Things I Hate

I was thinking about things I hate today, due to some events that transpired Monday and Tuesday. I hate when my boss is two steps behind me. Not literally, but he doesn't seem to grasp the fact that I'm good at working unsupervised. The business keeps on coming, and my boss had the kind of weekend that I had the previous weekend. Sunday we had two visitations. One of the visitations concluded with the funeral service, the other was to have the funeral Monday morning. As a result, there was some room-swapping going on, with the body for Monday taken out of the chapel so the other family could have their service. When I got to work Monday morning, I noticed the switch, and set about pulling the one body out of the chapel so we could put the other one back in, removing flowers, getting things cleaned up and organized, etc. We also had limo due at the family's residence at 8:30am. As I'm getting things cleaned up and situated, my boss calls me. The secretary comes to get me and tells me it's my boss on the phone, so I immediately predicted how the conversation would go: "Pull the one body out of the chapel, put the other one back in, tell Returning Employee he's got limo, get all the flowers out of the chapel, make sure the hearse has gas..." So when I pick up the phone, what do I hear? "We've got limo this morning, we need to switch bodies in the chapel, make sure flowers are ready to go..." I interrupted him and told him I was way ahead of him and that it had already been taken care of.

I hate when no one replaces the empty paper towels. We use paper towels all over the funeral home. One roll in each of the three bathrooms, one roll in the kitchen, two in the prep room and one in the garage. Yet nobody seems to be able to replace them when they are empty. Many is the time I find a cardboard tube devoid of paper towels parked in the dispenser. To me, it's an easy fix. If you take the last sheet, replace the roll. For some reason, I seem to be the only one that has a firm grip on this principle. I even wrote on an empty tube in the kitchen, "If you take the last paper towel, replace the roll." My boss took it down and told me the owner had taken the last sheet.

I hate when families arrive way too early. Today we had a visitation scheduled for 12:30. At 11:15 the hair on the deceased is being styled, and the family walks in, one hour and 15 minutes early. I had them wait in the lobby until we were ready for them.

I hate getting attitude for just trying to do my job. When the family arrived way too early, I called the owner, who was on his way to our new acquisition, to let him know the family had arrived. His response? "What do you want me to do about it?" I calmly told him, "Nothing; I just wanted you to be aware of what was going on."