Dude! What the F?

This may be the greatest co-worker story ever told. About a month ago, a new guy (lets call him Gus) was hired in my lab. Even though I was on leave, my other co-workers dutifully reported all gossip to me and the general consensus was that Gus was a top-notch albeit slightly nerdly guy (as most of us scientists are). I had the same impression of him after briefly meeting him as well. So it became quite odd when Gus didnt show up to work last week, with no form of communication from him. The end of the week came. Still no Gus. The beginning of this week started. No Gus. Several phone calls and emails from both the lab manager and Boss Man and still no response. The guy had gone completely AWOL. Conspiracy theories started floating around lab. The first was that he was a deserter. It happens. Science is a harsh mistress, and some scientists lack the social skills it takes to quit a job in a dignified manner. But the clues didnt seem to add up since he left many personal items here. Usually deserters pack up before they disappear. And they usually take the microwave, the $30,000 camera, and our wallets with them. This was not the case. The next theory is that he was lying dead in a gutter somewhere. I championed this theory and it came to be the one we actually started working with. So Boss Man decided to call Gus' emergency contact family member, a sister I will call Kitty who was living out of state in a place I will call Bangladesh. Kitty tried to get a hold of Gus, to no avail, and started freaking out HARD. This was not like Gus, she said. Not like him at all. He loved this job and wouldnt desert. He usually called her every week, and she had not heard from him. He must clearly be lying dead in a gutter somewhere. She pleaded with Boss Man, asking that he drive by Gus' house to see if anything looked amiss, since she herself lived in Bangladesh and could not, and Gus lived alone and was new to the Dirty South and didnt know anyone here besides his coworkers yet. Upon hearing all of this from Kitty, Boss Man grew quite worried, assembled a small posse, and drove off to the bowels of the nasty-ass 'hood where Gus resided to check this shit out. Oh yeah, and all of this transpired at around midnight.

When Boss Man and the posse arrived at the ghetto residence of Gus, they were immediately alarmed because Gus' mailbox was CRAMMED full of mail that clearly had not been retrieved for over a week. Not a good sign. More support for the "dead in a gutter" theory. Creeping around the house with flashlights (also, not a good thing to do at midnight in the 'hood) and banging on the doors, Boss Man thought he might have seen something in the house. A few more phone exchanges with Kitty, and they decided to call the cops. Kitty phoned in a missing person report and a while later, the fuzz met Boss Man at Gus' residence. The po-po did the same thing: peered in windows and then banged the shit out of the door yelling, "Gus, GUS, its the po-po. Are you in there?" all the while getting ready to bust down the g'damn door. But lo and behold, who should answer the mutherfuckin' door? GUS!!!!!!!!!! Holy f'in balls. Gus claimed he was deathly ill and was too busy barfing to answer the door, check his email, or listen to his phone messages for over a week. He thanked Boss Man, Kitty, and the fuzz for caring so much to see how he was doing. What...the...fuck???? Now the only people i know that have been THAT sick for a week that they couldnt answer phones/emails/doors are those people that were in COMAS. If he was that sick, shouldnt he have been hospitalized? On an IV with fluids? If you can make it to the can, you can surely call your boss back when you get a panicky voice mail that says "we're worried and we're going to be calling your emergency contact and the cops if we dont hear from you." I mean seriously. This is all pretty fucked up.

So the end of the story is that Boss Man CLEARLY must fire Gus now, because without calling or contacting him in any way, Gus deserted his position. Interestingly enough, even after the midnight debacle with the cops, GUS did NOT come to work the next day or even call!!! Now maybe i'm just more sensible, but if Boss Man showed up at my door with the cops at midnight, i might be on the phone with him the next day trying to sort things out. And there is still no sign of Gus today either. No one believes that he was sick with a stomach flu that severely and for that long, because seriously, he would have needed to be admitted to the hospital for dehydration. The two leading theories we currently have are that a) he was holed up in his house due to a paranoid psychotic episode or b) that he was on a meth bender (my personal theory). Maybe no one will see or hear from him again. Who knows. All i know is that this story will go down in lab history and that all of us will be really, REALLY good about calling our boss when we are out sick.

Post script: 5 months later. Our lab has never seen or heard from Gus again. And no follow-up from Kitty either.