I had a co-worker called K and he was as old as I. He was a software developer. An university graduate. He was always a helpful co-worker and a diligent employee. He always took time to help in technical difficulties.

He had stuttering. He was overweight. He smelled of sweat and probably partly because the weight problem. I wonder how lonely person he was because of the stuttering. I wonder whether he was overweight because he did not have any friends and anything to do in his free time because of the stuttering. Did he spend all his free time by himself? I don’t know.

One day we had a planning meeting over a telephone. K represented his ideas over the telephone laborously stuttering. There were a lot of random people in the room and someone chuckled on K but everyone pretty much managed to keep their discomfort to themselves. – I wonder how many times every day he got to experience the same s***** situation over and over again. Being so overwhelmingly afraid of committing mistakes in speech that one starts to stutter. Overanalysing other people’s actions and extracting the feared embarassement from them. Feeling rejected even though other people choose to suppress the discomfort in order to be friendly.

In July K passed away. Someone just said it on skype channel and later it was stated in passing in a department meeting. Management quickly recruited a new developer.

I stated in the skype channel that I was really sad for the death of K. The channel fell silent. Someone slightly agreed with me. After a couple of minutes, the daily chit-chat on cat videos, the style of a pop icon and prime minister’s social media presence resumed.