And So Begins My New Life

Join me as I embark on a new life and new career in Funeral Services.

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Location: Southeast, United States

I'm a Funeral Services graduate embarking on a new career. I graduated high school in 1981, served honorably in the United States Navy from 1982-1986, been married since 1986, and have one son. I've relocated to a new state and have begun working in my chosen profession of Funeral Services, and I've never been happier.

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Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Spot Check The Vehicles For Random Cargo

I got a call from my boss earlier today. He asked me if I had emptied out the van. I told him that I had no idea there were items in the van to be unloaded, and that the van was not at the funeral home at the moment. He told me to make sure it got emptied when it was back at the funeral home. So now I guess I'm supposed to randomly check the vehicles to see if they have any cargo that may need unloading. This kind of crap goes hand in hand with my previous post. I was so stressed when I wrote it I neglected to mention things my boss does that get to me. He will make arrangements, but then not write down important things in the file, such as which casket, is there a memorial package, is it a full package or cards only; which cards, which poem on the cards, stuff like that. So we end up calling him a few times before the service to get these things clarified. It would be a whole lot easier if he did his actual job and wrote everything down so his staff could get the funeral set up properly.

Monday, April 22, 2013

I Have Lost My Joy

If you read (or have read) this blog from the very beginning, you will see there was a time when I was nervous, excited, and happy to be out of retail and working in my chosen profession. Every day was different; you could wake up one morning and find yourself dispatched to a far-away city on a call, or going at suppertime to make a removal and come back to work and embalm the body. From one day to the next, it seemed as if each day was unique. While that primarily is still true, these past few weeks since the other director quit have been very busy and very stressful. We are so terribly busy and there is so much work to be done. I am seriously burnt out right now. It would be so wonderful to have a week or so with no calls at either locations so we can concentrate on catching up on yard work, cleaning and maintenance. To be brutally honest, if I were to win the lottery I would quit in a heartbeat. And I don't mean quit the funeral home I work at, I mean quit for good. Retire. Relax. Travel.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Helpless, Lazy Or Stupid?

I had to go over to the other location today to lead a funeral out to the cemetery. While I was there my boss said he had several things for me to take care of. One task was to finish filling out a death certificate that had some missing information. He had received the info from the families, so I made those corrections. The next was to print the cremation permit on a call that we got approval on late yesterday. The last thing was to reorder death certificates. This highly technical, extremely complicated task requires someone to fill out a form and fax it to the health department. All I could think was, "Really? You had to wait for me to come here and do it? You couldn't do it yourself?"

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Karma Can Be A Female Dog

In my last post I mentioned how the intern wished me a busy weekend. Karma overheard that remark, crawled out of her nice, cozy, warm bed and bit him in the backside. He's got visitation this Sunday from 12-6, which means he'll pretty much be working the entire day. We have to be there early to receive flowers and set them up, so he'll probably have to arrive at work around 9 or 10am. My only response was a gentle, "Neener Neener Neener!"

Sunday, April 07, 2013

It Was Nice While It Lasted

Well, the slowdown is officially over. We had something on the order of 5 calls over the weekend. I made the removals on 4 of them. Our new intern thought it would be funny to tell me, "I hope you get busy this weekend!" while I'm the one on call and we're so shorthanded thanks to the loss of a director and a secretary who is out tending to her sick mother. So tomorrow I have to go to the other location, work on a bunch of death certificates because the absent secretary is the only one over there who knows how to use the new system. Then I have to go to the other location to lead a funeral out to the national cemetery. I have repeatedly told the boss that he needs to get another person up to speed on that system, but he seems to think he doesn't need to. Well, he does, despite what his dumb ass thinks. I tried to encourage our intern to get qualified, but he says he's too busy getting through school to actually learn his job. Can you tell I'm a little bit miffed right now? I worked all day yesterday, and all day today, and for the second week in a row, I am having to come in on my day off and help with all this business. The upside to all this is I get to zing the boss for about 13 hours of overtime at time and a half. Cha-ching!

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