Sad News at My Office

Today and the next few weeks are going to be very somber in my office. My boss and director, Matt Smith, passed away unexpectedly this morning.

This is how I will always remember Matt.

I walked into the office around 8:15 am and saw Forrest and Scott (two of my previous bosses; Forrest is the Assistant Vice President over all of HRS) in our reception area talking to Marie. Forrest said he had some bad news. I was thinking I was busted for showing up late, so I was stunned when he shared the news. Apparently, Matt had sleep apnea, the kind where the brain stops telling you to breathe, and he had some heart issues; it was the heart issue that caused his death this morning. 

Matt, and his wife, just returned a year ago from serving as a mission president in Tahiti, and his youngest daughter is due to serve a mission to Japan this coming September.

It's just so shocking. I met with him just yesterday about the computer changes we're about to do in the department. He was so wonderful. He went to bat for me many times, gave me great insights to my work, allowed me to work autonomously, and was just a hoot to work with because of all the fun jokes he would play.

The best joke he played on me and Collette was just a few weeks ago. Whenever he'd go to Forrest's directors' meeting, he'd take notes, scan them and email them to me and Collette so we could see what was happening in the rest of HRS since we are quite isolated in HRD. In this particular meeting, they talked about raises for the full-time employees in HRS. Well, he wrote in his notes that he donated our raises (meaning mine and Collette's) to the other directors to give to other employees in the division. Both Collette and I emailed him accusing him of writing that in his notes just to see if we actually read his notes, but he stood by his joke and said that's what he thought we wanted him to do. Collette, not knowing him as well as I did, believed him at that point and was pretty upset. But I still wasn't going to believe him. I went into his office and told him I wanted to see the whites of his eyes when he told me that he gave away my raise. He still tried to hold onto his cover, but his laughing eyes gave him away and he gave way to actual laughing. It was a pretty good joke.

I'll miss him - even if I only worked closely with him for a year. (Before him, we didn't have a director because the previous director left during the hiring freeze so we couldn't replace her, but since we were close enough to Matt returning from his mission, we left the position open for him to return to.)