I know, it’s been forever since I’ve posted. To be honest I haven’t had anything new to post about. I mean, I still have a lot of venting I can tell ya all about… that is the reason I started this blog years ago. I’ve got a lot of negative feedback for my bitching, so I tried to not complain so much but I thought, why am I letting others dictate what I want to say, so I’m not going to NOT bitch about what I want and need to. I can only complain so much to family and friends and co workers. My co workers all bitch about the same things. I know all jobs can be frustrating and I believe that letting yourself vent about it helps you deal with it better. So anyway, here are some things I wanted to say..
If you are not the beneficiary on a life insurance policy, you cannot assign the policy to the funeral home. If you are not the beneficiary on the policy and we do accept an assignment because the beneficiary did sign to authorize the assignment, no, we cannot somehow arrange for the portion that is due to the beneficiary to go to you instead! Whoever the beneficiary is will receive any amount due to them once the insurance company pays the funeral home. The funeral home only requests the amount of the charges for the funeral and that is all the insurance company sends the funeral home. Any amount that is left over is sent directly to the beneficiary listed on the policy! No, we cannot request it be mailed to anyone else. We have absolutely no control who the beneficiary is! The owner of the life insurance policy appoints a person to be beneficiary. Not us! It does not have to be a spouse or child, you can appoint anyone you wish, but again it is the owner of the policy! Even if you try to pull a fast one and somehow insert your address on the assignment with the beneficiaries signature, that check will still be made out to the beneficiary! If by some chance you do that and receive the check and you sign that person’s name, it’s illegal!
Also, if you want the funeral home to accept an assignment, do not call the insurance company before we do and tell them you are not doing a funeral home assignment because when we do call them, they will tell us that you have already called and stated that you are not assigning the policy to the funeral home. We have had quite a lot of people do this thinking that some how if they do this they are pulling a fast one on us. I guess they figure if they just tell us they have spoken to the insurance company and told them they would be assigning the policy to us that we just accept that.. no, we HAVE to contact them to get information from them.
Not all life insurance companies accept a funeral home assignment. This is why WE call the ins co. to verify that they will accept an assignment. It is no fault of the funeral home if the life insurance policy you have is not assignable. And no, we will not wait on the insurance company to pay you. Your bill is due by day of service, in full. I’m not saying all people are not trustworthy enough to pay us once they receive the check from the life insurance company, but we aren’t taking that chance. We’ve done it in the past only for it to bite us in the ass and we never hear from the family again, never get paid, from the very people who swear to God they will pay that bill as soon as they get that check. No amount of phone calls from us or bills we send them matter. It is not our fault, like I said, if they will not take an assignment and we are very up front with our families about how the process works usually BEFORE the family even comes into the funeral home to make arrangements. Some families will ask us upon calling about the life insurance or while we are on the phone discussing arrangement appointment we will let the family know that if they wish to bring in a policy we will contact them for them and possibly take an assignment if the insurance company allows one. It’s never a guarantee and we certainly do not lead you to believe it will be guaranteed. The amount of the policy is also not a guarantee. Sometimes, most of the time, the ins company will not release the amount the policy is worth to the funeral home. Sometimes there are loans out against the policy so the amount you think is available is not. Again, some ins companies will not release that info to us. If the funeral bill exceeds the amount of the policy, the family will owe the difference.
And here I go about food again, sorry… About a year ago there was a Facebook page that I use to follow. It was a funeral blogger who set up the page for others in the funeral industry and for those who are just simply interested in it. I am no longer on Facebook, so I’m not sure if the page even still exists, but anyway, the person who ran the page would post question/topics and everyone would answer or comment. There was a post about how every one felt about food at the funeral home during visitation. Of course I responded! I don’t recall my exact words but I know that I said I thought it was ridiculous how much attention is put on the food, how the food sometimes becomes the main focus, that the amount of food that is brought into the funeral home is absurd and that we do not allow crock pots or anything that requires to be kept warm or heated. That the families even have asked us if we have an oven/stove, microwave, plates, utensils, etc.. Well what I was unaware of is that in other parts of the country (U.S.), food is more than welcomed and even encouraged, mainly in the South. I of course received some negative comments but also some that agreed with me. My intentions were not to say that it should not be allowed anywhere, I was saying that “I” don’t like it, it is not encouraged at our funeral home and most funeral homes in my area. If you live someplace that encourages it, then fine, I don’t care, but where I am, it’s a nuisance and most of the funeral homes in my area feel the same. It’s not that we do not allow anything, but when families have to go overboard with having food catered in for during the visitation, well, no