Vicarishame - 3

"Have you seen his office today?" my colleague, who'd become my boss several months before, asked me stepping into my office on that fateful Monday. His big eyes were even larger than usual from the shock.

"No, I went straight into class in the morning, and just passed by his office now without even looking in. I know he is not there, haven't seen him today yet."

I thought about that for a moment: I should have seen him, we teach at almost the same time. Perhaps he also went straight to his classroom?

We don't refer to him by name anymore, ever since we had a big fallout when he showed us his true narcissistic self. It's always just "him" or his last name now.

"Come have a look," my boss says.

His office is right next to mine on the right side, so it's a 5-step walk. We enter and my heart sinks. I gasp for air with my mouth open in shock.

"What the f...?" is the only thing I can say.

The office is completely empty, cleaned out of his personal stuff. All our offices are equipped with basic functional furniture: an L-shaped work desk with a standard office chair, shelving for books and papers. We make them our own with our personal stuff and equipment. When he moved in, he brought a sophisticated gaming chair and top-of-the-line noise cancelling headphones along with a lot of other video and computer equipment. It's all gone, the office was as clean as the day before he moved in.

"But... I was here most of the weekend," I say. I practically live on campus now that my son is in college in another city. "He must have packed up on Saturday night or very early Sunday morning before I came in. Otherwise I would have seen him. Moving out is not a 5-minute deal."

I'm still processing, in shock. We all knew this day would come, and my boss warned me of this, but I am an incorrigible optimist when it comes to people's ethics and the sense of duty. I didn't have "He'd quit three weeks into the semester" in my bingo cards.

"He quit by email," my boss tells me. I don't know if my mouth can open even wider from the shock.

"Did he write it to you???" I ask.

"Nope, to the dean. I wasn't even copied on it."

I shake my head in disbelief. "But... the students? Who is going to teach his classes?"

It's really hard to manage things like this in the middle of the semester. There's a reason academia works on a semester and academic year basis, and people are supposed to honor their contracts by teaching out until the end of semester, if not the full year.

"We'll have to manage," my boss says. "I have some ideas. I think we will be able to cover his courses until the end of semester and then we'll plan from there."

Soon, we are joined by two other members of the department and our human resources officer. Together, we strategize on how to cover for his classes and to reassure students (some of whom are in uncontrollable panic mode, I am told) that we will make sure they get the knowledge and skills they were supposed to get through those courses.

We all feel a little better after we've developed this preliminary plan. I take a deep breath.

I look around the empty office once again. "I am not the one who quit, but why do I burn with shame?" I say.

"I know, right?" my boss echoes.

"It's the curse of all decent people," our human resources officer says. "I guarantee you, the only one who doesn't feel bad about this is the one who quit."

Vicarishame - A feeling of vicarious or second-hand shame a decent person experiences while witnessing a wrong or embarrassing action committed by someone else.

Here are some other stories from the same "vicarishame" series. In the first one, I coined the word for the Vocal wordsmith challenge:

In the second story, I give an illustration of how it can feel in real life: