My coworker and I were scheduled to do an international trip. I just got to the new country and checked Slack. My coworker messaged me halfway through my flight informing me that their fiance has committed suicide.
I struggled/struggle with these things myself, but I’ve found the support (and medication) to find balance or something close to it.
This news came as a shock to me. He just merged his family with his fiance’s. So now he has 4 children (I believe 2 or 3 of which are not biologically his).
I sent him a terse but kindly worded message, but we aren’t that close. I’ve never met him in person. This was going to be our first meeting and he was largely responsible for guiding the meetings with our customers.
So I guess I just feel a bit like a fish out of water. I don’t know how to support him or what I should do. I want him to just forget about work which is why I hesitated to message him at all. But I didn’t want him to think I was incapable of doing this myself. Hence the short message in reply (which included me telling him I have it covered and take all the time he needs).
Foreign travel is hard enough when I have someone else with me. I’ve never driven in this country nor do I speak the language. I’m just a little flustered. I figured venting here might help me reorient myself. I don’t want this to “be about me”, but I also have no clue what’s going to happen. I’m not useless, but I’m also hardly a driver of million dollar contracts. I’m more like the “software guy” that helps make these contracts a deliverable. I guess I’ll just figure out driving and I’ll wing it with the customer engagement. Intimidating to spend 3-4 days with just me and a bunch of clients trying to figure out the future of this project.
Nonetheless, I also feel a lot of emotions about suicide hitting a colleague of mine. He’s a very kind hearted man. He’s a big strong guy with a soft heart. Just 3 years ago, I could have put my own fiancee in the same situation. It’s stirring up quite a lot of emotions.
Since I don’t have a therapist right now, I just sought out Lemmy/social media instead. I hesitate to drop this news on my wife because she has a hard enough time dealing with this kind of stuff as it is (especially with my previous history). I usually would talk with her about it but I don’t even know what I’d be looking for: comfort, encouragement, advice? Feels sort of selfish. On an anonymous platform, I feel a bit less bad about it.
Edit: thanks everyone for the advice and the space to vent. I got a car and spoke with the customers to plan for the next week. It’s still very much a “wing it” approach, but at least I know where to be and how to get there. I spent Sunday going on touristy things. Going alone feels a bit awkward - especially with language barriers. But it wasn’t too bad. My coworker - I hope - is taking this week off (at least) to sort it all out. It’s unclear what he’ll be doing but a couple of his closer colleagues reached out to him and offered to drive 6 hours to his home to support. So I think he has more than the typical “corporate support”. I’ll check in on him when this trip is over to tell him it went well. Doesn’t really matter if it did or didn’t. I just want him to not stress about it and feel responsible for this in any way. At this point, my own little shock and fear has passed. I’m ready for the week. I can’t imagine what he must be going through.
You
I don’t think you’re being selfish here.
If anything, the empathy you have about this hits you harder than it would a selfish person.
Being emotional about this is perfectly normal.
Your wife
At least tell your wife about the coworker not being able to make it there.
If my partner was in this situation I’d want to know, I imagine you would too if the roles were reversed.
It’s not about looking for something out of it, sometimes it just helps to get things off your chest.
This trip
It’s also perfectly reasonable to worry about your new immediate situation in this work trip.
I know what you mean, I’m a tech expert, not a sales guy. Customer sales meetings are usually inanely boring sales pitch with the occasional tech question.
Sales people talking together, with tech being an afterthought.
Your co-worker likely had some sort of sales pitch already prepared that you can reuse, but honestly, you don’t necessarily have to become a salesman here either.
The meetings themselves will likely just be different, it’s fine.
Just be honest and upfront about your sales person not being able to make it because of death in his family. Give them as much details as you feel comfortable with.
Customers are human too.
Firsthand experience, some of the strongest customer relations we have… were made the other way around: tech first, sales second.
Play to your strengths, get them interested, they can figure out the boring sales stuff afterwards for once.
It still depends on your audience obviously, but it’s not necessarily a bad way to approach a customer.
You got this.
Thanks for the encouragement. I definitely told my wife immediately about being alone out here but I hesitated to mention the details until recently. I’ll see if anyone has a slide deck for the plans this year. Otherwise, like you said, I’ll play to my strengths. Maybe I can make it more like an extended FY25 sprint planning meeting lol we’ll just have to see.