Not Paying Attention To The Details

Our secretary has been on vacation for the past three weeks. She returns Monday, and I will be thankful. Not because I've been overwhelmed or under pressure; I haven't. It just seems that I've been screwing up more than usual lately. The trainee says it's because I've been occupied with getting her trained, and while I would like to believe that, I've just been careless. Plain and simple. I've screwed up two death certificates. The first one I put down the wrong date of death. I took this information from the face sheet my boss had worked up, based on the information provided him by the informant. However, had I bothered to check the date of death provided by the informant against the date of death provided by the hospital, I would have caught the error. I failed to do that, so yesterday I had to run downtown and have the doctor sign a medical amendment so we could get the death certificate amended with the correct information. The second one I messed up was on the place of death. The patient passed at XYZ County Hospice Care Center. This facility was not in our database, so when I entered it, I made a slight error on the name, and entered it as County Care Center. The health department rejected it, so now we have to generate a new certificate with the correct name and have the doctor sign again. I'll be glad when Monday arrives.

Training The New Hire

We've hired a new secretary for our other facility. While our secretary has been on vacation these past couple of weeks, I've been training the new hire. She seems capable and easy to train, but some days I feel like I'm falling short as a trainer. Yesterday we entered all the files from the calls we had over the weekend. She did most of the work, but I forgot to put a due date on the burial/transit permits. I should have known better. Overall, though, her training is proceeding fairly well. When our secretary returns from vacation, she can fill in all the gaps where I have a clear lack of knowledge and experience.

We had two services at the National Cemetery today; my boss took one and I handled the other. Everything went well, I'm pleased to say.

A couple of months ago we ordered checks for our new facility/acquisition. Our old checks were the two-part carbonless tractor-feed style. We will be replacing them with three-part checks for the laser printer. I was asked by the owner to set them up to print on our printers, so I took care of that in short order. It took me just a few minutes to get the layout rearranged in our accounting software so they print properly. Now my next project is to get our vendor lists updated and printed out in a nice, neat format. We can do a rough printout, but some of the addresses are getting cut off. I love doing this kind of work. I may not be the best at giving out prices on the phone and trying to convince people they should use us, but I'm a whiz at computer stuff. Except networking. I know beans about that.

Moaning And Groaning And Miscellany

Sorry for the long delay between posts. I've been thinking about this blog lately, and it occurred to me a lot of my posts are negative. Complaints about work or my boss or my days off, and I don't want to be a negative guy. So I'm going to try and stay away from negativity for a while. Business has slowed down to a reasonable level, for which I'm grateful. Our secretary is on vacation for the next three weeks, so I will be filling her shoes while she's gone. I hope business doesn't get overwhelming in her absence.

We had a new guy at work for a while. He seemed to be doing just fine, working funerals, cleaning up around the place, running errands, whatever needed doing he was willing to tackle. Then, the next week, he calls in on Monday saying that something came up and he can't come in. I pass his message along to the owner. Wednesday, his next scheduled day, he pulls a no-call, no-show. Friday, his next day to work, rolls around with no contact again. Needless to say, he's now an ex-employee.

We had an interesting event happen yesterday. We had a full service cremation, which is where the body is present for viewing and visitation, and after the funeral we remove the body from the casket and cremate it. Yesterday Returning Employee and Takes A Day Off were removing the body, and as soon as it cleared the casket, the casket tipped over and fell off the cart. What happened was the casket was too far back on the cart, and with both the head and foot panel open, there was too much weight on the back side of the casket, which caused it to fall over off the cart. Both panels snapped off their hinges, but no one was hurt.

We did some work in the yard today at my home. We laid down some mulch where my son parks, and afterward we washed my truck, which needed it badly. Tonight we're having lasagna. I'm looking forward to that, as it's been quite a while since we had some.