Tip of the day (new)

Tip of the day (new).

Tip of the Day: 1/25/12

Tip of the Day:

January 25, 2012

If you attend a  funeral service (or prayers) at the funeral home, at the end the Director will come up and make some announcements. One of those announcements will be something like this “At this time I would like to ask you to please pass by the casket to pay your last respects and exit out the doors to your vehicles. Please turn on your bright headlights and remain in your vehicles for we will be processing to the cemetery. I ask that we start in the rear of the room and up the left isle.”  SO…. here is the issue. Usually there will be one of the staff waiting in the rear of the room to start guiding guests that it is there time to get up and pass by the casket. I will start with those who are standing in the rear of the room and then work up to those seated. I do so, by leaning over and saying “you can start up” and with a gesture of my hand. When someone does this to you, DO NOT just sit there! Do not just look at me and say nothing! Either get your ass up and get in line to pass by the casket or just say something like “no thank you, i’d rather not” HOWEVER please realize that there are other people in your row of seats that would LIKE TO! SO….if you are not going to pass by the casket, when someone tells you it is your turn, get up anyway and get the hell outta the way! Also, you heard what the Director said about exiting to your vehicles….Well, DO IT! Even if you aren’t passing by the casket. As a matter of fact, if you aren’t passing the casket, then you should be one of the first persons to get into your vehicle! Do not loiter around the funeral home standing in the chapel in everyones way, even if you think you are not in the way, you are! Quit thinking of yourself for one minute and realize that the family is waiting for everyone to leave so they can have a few minutes alone. AND then we need to close the casket and move it thru the room and out to the hearse. OKAY!

Tip of the day (new)

so, since i have been so busy lately, especially at work! it’s nuts at work actually! I have decided that at least I can post a tip of the day (pertaining to funeral home tips). Maybe some will have multiple tips, depending.

Tip of the day for January 23, 2012

Do NOT bring your baby or small children to a funeral service! ESPECIALLY if you are not going to refrain them from running up and down the halls ( near the steps! or doors!) this is a distraction to EVERYONE! but most of all ME, who is trying to organize and keep things running smooth and QUIET! Babies are just not a good idea period! They cry and scream! Why would you bring one anyway. Why would you bring any small child!?! Funerals are usually long, to a child, and they get anxious, so LEAVE them at home with family or with a sitter or you your self should not attend. It is RUDE if you let your child run around during a QUIET funeral service and not do anything about it. I do not think it is cute nor do I find it funny, so when you see me in the hall and your brat is running by me screaming, please do not look at me and smile or laugh…..Take them outside or to an area where no one can hear them, which is typically OUTSIDE or better yet HOME!

 

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

work at a funeral home…

been busy! too busy to even think straight. and of course trying to deal with unrealistic families! how do you deal with people who are, lets say, drug addicts? they want this and they want that, but NO one has any money to pay for anything! and if they don’t get their way and what they want, well then they have no problem telling us that we will NOT see any money! how nice, right? we could have told you we did not want your business and to take it elsewhere. however, we did not tell you to go elsewhere, we helped you in your time of need. we did the removal of your brother, we transferred him to the crematory, we secured the proper paper work (medical examiner permit, death certificate, crematory charges. that equals approximately $600.00. that does not include our charges, what the funeral home charges for our services! we took your brother as instructed by the family to the crematory to have him cremated, instead of the declining your business and then having your brother transferred to the medical examiners office so he could spend weeks upon weeks there waiting for his family to actually pay someone to do what we did for FREE! as any other funeral home in our area would have demanded ‘some’ payment before even doing the removal! then it turned into who is picking up his cremated remains from the funeral home….ONLY THE NEXT OF KIN can LEGALLY pick them up unless the next of kin instructs us otherwise! NO WAY AROUND IT! NONE! altho you people tried your hardest! calling us continually! lying to us! and yet still NO PAYMENT! from NO ONE! why is it so hard for people to understand that there are laws that we MUST follow?  

i have bitched about this before but last week we had a service at the funeral home, there were quite a few people who attended. the pastor was speaking and “most” everyone was quite….but there were some rude people who just wouldn’t shut up! the pastor stopped speaking and asked that everyone please be quite or leave the funeral home! then about 5 minutes later, someones cell phone starts ringing! i can never understand why when that happens the person whose cell phone is ringing just doesn’t immediately hit IGNORE on their phone … instead they let it ring and ring  and ring…..! well, the pastor stopped again, and now he is mad, and says to everyone ‘if i could please have everyone’s undivided attention, no talking, no cell phones, if everyone here who has a cell phone please take this time to turn them OFF before I begin again. it is disrespectful. if this was your loved one up here then i am sure you would not appreciate people talking or cell phones ringing”. AWESOME! i loved it! finally!

