Italian Woman Found Dead After 2 Years - Thoughts

A woman in northern Italy died in her house more than 2 years ago and wasn't discovered until last Friday. She had no family and no friends to check up on her. Neighbors thought she moved away at the start of the pandemic. Authorities only discovered her body after acting on complaints that her yard was overgrown. Example news coverage: CNN article "Body of 70-year-old Italian woman found sitting in chair, two years after her death" (9 Feb 2022).

The thought of someone dying alone and their departure not even being noticed for 24+ months is sad. It also touches close to home because Hawk or I will ultimately live alone. One of us will pass before the other. When other of us passes, will it be days, week, months, or years before anyone notices?

One way I think about this is through the experience of older relatives. Both of my grandmothers lived alone in their homes for decades. They weren't alone-alone, though, because they had family. As often as my grandma "Cici" moaned nobody cares about me anymore, she did get several telephone calls a week from her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids, and at about one visit a week to her house.

Cici wasn't in the same situation as the Italian woman who died. Cici had a big family. This is where it hits me personally because I don't have kids. At some point I (or Hawk) will be 70, 80, or older, with parents passed, brothers and sisters passed or in declining health; will our nieces and nephews think about us? Will our friends or neighbors notice not seeing us for 2 years— other than complaining to the authorities if our grass is overgrown or bills are unpaid?

This is another thing that was sad about the story from Italy. The woman was only 70. Only 70. My grandmothers were young-old when they were 70. They drove themselves to religious services every week, they knew their neighbors, they had friends in the community that they engaged in activities with... not a lot, really, but more than zero. More than would think nothing's amiss if they disappeared for 2 years.

So, to me, that's the point: stay engaged. Stay engaged with family, even if they're not direct descendants. Stay engaged with friends. Stay engaged in the community. Especially at 70. That's too young to go unnoticed for 2 years.

Stupid Customer Tricks

This afternoon a prospective customer we've been trying to schedule a meeting with for several weeks finally responded to us. He sent an email at 4:54pm proposing 9am tomorrow as his first choice. 9am tomorrow. He suggested tomorrow 2pm or Monday afternoon if that didn't work.

'Mr. 4:54pm would like a demo first thing tomorrow," I teased my colleague, Todd, via Slack. Todd is the account executive in charge of the opportunity.

Normally we want more preparation for the demo. We've been chasing Mr. 4:54pm for weeks not just to schedule a time but to align on what his needs are— so we can address them accurately in our presentation. But in this case Todd and agreed, "Fuck it, let's shoot from the hip." We figured if we didn't take the shot we'd lose another several weeks with this opportunity. Todd confirmed the 9-10a slot and sent a calendar invitation.

Here's where it gets really stupid.

Mr 4:54pm fires back an email minutes later. "WhY iS tHeRe A mEeTiNg ToMoRrOw?!?!"

...Well, he didn't write it in camel case like that, but that's what the tone of his message seemed like. He seemed genuinely surprised, like he was completely unaware that he just proposed a Friday morning meeting—as his first choice, no less— and we accepted.

Todd emailed him briefly mentioning the whole propose/accept dynamic.

Then it got even stupider.

"We couldn't pOsSiBlY have a mEeTiNg that sOoN!" Mr 4:54scolds us. He points out the huuuuge number of people he forwarded the invitation to (which he did without telling us, until now) and implies we're fools for thinking we can coordinate such a meeting on such short notice. BTW the huge number of secret invitees rang alarm bells for me; more on that in a moment.

At this point I figure there are two likelihoods here. 1) Mr 4:54pm is incompetent. He's a senior director of software in a highly successful technology company. "Knows how to schedule a meeting" should be well within his wheelhouse. 2) He's deliberately setting us up to fail. He proposes difficult meetings times hoping we'll decline; then he can blame us for being uncooperative. Or if we accept them (like we did) he faults us for being unrealistic (like he did).

Then there's the thing about the huuuge number of people he forwarded the invite to. Huuuuge demo meetings rarely go well. They require strong leadership— exactly the kind of thing Mr. 4:54pm is not providing. Another point for incompetence... or malice... or both.

Update: Friday afternoon Mr. 4:54pm asks us if we could tell him who's attending the meeting because he doesn't remember who he forwarded it to!