A Death Worse Than Fate

I don't know much about Denise Prudhomme. She was probably one of 134 million Americans who go to work each day, earning a paycheck, marveling at the increasing price of eggs during supermarket trips, and hoping they can keep their heads above water for another month.

She could have had a family that loved her, or perhaps she lived alone. She might have had a host of friends and been a social butterfly, or perhaps she was a very lonely person with nobody significant in her life. Maybe she was the picture of health, or maybe she suffered silently from a terrible illness.

From the information out there right now, there's no way that I, a writer in New York, could know any of this about an office worker in Tempe, Ariz. We never met, nor would we have had occasion to meet.

The one thing that I do know about Denise Prudhomme is that she is dead.

And that my heart breaks for her.

The 60-year-old scanned in for work on Aug. 16 for work at a Wells Fargo office in Tempe. At some point within the next 96 hours, she expired. She was found on Aug. 20 at her desk after other workers had noticed a smell emanating from it. Phoenix news station KPNX reported it is not clear why nobody noticed that something was wrong, or why there was no welfare check conducted. Her cause of death was not known at the time.

But what leaves me unnerved is that she probably did not plan for her life to end this way. Like all of us, I can imagine she wanted to enjoy a full, happy life. She probably wanted love, laughter and joy, and sought after a fulfilling career. Her path led her to work at Wells Fargo, a company that earned $17 billion in profits last year. I don't know what her title was or how she fit into the company's puzzle but I doubt during her job interview, whenever that was, that her hiring manager told her, "this is the place you are going to die."

The whole thing is a broader commentary on the American worker, becoming lost in a corporate maze in which human beings seem to be an increasingly unimportant part of a system of systems. It is as if people are there only to help a bunch of computers make a few wealthy people more money. That they commit time out of their valuable lives -- lives that could be spent learning, loving, and living -- doesn't seem to count. They trade that time for a paycheck that buys less every year, health care that may or may not treat a serious ailment, and a retirement scheme that they hope will take care of them in old age.

The reason I feel this way is because I've worked at more than one company in my own career which made it clear to me that people were only numbers to them, that only high-level managers were seen as having any human value, that I was not only expendable but voiceless. Moreover that when it turned out that life happened to human beings, not only did no one care, but no one should care.

Having managed others myself, I've always demanded a lot from those who reported to me because I wanted them at their best. That can be a lot in some of the places I've worked but I'm in a demanding field and many times your best is the only thing that will cut the mustard. Still, no matter what, I always, always wanted them to feel seen, heard, and understood. I cannot imagine being the manager of someone who died as a result of coming to work to fulfill my requests, especially when they could have chosen not to.

Now it is true that Prudhomme could have died that day had she decided to take it off. She could have died while visiting a friend. She could have died while walking her dog. None of us know when our time will end. We only know that it will.

I'm not saying that we should all quit our jobs because they're wastes of time that take us away from more worthy pursuits. No, if anything the American worker is the engine of this nation. They are why, despite its misgivings, people in this country generally eat and live better than the vast majority of people have in 300,000 years of human history.

From teachers to sanitation workers to web developers, physicians, cafeteria workers, engineers, auto plant workers, construction supervisors, land surveyors, bankers, attorneys, high school coaches, and yeah, journalists. We all have a purpose. We all keep this machine moving and it's not just through the jobs we do, but more importantly, through the people we are.

It's also true that many, many people go to work each day and come home with a sense of fulfillment. Their coworkers are their friends, and some people even meet their spouses at work. Other workers do things each day that we will never know prevent major catastrophes and save lives. Then there are those whose jobs make them miserable. They go to work each day in an environment that creates stress, and mental and physical illness, contributes to a poor quality of life, and leads from bad to worse in their lives. Most of us have been somewhere between both situations.

I don't know what Prudhomme did, or where she may have fallen on that scale. But what she did had a function and it benefited someone else in some way. I didn't know her, but she brought more than her ID card with her to work each day. She also brought her humanity and she deserves to be remembered that way.

She was more than an office worker. Denise Prudhomme was a person.

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