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Comment by polynomial | Hacker News Reader

Sensitive workplaces (which seems like most these days) have taken to calling this the Lottery Factor (as in team members quit bc they hit the lottery) to spare more delicate types the pain of imagining their peers run over in traffic accidents.

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Having been in the situation that a coworker did no longer arrive to work one morning because some person opened the car door when they were passing with their motorcycle, I can assure you that it's not only the more delicate type of people that all of a sudden are a bit more quiet than usual.

It's all fun and lulz until it happens to you.

There's advantages to both terms. Bus factor maintains the (possible) fiction that people care about their coworkers/bosses enough that they'd transition out if they had the choice. Bus factor highlights that there's no way to get that information even if the person is nice enough to help for effectively free.

I work in the EEO/AAP space and can confirm our company calls it the Lottery Factor though it is partially because we do an office lotto pool when it gets big and jokes bled over. However it is much nicer for discussions. What will we do when employee x gets hit by a bus just does not sound good to random people walking by.

The real world isn’t a safe space, we don’t need to modify our language like this to avoid triggering momentary negative thoughts.

Almost lost a co-worker when he got hit by a bus five years ago. He's back at work full time now, with a substantial settlement from the transit agency (nice amount of f** you money). He wasn't an essential employee, but was important to our team in many ways. Fortunately he was always willing to joke about his accident. He'd survived, after all!

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