This originally appeared on Forbes on September 2, 2024.
There's a profound and collective sadness in the death of Denise Prudhomme, 60, who scanned into a Wells Fargo in Tempe, Arizona on Friday, August 16, and never scanned out. She died at her desk and wasn't found until the following Tuesday. People dying at work from a safety breach or from stress still happens much too regularly. The immediate example of an extreme disregard for employee safety that springs to mind is the Foxconn suicides of assembly line workers in the company's Longhua facility. But as far as we know, Prudhomme's death didn't fall into either of those categories.
What Prudhomme's death at her desk triggered is a stark reminder that life is short, and raises the bigger question of whether we are wasting precious time working for large companies who, at the end of the day, don't notice if an employee dies at their desk for four days. In a year filled with headlines of tech layoffs where huge corporations continue to put profit over people and corporate America wrestles with return-to-office mandates that employees are outright rejecting, Prudhomme's death might be the event that pushes many to leave the rat race.
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