I work in a Data Center. There's two of us who go onsite: the primary guy, and me. I'm a sysadmin, so it's mostly remote; I usually end up going in maybe once every two weeks or so. I have a lot of remote work on my plate.
The onsite guy has been making noise that he's leaving for a few months now. Two months ago, my boss, the tech lead, and myself interviewed a guy we liked, so we approved him. The approval went in and... nothing. Not a peep for months.
Last week, my cooworker gave his two weeks' notice. I am off next week for vacation; that is the week the new onsite guy is supposed to start, since he was suddenly hired. Everybody else in my group is in other countries: India and Argentina. So, he's supposed to start, but there's nobody to actually let him into the Data Center and show him around, which doesn't matter because it will take two weeks for his ID to come in. So, there'll be nobody to do any onsite work next week.
And it could all have been avoided if they'd hired the new guy when he was approved. He'd have had two or three weeks of orientation from the guy he would replace, and all would be well.
I'm pretty sure my boss has been getting heat from his higher-ups to cancel my vacation (I haven't heard anything, but you just know), but I'm equally sure he doesn't want to suddenly have two vacancies in his department....