How morbid
My boss and his deputy are both away until Monday. After a few jokes about CCTV cameras with pre-programmed messages ("Stop checking the office football pool and get back to work!") and how to cope if a major physics news story breaks in his absence ("If the BBC ring up, just sound confident, it'll be fine"), my boss had one final tip:
"Oh yeah, and if Stephen Hawking pops it while I'm gone, the obituary's on the H-drive."
/me does double-take "Is he ill?"
"Nah, but you never know. I think we wrote it last year. It's good to be prepared."
I'd heard that news organisations routinely keep obituaries of living figures on file, updating them as necessary, sometimes for years before the people actually die. There have even been cases where the obituary writer actually died before the, er, obituaree.
I suppose it does make sense to be prepared, but I still think it's morbid for us to have ready-made eulogies (just add dates!) lurking in shadowy corners of the office H-drive.
"Oh yeah, and if Stephen Hawking pops it while I'm gone, the obituary's on the H-drive."
/me does double-take "Is he ill?"
"Nah, but you never know. I think we wrote it last year. It's good to be prepared."
I'd heard that news organisations routinely keep obituaries of living figures on file, updating them as necessary, sometimes for years before the people actually die. There have even been cases where the obituary writer actually died before the, er, obituaree.
I suppose it does make sense to be prepared, but I still think it's morbid for us to have ready-made eulogies (just add dates!) lurking in shadowy corners of the office H-drive.