How did I end up as the manager at a funeral home?
I’ve got a degree in English from the local University. I’ve got experience with customers from restaurants, colleges, and a law office. I’ve worked with the creme de la creme and the cream of wheat. So how did I end up in charge of dead bodies?
To be fair, the bodies are already cremated and stored in a little drawer. But I’ve got the key. Or I know where the key is the few times it’s removed from the lock.
Let me back up.
I graduated from Oakland University in 2011 with a B.A. in English. At the time I was employed part-time at a warehouse owned by my deceased father’s good friend. Walking eight hours a day up and down filthy aisles picking filthier items for orders. ‘Adult novelties’ I told polite society. ‘Dildos and lube’ I told my friends. It was hot, cold, back-breaking, unstimulating, and awful. But it was money and I was desperate.
My father was the main wage earner in the family. We worked together in a series of upscale restaurants, Italian and Mexican (sometimes the same place). I was hostess, coat-check girl, busser, food-mover, and novice bartender: wherever I could fill in. Dad was the top bartender, old, smiling (at least where customers could see), and a pro.
Then he got sick. Friday night we went to work as normal. Saturday he called in sick and I went to my future in-laws anniversary party. By ten he was in the hospital for emergency surgery. Three months later he left not in an ambulance but in a body-shuttle.
That time is a story for another day.
While he lay in the hospital, he made me promise not to work at the restaurant: it was in the middle of Detroit, surrounded by danger. Our car was broken into once. I saw hookers walk the streets most nights when were left, blocks from the doors. I promised him. I’ve never been back.
My now-husband moved in with my mother and I not long after, shoring up the lopsided family as best he could. He works part-time as a manager at GameStop: not enough for us to live on. I had to get a job. Dad’s friend offered me a position in the warehouse and I took it.
I worked at the warehouse during college and a year and a half after, my lack of experience keeping me from landing another gig. I left when a nearby law firm hired me as a part-time data-entry and filing clerk. I ended up replacing the other gilr they had, learned how to be a paralegal, and learned a lot about mortgages.
I learned how to be a manager when my 37 year old supervisor died of a heart attack. We weren’t expecting it, even though she had heart issues. I blame the stress of the job: the night before she died she fell asleep in the office. I called the lawyer to report I couldn’t wake her and I was worried, but he brushed me off, saying he’d be by after I left to help.
He wasn’t there when I got the call the next day.
I hired a friend to help me out, since I was drowning in paperwork. I quit later that year, the lawyer’s bullshit superseding the need for money. I’d saved my money and we could live off it for three months. My fiancee was supportive, but I felt like shit. He’d been in a terrible job longer than I had without quitting. Who needed mental helth? I only had anixty attacks daily. I only got called an idiot daily. I only hated me job, life, and everything else daily.
So in November of 2013 I quit. A few months later the lawyer got investigated by the state for fraudulent practices. I gave them honest answers when the agents came knocking, and I haven’t seen them since. Karma.
Christmas came and went, no job in sight. The new year rolled in, and I was just as broke and beginning to get desperate. I’d had few interviews and sent out countless resumes. The most promising one was for Oakland County, where my aunt and cousin work in the jail. I applied for an administrative position, and hoped for the best. I was tested with about a hundred other applicants. My spirits drooped, though my scores had been exemplary and I’d been told positive things by HR. I didn’t want to go back to the warehouse. But my time and money were running out.
Then I had a call from the Elton Black and Son Funeral Home. They needed someone part time to manage the Pixley Funeral Home, literally 2 minutes from my house. I’d take phone calls, file paperwork, enter contracts, take money, print memorial folders, type burial permits, anything the funeral directors needed.
I told them all I wanted to do what help people. That I like helping people. They hired me at the interview.
So here I am, six months later. Wednesday I got back to Elton Black and Son: I’m switching locations with my supervisor. I’ll work 9-5, 4 days a week. Same hours, same money, same work, just a lot more of it. No more time to blog and internet surf when we’re free of decedents.
The Pixley is quiet most day. Today more than usual: the power went out last night. Tyrion (my chromebook) is charged, so I’m able to type while I wait for the day to end. Thirty more minutes. Then on to Shrek rehearsal, sleep, and repeat.
That’s my saga. Death leads to death leads to death. Death got me into the warehouse, death got me into management, and now I manage a place where we celebrate death. Or at least make it less messy.