SO rude!

When I see a door closed in a public place/business I knock before entering. Meaning I wait until someone answers the door after knocking. If by some chance no one answers the door, then I have to believe that no one is in the other room or they cannot answer the door at the moment. I don’t think I would ever just walk in without knocking unless I heard a voice from the other side saying “come in!”. If by some chance you could see thru that door, if there was window in the door, or the door was glass or there is a window next to that door and you could clearly see people in there, but they were ignoring my knock…well, I would just assume that they can not answer the door at the moment or what is going in the other room is private and they do not want to be bothered right now, explaining the shut door! either all of that or everyone in the room is deaf….but I’m gonna go ahead and guess they don’t want to be bothered. So here is my issue. At a funeral home when you see a door shut but can see people in the room and you knock and they do not answer, DO NOT walk in that room. DO NOT keep knocking! DO NOT knock on the window to that room! GO AWAY!  unless it is an emergency and someone is flailing wildly about the room, well even then you or someone very near to you has a cell phone! Now if the building is one fire….uhh, I’m not so sure I would be knocking on the door to warn the people in there anyway, I would just open the door and say FIRE! Also, let me add this, on this door it just happens to say in black letters, BIG black letters “ARRANGEMENT OFFICE”. Soooooo……uhhh, ya think maybe all those people in that room, with the person behind the desk in a black suit just may be making funeral arrangements? Take a minute, that’s ok…go ahead, I’ll let you think on it, but only for a minute.                      Ok, times up. Answer is:   YES, those are people making arrangements! Whew, sweat was starting to bead on my forehead, thought maybe I was the only person who knew that answer! So, let me move on to the next ‘no no’. When someone finally does answer that door because of your relentless knocking and they say “may I help you?” with a little bit of irritation in their voice and you say “I need you to put these flowers in the chapel” and you don’t say “I’m so sorry to bother you” or “I’m sorry to interrupt you” but you say in your bitchy voice “I need YOU to put these flowers in the chapel!” and the person says to you “uhh, ma’am, I am sorry but I am with a family right now….” and you again interrupt me and say again “I NEED YOU to put these flowers in the chapel for me!, I brought them in myself and I CANNOT walk into that chapel with all those people and hand them flowers, it is YOUR job to do that!” Lets just say that the person you are talking to is going to be alittle irritated and so is the family who is in the room making arrangements for their father who just died! Yes, this happened a few days ago. So, the Director said, “I am going to go back in this office to sit with the family who just lost someone and I will page someone for you. The lady sighed and asked how long was this going to take! When the other funeral home employee came up and asked “what can I help you with” the lady (or maybe it was satan, not sure) said “I just got done telling him what I wanted! put these in the chapel for christ sake!” Now, granted, the lady didn’t see anyone else around, meaning an employee, but if she would have taken the time to LOOK around, she would have seen the OTHER office door, which was OPEN or … she could have seen the buzzer on the wall that said “push for assistance!” I feel sorry that the deceased ever knew this person!