we don’t allow that. Sometime families do it anyway without asking and of course we don’t make them remove the food (unless it’s being kept warm with crock pots, steno plates, etc). We do not have a large facility and it becomes an issue. There is no room for it! People pack in and to be perfectly honest, most people make a mess. Maybe not on purpose, but they do. There are typically children who are not being watched as well and kids will make a mess. Who has to clean this mess? Our staff. People do not care about our facility. It’s a shame really that people have no consideration for our funeral home. We work very hard to keep it clean, to look nice for our families but in return many of those families or visitors of those families do not care to appreciate the work we put into keeping it nice, they do not have the common sense to see that their child or someone else’s child is spilling their juice on the furniture or dropping candy all over the floor that now others have stepped on and it is being tracked thru not only the lounge but in our chapels into our carpet. Ultimately this can be a reason our prices go up. And of course this is all just my opinion but it still boggles my mind why the family feels they have to have food for the people who are coming to visit/pay their respects to the deceased. I get that the family may want to have something while they are there all day, that’s fine but when you start bringing in bag after bag and coolers filled with beverages and ice and crock pots.. it’s just not necessary. As I’ve said before, it’s a funeral home not a restaurant not a banquet hall, not your home. We are not set up as a restaurant, banquet hall, bar, etc. When so much food is brought in, the space available becomes crowded, over crowded. There is more food than people. No room for people to sit and eat or drink. People then will take their food and stand or go to an area that is not designated for eating or drinking (we do not allow food or drink outside the lounge) and now we have people dropping crumbs and spilling things. To be honest, it’s aggravating and frustrating to have to tell a grown adult to please go into the lounge if they want to eat or drink, that you cannot have food anyplace else. I find most people do not like to be told they cannot eat or drink any other place and we receive rude remarks or the rolling of the eyes or the argument that there is no room in the lounge. Well, then there shouldn’t be that much food that over half the visitors are in the lounge! Again, these are my opinions and pet peeves. I know there are places, like I mentioned that don’t mind the food and that’s great, but we do mind. I also mind when the family asks us about if food is allowed and we tell them yes, but nothing that has to be kept warm and that we do recommend keeping what food you bring in simple. Snacks, fruits and veggies, sandwiches, subs, etc. and what do they show up with? Crock pots. Full dinners. And I suppose it’s because people fail to listen…. or they just don’t care.
When a family comes in to make arrangements, at some point we will ask if they want an obit it the paper and also let them know that we can post it on our website. I think these days most people go on line to read the news and check obits. When we gather the info from the family for the obit, we have our way of doing so. We of course will ask how they would like the deceased name to read, then the spouse of the deceased, wether the spouse is living or passed. Then comes any children and their spouse, siblings and their spouses (if they want the spouses listed), grandchildren, great grandchildren, nieces, nephew’s, etc… Typically when starting with the children we start with the oldest child first and go from there, same with siblings, grandchildren, and so on. We tell the family that is how it will read, that is our format. If the family prefers to write their own, that’s fine as well. There is no other reason we put someone’s name first, wether it be children, siblings, grandchildren, etc. We only go by oldest first. It does not mean that the first person listed is the one paying the funeral bill, it does not mean that person is in “charge”, it does not mean that person was liked more than anyone else! And we only have names of those people because that is what the family gave to us. We have NO idea if the family left someone out, wether on purpose or by mistake! We have NO idea if the family may have given us an incorrect spelling of a name. We only list who the family tells us to list. I cannot begin to count the number of times that we have received calls from relatives upset that their name is not in the obit, that a name is spelled wrong, why is so and so listed before this person, why isn’t this person listed!! And then they demand we change it. First off, why are you contacting us FIRST? Speak to your family, the ones who came in to make the arrangements and second, why are you so quick to blame the funeral home and be angry with us? And lastly, we aren’t going to change anything with out the ok from the person who is in charge aka informant. We also get families who bring in a photo for us to place with the obit. We DO NOT choose the photo, the family does. Many times families will pick an older photo of the deceased. Why, I don’t know, maybe that photo is sentimental to them, maybe it was the deceaseds favorite photo of themselves, we don’t know and to be perfectly honest, we don’t care. That is what we were given and told to use and that is what we do. Again, why do people ask us why WE chose to use that photo? “It looks nothing like them” “that’s an old photo, why are we using that”? Again, we did not pull that photo out of thin air… And further more what makes people think we are going to change anything because they want us to change It? Wouldn’t you be a bit upset if someone changed the obit or photo you wanted because a friend of the deceased called upset because they ‘feel’ a different photo should have been used instead of the one you chose?
