When co-workers leave - panic!

One of our engineers is leaving for another job soon. He has been an important part of a number of projects here and the rest of us will have to pick up some of his duties until someone else is hired to fill the position (if someone ever is hired to fill the position). The reason I'm writing about this is the lack of panic I see about his leaving. They say you're not supposed to panic about things because that keeps you from performing at your best. Panic is supposed to keep you from analyzing the situation and reacting appropriately. That may be true but I think there are situations when a little panic is good. It gets you moving and it shows others you are concerned about the situation. If you don't panic in certain situations, it is my opinion that you don't care about it very much.

What do you do when your dog gets away from you and heads toward the road where a truck is approaching going too fast? You panic - you shout - you wave your arms - you try to get the dog's attention and the truck driver's attention. You have to move fast and make a lot of noise and panic does this for you.

To get back to my co-worker's leaving: I'm not sure what the folks who run our company think - Do they think that each of us is not working all the time we're here? Do they think that we're looking for more things to do? Do they really believe the four other people in our group each have two hours a day free to devote to picking up the slack? I guess they do. The fellow who is leaving gave them two weeks notice and they said, "Oh, just give us a week." While that's very nice of them, it gives the rest of us half the time to pick up what we need to know about these new projects we're going to be working on. Luckily for us, he was a very organized guy and worked very openly with us. We all coordinated our work thanks to our supervisor keeping our shop a fun, open place. So, it's not as bad as it could have been. But the people making the one-week decision had no clue about that.

I'd like to see a little more panic from the higher-ups. They should be rushing to start a job search. They should be meeting with us to ask which of our current projects are going to be delayed because of this. They should be offering to get temporary help to help us get through this. They want to make it look like things like this will not affect the company. They want to make it look like nothing you can throw at them will cause them to panic. Instead, they need to be running, waving their arms and trying to get someone's attention.