplace to do much with regard to an absence. Really depends on the nature of the job. An hourly slot type position, they'll tend to call and if they don't get an answer, they find someone to fill the slot and move on. For larger workplaces, that may not happen though.

What a horrible experience for the daughter. Sucky for everyone else, too.

I tend to think that neutrally impersonal behavior is more prevalent in communities and organisations that are very large and/or underfunded. Apparently humans tend to have an upper limit on their social network of 150 people. People outside our 150 closest family/friends/acquaintances/colleagues/students/club members, get short shrift. My high school had just over 800 students. I was off sick so often my mother eventually gave up writing notes for school for me whenever I stayed home in bed with a tissue box, dry toast and orange juice. One year I was insulted to bring home a report card that said I had been absent without authority (truant) for 53 days that year. No-one had ever contacted my parents to check where I was, and if I had parental permission to be absent from school, given I had started being absent without doctor's notes.

I had a friend scribe my notes in High School - from day one. Even if my mom wrote me a note, I'd have my gf rewrite it.