I really want to believe that most people have access to the internet these days or at least a phone book. I could be wrong…again, but do you know how many phone books I have that I don’t need or want! It seems that every time they deliver phone books, I end up with like, 5 of them, all the same! Then I have the old ones, that now I have to throw away or take to recycling. Anyway, getting off track. I get phone calls every day asking if so and so is being laid out at our funeral home. If I do, then the person calling is usually calling to find out the viewing times and funeral times. However, I get several phone calls where the caller asks if someone I DON’T have is being laid out at our funeral home. I politely say “no sir or no ma’am, I do not have anyone here by that name”. Half the time I get, “okay, thank you” or Okay, sorry to bother you.” BUT…the other half, I will get “ugh..well, do you know where he/she is at?” No, I do not! How would I know that? There is no list of all the dead people in the area and what funeral home they are using. I have been asked that plenty of times. “Well, isn’t there some list or something that you can check?” Nope, no, there’s not…. But, usually when I tell them that the person they are looking for is not at our funeral home, they will ask if I know where and when I say no, they say “oh, well I was told it was on such and such street so I thought it was your funeral home. Well, there are about 4 funeral homes on this street, which runs thru at least 6 cities! and to narrow it down, there are 3 in this city. Then they will ask for the names of the other funeral homes. Usually I am glad to give them that information. However, when they start expecting me to give them the phone numbers of those funeral homes, I start to become a bit irritated. One, because I am busy and I may have someone on hold, that I put on hold to answer your call. I am not information, call them! I am not a phone book, use the one you have, or the other 3 or 4 that you have, because if I have 5 phone books at work and just as many at home, I am sure you have at least one. use the internet! like I am probably going to do while you are waiting on the phone for ME to look up the number for you! I am sorry you called the wrong funeral home inquiring about a person you are looking for, but really, I don’t see how this became my problem.

Next rant that I have, when you call a business and want to speak to someone but that person is not in or not available to come to the phone and I ask to take a message, SPEAK clearly and somewhat slow so I can understand what the fuck you are saying! Go someplace that there is not a lot of noise in the background. If I can’t hear you, how can you hear me? I don’t want to have to keep asking you “what” or “spell that again”. If the person you are calling is not in, and when I ask to take a message, DON’T just hang up on me! I HATE THAT! even tho nine times outta 10 it’s just a sales call, but it pisses me off! and when you do call back for the 3rd time in one day, even if that person is in, I AM NOT going to get them for you! That goes for non sales calls too. We are a funeral home, if you call for someone, they WILL call you back! It may not be within 10-15 minutes, but it will be that same day before 5pm! If you tell me it is urgent or important I WILL relay that to the person you are calling for. Because if you don’t leave a message and just tell me you will call them back later, how do you know that person is going to be back when you call? YOU DON’T! If you call at 10am and I tell you so and so is on a funeral, you have no idea when they will be back! do you? so when you call back in an hour and I say no, they are gone on a funeral, and you reply that I told you that an hour ago, well…yeah, I am sure I did, it usually takes longer than an hour if that person is on a funeral. You don’t know when they left, you don’t know where they had to go! Also, don’t make comments like, “every time I call he/she is never in”. “I call all the time, but can never get in touch with them!”. LEAVE A MESSAGE! then maybe they will call you back….

Busy. Slow. Busy. Slow. Busy

Right now, its busy. I am so glad to have the weekend off! But since May, it was slow. Then it got busy. Then it got slow. Now it’s busy again. Weird how that works. Weird that all the other funeral homes in the area were slow as well. Then we would all get busy again.

Now, when you need to make funeral arrangements, we get that you may not know what you are doing or what you need to do. Thats we are for. We are here to help you. But…..you need to work with us! If you want to order flowers, you may do so thru us, at no extra charge. Or you may go to a florist of your liking. However, you must go asap! You cannot wait until the day of. I mean, I suppose you could, but you are asking a lot of that florist! Also just because you came in for funeral arrangements on say, Tuesday and you haven’t finalized the arrangements, does not mean that you can come back in anytime you feel like it on Wednesday to “go over” things and demand to speak to the Director! You see, other people die. When other people die, they call us. We make an appt. for that family to come in and make arrangements. So….when you come walking in on Wednesday and say to me “we need to see so and so that we saw yesterday to finish the arrangements for so and so”. and I tell you, “well, so and so is with another family right now who had an appt. at 12:30pm.”  WHY….WHY do I get smart ass fucking remarks?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?  God, do I hate that! NO ONE! NO ONE told you to just show the fuck up when you fucking felt like it! I KNOW THIS FOR A FACT! and when you ask me in your sarcastic tone “well, how long are we going to have to wait then to see him, we need to get this taken care of?’ and I tell you, “I don’t know, however long it take for him to finish with the family he is meeting with right now, could be over in a half an hour, could be an hour and a half, is there something I may be able to help you with?” (this is the part I love)…. “well, (looks at other family members to get some sort of reaction to whether or not I seem like I can help them) I guess if so and so isn’t available, we really don’t have much of a choice do we?’ I say ‘well, of course you do, you can go ahead and have a seat, have some coffee or I can get you some water while you wait, or you could always come back at oh, say 2pm….?” they usually go ahead and let little ole’ me help them. geeezus. By this point I really don’t want to help them and always end up thinking to myself, gee, why did i even offer to help them, should have just told them they “had” to come back later!

