Underling 1, who has recently been leaving early quite often to go translate for her uncle at the hospital, found out this afternoon another of her uncles was just murdered in Mexico (apparently he was involved in the drug trade). Her mother is already out of the country for a week.
I have the feeling I'm in for a very busy week.
I'm a little concerned about my lack of empathy, though. Underling 1 is one of the nicest people I've ever met, and has never been anything but pleasant and forthright with me. This is clearly going to be a time of great stress for her, and here I am griping about how this affects my own workload.
You don't know the deceased, and in fact, didn't know of his existence until now, after it has ended. So it's a bit hard to expect you to feel sorrow for that. And when you've already been having to pick up someone's slack on a regular basis, it's kind of normal to see something that's going to pass even more of their workload onto to you as an unneeded burden.
Fact is, in a similar situation, most of us would make the appropriate sympathetic noises and purely courtesy offers of help, etc, and once the bereaved was out of our immediate vicinity, put it in the back of our minds.
If Underling 1 was someone you'd know a long time, that you spent time socially with - that you were, in short, anything more than a colleague with her - then yes, the lack of feeling would be perhaps concerning. But you don't really have any more than a workplace relationship with her, so it's not unreasonable that your empathy for her would be shallow or limited.
You're better than you think you are.
