The Average Mortuary Workday
Jul. 18th, 2020 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jpegghost7:00 AM: Wake up. Stare at ties, wear favorite one in hopes to make the day go well.
8:00 AM: Arrive at work. Morning poop. Listen to funeral directors talk about the insane families and office politics. Chug cold brew. Spill some on favorite tie.
9:00 AM: Go to the city Health Department for death certificates or burial transit permits. Meet multiple other directors from multiple other funeral homes in the same room ("Death Services" room). Catch up, talk shit, briefly forget why you were there to begin with.
10:00 AM: Return to the funeral home to either prepare for a visitation, funeral service, or graveside. If none of those, you have to check a body in and dress them. The body leaks all over the white shirt the family brought in. Spend 12 minutes drying the button-up with a hair dryer from 1989.
11:00 AM: Glue someone's mouth shut because their mouth keeps opening. If family has allowed embalming, clamp their jaws shut with a wire gun that locks the alveolar processes together. Their lips part anyways and you have to use glue.
11:00 AM: If at a funeral service, the family is 30 minutes late. If at a graveside, the sun is out and baking you, and the family is 35 minutes late.
12:00 PM: LUNCH. Coworkers further believe you're a human trash compactor after you are caught eating cold fish cake (odeng) from the fridge. Explain that gochujang is not ketchup. Get food on your tie.
1:00 PM: Lunch, but only if you just got back from the graveside / funeral service. Go to the post office to drop off some death certificates that your boss forgot to give you until now.
2:00 PM: Put a body in a casket for their visitation tonight. You patched up any mystery holes that may purge liquid onto them, but they purge out of their mouth instead and onto your gloves. Add gloves to the ever-growing Biohazard trash.
3:00 PM: Youtube. Coworker is watching the History Channel. Boss left for the day, or to go to JC Penny's.
4:00 PM: One hour left, continue to watch Youtube and do homework. Coworkers leave between 4:30 - 4:50 until it's just you and the secretary.
5:00 PM: FREEDOM. Get free sandwiches from the caterers who came by for the visitation's reception as you leave, then go home to get butt-slapped by boyfriend and watch Buzzfeed Unsolved. Rinse repeat.
...That's generally my day to day at work. All of these things happened to me at least once, and I don't anticipate the insanity to EVER END.
8:00 AM: Arrive at work. Morning poop. Listen to funeral directors talk about the insane families and office politics. Chug cold brew. Spill some on favorite tie.
9:00 AM: Go to the city Health Department for death certificates or burial transit permits. Meet multiple other directors from multiple other funeral homes in the same room ("Death Services" room). Catch up, talk shit, briefly forget why you were there to begin with.
10:00 AM: Return to the funeral home to either prepare for a visitation, funeral service, or graveside. If none of those, you have to check a body in and dress them. The body leaks all over the white shirt the family brought in. Spend 12 minutes drying the button-up with a hair dryer from 1989.
11:00 AM: Glue someone's mouth shut because their mouth keeps opening. If family has allowed embalming, clamp their jaws shut with a wire gun that locks the alveolar processes together. Their lips part anyways and you have to use glue.
11:00 AM: If at a funeral service, the family is 30 minutes late. If at a graveside, the sun is out and baking you, and the family is 35 minutes late.
12:00 PM: LUNCH. Coworkers further believe you're a human trash compactor after you are caught eating cold fish cake (odeng) from the fridge. Explain that gochujang is not ketchup. Get food on your tie.
1:00 PM: Lunch, but only if you just got back from the graveside / funeral service. Go to the post office to drop off some death certificates that your boss forgot to give you until now.
2:00 PM: Put a body in a casket for their visitation tonight. You patched up any mystery holes that may purge liquid onto them, but they purge out of their mouth instead and onto your gloves. Add gloves to the ever-growing Biohazard trash.
3:00 PM: Youtube. Coworker is watching the History Channel. Boss left for the day, or to go to JC Penny's.
4:00 PM: One hour left, continue to watch Youtube and do homework. Coworkers leave between 4:30 - 4:50 until it's just you and the secretary.
5:00 PM: FREEDOM. Get free sandwiches from the caterers who came by for the visitation's reception as you leave, then go home to get butt-slapped by boyfriend and watch Buzzfeed Unsolved. Rinse repeat.
...That's generally my day to day at work. All of these things happened to me at least once, and I don't anticipate the insanity to EVER END.
MAGIC.
Date: 2020-07-19 12:49 am (UTC)Re: MAGIC.
Date: 2020-07-19 02:17 am (UTC)Boss - Sagittarius. She is mean as hell and gives me the verbal smackdown very often for no real reason other than I'm in her vicinity.
Coworker 1: Taurus. He doesn't do work and watches the history channel all the time, is generally pretty irritated at the idea of work. Makes me do most of his cases. Calls me 'kid'.
Coworker 2: Libra, I think. Ex-marine, a little too republican but watches anime. I lived with her for a month when I was homeless.
Coworker 3: Scorpio, I get along with him best. He likes Star Wars a lot.
Secretary: Virgo, I think. Goes for 50 smoke breaks a day despite being 75.
The others I don't recall off the top of my head ... One of my ex-coworkers is a Scorpio as well.
Re: MAGIC.
Date: 2020-07-19 11:58 am (UTC)all my coworkers (we've talked about this?) are aries. and like, it drives me insane.
Re: MAGIC.
Date: 2020-07-19 12:29 pm (UTC)I love Scorpios, I get along with all of them. It's Aquariuses I can't stand. Also, so you can learn my weaknesses and kill me, I'm Taurus (as you know), Capricorn moon, Aquarius Ascendent (:() ... Alex is a sweet little Cancer, with Sagittarius Moon and Libra Ascending.
Re: MAGIC.
Date: 2020-07-19 01:25 pm (UTC)i'm okay with aquarius but only to the point where i try to talk about the personality of a tree and then they say, WELL, ACTUALLY. and i'm out. but i like it when people know their shit.
i'm pisces sun, taurus moon, libra rising. which i believe to be the most perfect combo EVER. even though my libra concerns me. scorpios KILL ME, i need near constant proof-of-love and i just cannot with a scorpio, i inevitably lose it and do a sobbing dramatic wail while whining 'do you even LIKE ME?"
i'm loyally fond of (jessa, mama) stubborn comfortable tauruses, and most of my conversations with jessa are just intense nesting. no, no tell me in great detail about those throw pillows you found on sale.
i adore aries, like if i have an insta crush? it's an aries. it's also a Bad Idea.
I support all boyfriends being Cancers. my cancer ex of... eight years now? still sends me a birthday present and checks in if my instagram gets dark. so well done.