¿Qué le cayó?

[Stu]

What does this mean?
It suggests. " What happened to him? " but I don't see how you get that and why would he think the other died, perhaps they usually only employ a new worker when the previous one dies.
Does he mean "fell ill" and unable to work.


Pero era buen trabajador..., uno de los mejores.
-¿Qué le cayó?
-El otro no murió, así que le cayó sólo un año. Seguro que ya está libre

[poli]

A common expression is me cayó bien/mal,

It usually means it disagreed with me, or it went well with me. So, as you assumed what happened is what it means. A more direct translation might be,
how did things land with him?

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

"Caer bien/mal" is as Poli said, but here it rather seems to be "how many years he got as a sentence".

I assume there was an accident at work for which two men were responsible. One died and the other had to make time in jail.

It's not the way anyone I know would ask this, but that's what I get from the dialogue.

We'd probably rather ask: "¿cuántos años le cayeron?" or something like that, I think. :thinking:

Without any context, I would have thought that the question would be asking literally what kind of object had (physically) fallen upon the person, or if he had caught some sort of illness.

[Stu]

Thank you both for the responses,
very useful, I didn't notice anything in the text that suggested further clues but perhaps I need to check it again.

Thank you

[Stu]

Angelica,
You are exactly correct, on checking I had forgotten that the fellow had stabbed the other man but not mortally. So it is clear now.

Thanks