Another thing that can be extremely irritating is when we have a funeral service at the funeral home and after the Priest, Pastor, Reverend, etc.. is done, the Director will then speak to everyone and give instructions. This will usually include any luncheon that will be held, if we are going in procession to cemetery or if we are just meeting at cemetery, the Director will also tell everyone that they will be given the opportunity to pass by the casket to pay your last respects and then please exit the funeral home and proceed to your vehicle, turn your bright head lights on and to please pay attention, as we will be leaving shortly and of course pay attention to the car ahead of you, stay close but a safe distance in the procession. Now, if there is no procession to the cemetery because this person will be cremated, the Director will still go thru all the announcements but instead of giving instructions on following in the procession, he/she will still let everyone pass by the casket one last time to pay your final respects and please exit the funeral (usually thru one of the doors in that particular chapel, which will be open at that point) as this does conclude ALL services. Once all friends and family have passed by the casket and exited the funeral home, we always allow immediate family their last few minutes. We close any doors to that chapel, inside and out as a way of giving them their privacy and also a way of letting it be known that you are not really welcome back into the chapel, so the family can have their privacy. So basically we are trying to get you to leave, get out of the funeral home without coming out and saying, “exit the funeral home and please do not come back in. For some reason people just have a hard time doing this. It never fails, people will exit out the chapel doors and walk right back in thru the front door. Of course some time it’s to use the restroom, but other times it’s just them standing around or they try to get back into the chapel. If we are leaving for the cemetery, you need to be in your car! We are on a schedule! Other times people will come back in and go into the lounge and stand around, eating or drinking or whatever. There is no reason to come back in! Also, if you were not asked to stay in the chapel with the family, by the family, don’t think you ‘should’ be in there. If you do try to go in, we will tell you no, you can’t. Of course I’ve been told several times that “I’m going in anyway”. There are those people who come back in then find out that the procession is getting ready to leave and then act rushed or as if they had no idea… I’ve had people in their cars get out of their cars to go talk to someone or come into funeral home to use restroom and they are holding everything up. We have also left without those people ! You are not special, so it’s always amazing when those very people get upset that the WHOLE procession did not wait for them. But, if there is no procession it seems as tho people just won’t leave? Why? They will walk right past the doors and just stand there. Doing nothing but being in the way. They can clearly see we are trying to wrap things up and give the family their time. Also, after the family has gone up and are done, we ask if they would like to stay while we close the casket. Some families choose to stay others do not. When they do not stay, we wait until they exit the funeral home to close the casket and those people who are ‘still lingering will ask why we aren’t closing the casket as if they feel we need to do so for them. I guess I’m just always amazed at how people feel they have a say in what goes on or how things should be done when they really aren’t anyone important to the family. Not just with them hanging around when they should be minding their own business but with anything funeral related. I’m sure most people feel as if they are “helping” the family, their intentions are good but really they just need to not concern themselves with it. Unless the family has asked you specifically for your help, then don’t ‘help! We really won’t release anything to anyone other than the next of kin or informant anyway. We have a list, a Funeral Day List that we will give to the family the evening prior to day of funeral and ask that they fill it out. On that list it asks for names of the Pall Bearers, the first few cars in the procession, name and address of the luncheon if there will be one and a section to list what needs to be removed from the casket before closing it and a section to list who is authorized to come back to the funeral home to pick up any flowers and any other family belongings such as the sign in book, photos and death certificates. So, if you come to the funeral home and say you want to pick up the flowers because you want to help the family, you are wasting your time if you are not on that Funeral Home List. I don’t care if you are their neighbor or friend for 30 years, if you are not on the list, you will not take anything!
If you do not have a priest, Pastor, etc… the funeral home will find one for you. So during the arrangement, we will tell you that we will call someone for you and once we find someone we will coordinate times. If you want your funeral service to start at say 11am, well, we will ask if the clergy is available at that time however, if he or she is not, we have to schedule around their availability. We will also post on our website that funeral service times are pending, until we get that time. So even tho you want it at 11am does not mean it will be at 11am, we will try, but it’s not a guarantee. So please do not begin telling your family friends it will be at the time you want! Please wait until you hear back from us. Do not post it on social media either until you have heard and confirmed times with us! Too many times people call and say that they read on Facebook that the service is at such and such time and we tell them no it’s not, it’s at this time, they ask US if we are sure!! YES I’m sure!! People/Families are too quick to decide when they want the funeral. Most likely the days you want will be fine and we will accommodate you but times are never a guarantee. Especially if you want a Mass at church. It is when the church is available and when clergy is available. You may want Mass at 10am on a Wednesday but we do not know if the Priest is available, if maybe there is another funeral mass scheduled thru another funeral home. These things need to be done at the time of arrangements and confirmed. So when you post days and times on Facebook, tons of people are going to see this and now they all have the wrong info and what happens is once we post it on our website or they maybe see it in the paper if you placed an obituary in the paper, they begin calling the funeral home. They question us about days and times and we tell them when it is….. they go into the story about how they read on Facebook or so and so saw it on Facebook and said it was this day ad time. Well, I’m sorry they posted the wrong info but I’m telling you when it is. Believe me!! I despise when I get asked, ‘Are you sure? YES, I’m sure!
Ok.. there is my venting, for now..
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