Spectres of Coworkers Past
January 2, 2018
I've had the last fourteen days off of work, and I have to tell you that it was downright glorious. The way the company handles paid holidays is different in our particular facility, as the union has negotiated to shift some of the sillier paid holidays toward the end of the year, so we have an extended xxx-mas break. That and I had three additional days off to attend a funeral for my grandfather in Omaha.
I was surprisingly well rested, for once, as I left the break room to get on with the actual work day - even if it was about ten minutes later than I ought to have. But, as I rounded the corner to head towards my desk, I saw one of my coworkers who had died six months previously, just going about her business. More than a little alarming, this was, so I simply stopped and stared. Because hey, animate dead.
As it turns out, it was not my dead coworker, but her sister. I had completely forgotten that she works there, because she was essentially gone throughout last year, due to first her husband, and then her, having the cancer. But when she came back, she had cancer hair, just like Brenda did after her chemotherapy, and having gone from straight to curly she was a dead ringer for her deceased sibling.
So yeah, not really a ghost, but it took about thirty seconds for that to register. That's one way to wake up in the morning!