i did speak to a very nice lady on the phone the other day. she just made me laugh and we had a good conversation. i liked that. not often you feel comfortable just chatting with someone you have never met. i wish i could meet her now! i told her that too. she was calling about her pre-arrangements she had made some years ago. the company that owned the pre-need insurance sold to another company (which is not uncommon) and she just had a question about it. She was talking and joking that at her age, she knows not to let little things that worry her go….so that is why she called, and that she doesn’t want any mishaps after she is gone where someone else has to worry about paying for her funeral when she went thru all the trouble of paying for it over the last several years. She was telling me about how she still drives here and there (that was the only thing that really worried me about her, since she said she was 89 yrs old!) and that she was a hair dresser for over 40 years and that the young girls who she use to work with still come by to this day ever Friday and have lunch with her, now they are much older, she said, and they tell her how they use to be scared of her when they all first started working with her because she would tell them what they were doing wrong. but now that they are older they appreciate that she was honest with them. she then asked about me and my life and work, etc….she wasn’t being nosey, just creating conversation and i enjoyed it. i told her before we hung up that i wish we could meet ….. before she passed! to which we both had a good laugh, thank goodness she has a really great sense of humor!

so anyway………thats about it. until next time.

No show for appt!! on a holiday!!!!!

so..normally we are closed on sunday’s unless we have visitation. or…if someone passes and the family would like to come in to make the arrangements. so, on sunday, Mother’s Day, get a call and the family wants  to meet at 10am! okay…..fine.  so guess what happens? they don’t show up! they don’t call. nothing! on Mother’s Day! Because apparently i have nothing better to do on Mother’s Day, right?!?

then….on Monday morning, BEFORE 9am. get a call from, guess who! and they say that they can come in around 11am. well, i asked ‘uhh, i waited for you yesterday at 10am. ” the response was this “Ughhh Ohhhh Noooooo, what now…oh God….” really? what the fuck is that suppose to even mean? so i guess she thought since she was rude enough to not show up or call that i meant we couldn’t help her monday! i said “we can still be available to help you today, i was just saying that i was expecting you yesterday, also, if you want to come today, and that is fine, i need a time that you will be coming in”. again, she said she could make it around 11am. I said “i need to know more of a pin-point time to make sure that there is a director there for when you arrive”. she said, “oh, i WILL be there at 11am!” so, they did show up at 11am. then they left! without finalizing!  ugh! they said they had to think about it and see if they had the funds available to pay for a funeral……?? so, i receive a phone call about an hour later. it was that family. they asked for the other director who sat with them when they came in earlier. i told them that she had just stepped out but should be back around 2pm. well, she wasn’t happy with my answer. she said she HAD to come back in and speak with her. i told her no problem she can come back and speak with her how about coming back at 3pm? OH NOOOOOOOO! NO NO NO NO NO! that was not working for her! i said, she JUST left, the only thing i can do is call her to see if she will be back any sooner, so let’s have you come at 2:30pm a half an hour from now. she said, “well…i guess that will have to do if i can’t come right now, i am just down the street. i do have things to do this afternoon and i cannot be late for them!”   OH REALLY? you inconsiderate bitch! i should have turned the lights out and locked up the building right then and there so when she showed up no one was here to help her! well, that’s what i wanted to do! of course i couldn’t and wouldn’t. but really, to have the nerve to say that after not showing up OR calling the day before! how dare her! i told her if the director would be back sooner i would call her so she could come right in…well, the director showed up about 10 minutes later….but, i wasn’t about to call that bitch and let her know. and as far as her having “things” to do in the afternoon, bullshit, she was here for 2 freaking hours and never mentioned that she was in a hurry or had to go anywhere or have anything to do. she also called twice after they left and showed up this morning already to ask a question. good thing i am off on the day of their visitation! whew!

other than that, we have been kinda slow. last month was sooo busy. this month…not so much…..yet. that could change in the matter of minutes.

until next time….

