I had something like this happen at a small software company I worked about 15 years ago. Our owner had written a specialized program for his wife to sell on the side, but under the company's name. One weekend, after a very big fight, she ended up committing suicide after he'd left the house. The next week, they had me going through her email to get a list of customers she had been working with. I can't begin to tell you the amount of discomfort you feel going through a recently deceased person's email - especially when it was mixed with personal messages. I got in, found all the work related messages, forwarded them to my manager and got out - I couldn't bear to be in there any longer than I had to. No one at the company was very close with her, but it was still a complete shock.
I have to do that when my client's employees quit or are let go. Even though I know they are alive and healthy, I still often wonder if I will ever see them again in my life. So many people have come and gone over the years that I can't even remember. When I disable their account and archive their emails and documents, it feels like I am saying good bye to them for ever. Groupon's bots will soon find out that user 'jsmith@example.com' is no longer here.
My archives will be slightly larger but nightly backups of active users documents will get a bit quicker. I used to have lunch with you user 'rjackson' but now that you got fired for doing something pretty bad, we will most likely never talk again.
And with that one command, a person leaves my life forever.
