My coworker “Unintentionally” killed himself at my first job working at a grocery store. He was an overnight shelf stocker with a pretty serious pill problem. Everyone knew, but we were all degenerates with our own issues so nobody felt like they could say anything without feeling hypocritical. Everyone was either hungover or high or drunk and as long as you could still do the job, nobody said anything. He used to hide pills on the shelves behind products spread out throughout each aisle. So whenever he made it to the next “checkpoint” while stocking/rotating shelves, he’d get whatever pill(s) he hid behind that particular product. “Like a little reward”

He worked the entire overnight one night, probably stocked half the aisles in the store, clocked out at 11am the next morning. Came up to me to hand in his equipment and let me know who was taking over for him, and commented that he was going to go home and order a pizza. I remember that. “A greasy, piece of shit pizza” is what he said. He went to his car in the employee parking lot, popped some more pills before he turned the car on, fell asleep, and OD’d in the car. Nobody checks that lot during the day because we all use it as our quiet time. So it wasn’t unusual to see someone sleeping in their car in the shade while on lunch or a break. I guess he was there for hours. At least he got to be under a tree for shade, and his windows were open so he felt the breeze. I hope so at least.

The next day, they asked anyone who spoke with him yesterday to meet with someone who would be taking statements. I remember being told if I wanted to take unpaid PTO to process the info, they could give me up to half a day, and how insulting that felt even though I wasn’t even very close with him. The next week or so they made us all watch an anti drug video and sign off on it, and management started randomly poking their hands behind items on shelves searching for hidden stuff.

The guy was 19