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY!

UGH! has it been busy!

and let me tell you….of course i have something to bitch about, did you think otherwise?

i just don’t get what posses people to be so damn rotten to people they never met before!  i still think that people feel since they have just lost someone it gives them the right to feel superior somewhow….but to be nasty to the very people who are HELPING you is down right rude! we bust our asses to make sure that everything goes off without a hitch! make sure the room looks nice, clean and ready for you when you arrive. make sure that the deceased looks as good as possible..considering. we go that extra step to make sure that you have NO WORRIES. we don’t want you to have to worry about anything more than you already have to worry about. we understand that you are upset and grieving and on top of that you are stressing about everything else that you may have forgotten about. we do things that aren’t even asked of us, we do things for families who request the oddest stuff and never say a word, just smile and say ‘no problem’. so what gives?!!?!?

and again…not that we aren’t focused on your family, but we do have other families as well. i am confused when a family arrives and we have another family using the facilities at the same time. we really don’t have to tell you that someone is going to be layed out the same day as your loved one, but we often do just incase. usually the families say ‘oh no, not a problem”, but get to the day of and you best believe there is going to be some complaining! or some dirty looks and rolling of the eyes when they walk in to find other people are using the funeral home as well.

and another thing. we only have so much parking! we had a very large service the other day for a younger man, he was in is early 30′s. the service was at 11am. we had another family who’s first viewing began at 11:30 am. well, obviously there was limited parking available. so in walks an older man and in his loudest voice walks in the front door and just starts huffing and puffing about how far he had to walk because there were no parking spots available! is it not obvious that there is a service in progress and when you walked in it was QUITE! and why would you do that anyway? then when we try to explain to you that there is a service going on continue to rant and rave, while the family members and friends are standing in the halls because there is not even enough seating!?! good lord!

well…gotta run! will post more asap!

Go someplace else then/geeezus

if you think that threatening to go to another funeral home will persuade us to change our pricing for you, then you are wrong. this is what i talk about all the time. when people are coming in to OUR funeral home, coming to us for help to bury/cremate their loved one and right off the bat have an attitude! what posses a person to do that?  sit in front of us when we give them prices and say that they can get it cheaper and say they are going elsewhere. well, then go! had a family ‘walk-in’ on Wednesday, yes, walk-in, and said they had no money and they intended on using state funding. but yet again, another family who did not understand what exactly state funding means. so, we explain that they will only pay a portion of the funeral expenses and the family is responsible for the rest, also the family may not exceed a certain amount otherwise the state will not pay for any of it! they were taken aback! they said give us your least expensive option, well that being direct cremation. no, that is not what they wanted, they wanted visitation. well, then we gave them what it would cost with viewing and use of the funeral home for a few hours during the day. no, they wanted evening. well, that is where it gets expensive and they cannot use state aid with that option. again, their words were, ‘we can go elsewhere if you like?”. your asking me if you would like it if you went elsewhere? as a matter of fact i would! so, we said, this is the only option available to you thru our funeral home using state aid, would you like to continue or think it over, etc……  they got up and walked out. SEE YA!       or so we thought…….damn! apparently they went to another funeral home and they gave them either the same price, wouldn’t accept state aid, or gave them a higher cost. direct cremation is what they ended up doing and they will be having a memorial service at a later date, elsewhere, i hope!

had another incident with cremation authorization a few days ago as well. you MUST be the next of kin to sign the cremation authorization. no if ands or buts about it. we have to trust whoever is sitting in front of us is being truthful. when you come in and say we would like a cremation. we ask who the next of kin is. many people don’t get the whole next of kin thing. you are not next of kin just because you have taken care of someone for the last 5, 10, 20 yrs! you are next of kin if you are the deceased spouse, if spouse is also deceased, then it is the oldest child, etc………if you lie about it and sign that cremation authorization and the next of kin surfaces one day or really anyone in the family who disagrees with the fact that you had that person cremated, you are in for some trouble. just letting you all be aware of this!

tootles