We're Back!

And it was a blast. We went some amazing places (Cozumel, Belize, Honduras, Costa Maya) and did some fantastic things, like exploring an underground cave and river system, zip-lining through the jungle, touring ancient Mayan ruins. It was fantastic and I loved everything about it, except having it end.

Vacation!

Saturday I leave for a 7 day cruise to Mexico. This will be the second cruise I've been on. The first was two years ago aboard the Carnival Fascination. That was a five day excursion to the Bahamas. This time we're on the Carnival Dream. My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed our first cruise, and we've decided that most of our vacations from now on will be cruises. I'm so looking forward to it.

Back To The Slowness

Work has slowed down once again. After a fairly normal March we are back to having nothing to do. Believe it or not, this is quite boring, because there are only so many times during the course of the week that you can dust the offices or mop the floors. The last time we were this slow the boss sent us out to paint one of his many buildings around town. Just a couple of weeks ago Returning Employee was spending his days taking care of yard work. I was spared because our other Director is out with shoulder surgery, and I needed to be available to meet people coming in our go out on a death call.

I Guess I Know What I'm Doing

Today I was flying solo. The owner took the day off, and the other director was off today. I am not very experienced at making complicated arrangements, so I was hoping nothing significant would occur. However, we got a death call last night. The arrangements were for embalming and shipping out of state. I can handle the embalming, which I finally got around to doing after some early chaos.

One of our previous calls required the cremation be performed and the urn ready this morning. I had to run to the crematory first thing this morning to pick up the ashes. I did that, put them in the urn and was preparing to embalm our new call. Just as I was getting the features set (closing the eyes and mouth), we had a death call. I was the only one available to go on the call, so I stopped what I was doing and made the removal. When I got back, the other director was there. He contacted the receiving funeral home and got the information we needed and I proceeded with the embalming. I set the features, raised the artery, mixed the fluid and started injecting. It all went well and the body turned out just fine. I performed a flawless heart tap (a process for draining blood directly from the heart rather than raising a vein) and got good distribution. After that, I booked the flight for tomorrow morning.

The owner came in late in the day just to check up on everything. I told him we had just put the body in the shipping container, but he was certainly welcome to check him out. My boss asked how the body looked, and I said he looked just fine. Then my boss said, "If you say he looks fine, then I don't need to see him." That blew me away. Normally he's a stickler for every body that goes out. So either he trusts me and my skills and judgement, or he's just not as focused as he used to be. I prefer to think the former.

Where Is Our Business?

I cannot believe how slow things have been recently. Normally this would be our busiest time of year, but for some reason our call volume has dropped. And it's not just us, it's everybody. As of yesterday morning the last body to be brought to the cooler was on the 27th of February, and that's with the crematory doing cremations for four places. In addition, all of our vendors are telling us things are slow all over, and they would be in a position to know, since they're in contact with funeral homes all over the state.

Our boss is getting kind of antsy, and we're scrambling to stay busy, especially when he's around. However, there are only so many times you can dust an office or vacuum a room during the course of a day. So yesterday the boss decides he wants to change the wallpaper in the secretary's office. So we spent all morning stripping wallpaper. What a mess that was. Thankfully, it was only one full wall, one half wall (below the chair rail) and a border. We got it stripped that morning, then in the afternoon we touched up the paint and made the surface ready to receive the new paper. That was being done today, and thankfully I was off. I'll see how it looks tomorrow when I go in to work.

Other than that, there's not a whole lot to report on. We had one funeral this week, on Wednesday, but it was a big one. We filled up the chapel and the overflow rooms, and our parking lot was full to bursting. Thankfully, we are in a situation where our parking lot joins the one next door, so we have plenty of room for overflow. The downside is we have to station people outside to direct traffic, or else they'll just end up parking on the grass, or in our unloading zone. It's very awkward to try to bring in a body when you're receiving door is surrounded by cars.

Success!

Our first electronic death certificate is complete. We pick it up from Vital Statistics tomorrow. It went surprisingly well. The doctor printed neatly and checked all the appropriate boxes, and we had no trouble finishing the certificate and forwarding it to the state. Just a couple of hours after sending it, we had cremation approval from the medical examiner and final certification. I hope they all go as smoothly.

Switching gears for a few moments, it seems customer service is dying. I called two different internet providers to see about getting us broadband (right now we use a laptop air-card). One company wanted an $1800 deposit to run the equipment to our location, and a three year contract at $109 per month. The other company said they are researching what it would take to run the equipment to our location, but the process is on hold and we may hear from them in 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 years. Wow. So I did some research and found a company in the nearby big city that specializes in wireless broadband. I emailed them for a quote, received a response that promised an answer within 4 hours during regular business hours, and never heard back at all. Pathetic.

First Electronic Death Certificate

Today we entered our first electronic death certificate. It was surprisingly easy, except when it came time to fax the record to the doctor, we were at a loss. It seems the tutorial and orientation never actually covered the process to do this. So we called the help desk and they pointed us in the right direction. We are currently waiting for the doctor to sign and fax it back to the system. We anticipate that happening tomorrow. After the doctor signs and faxes back, we take the information provided and enter it into the death certificate, then forward it to the state for approval. My only concern is reading some of these doctor's handwriting. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Tomorrow Is The Day

Tomorrow is the official kickoff of the Electronic Death Certificate system in our county. I'm curious to see how this will work out. Sometime tomorrow we should receive our access to the system, then we can fully understand what we'll be dealing with. I did go through the tutorials several times, but I don't know if any of my colleagues have. I'll keep you posted as to how it works out.

They're Here!

Meaning the Electronic Death Certificates. A training and orientation seminar is being held Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and of course none of my colleagues have bothered to prepare by going through the online tutorials. Our session is Tuesday afternoon. On the plus side, that means I'm indispensable since I'm the only one with any clue as to what's going on. The system will be implemented by the end of this week, most likely.

Friday was an interesting day. The owner left for the day at 11am, our other director also left at 11am for a funeral (not work, he had a death in the family), our errand guy and Returning Employee left at lunch. So for the rest of the day it was myself and our new administrative assistant.  I was going through the files, calling families to let them know death certificates and cremated remains were in, and I discovered that one of the families had ordered a plaque for the urn. Of course, no one had bothered to order it, so I ran to the trophy shop and placed the order. When I got back, I found out the family had come in and there was also supposed to be a memorial package, which had not been done. I quickly put that together, and they came back later to pick it up. It was very frustrating because these are the kinds of issues I used to deal with when my old boss was still around. He would make the arrangements, then let us "clean up" after him.

My Old Boss Is Still Pissing Me Off

Despite the fact he longer works with me, my old boss is managing to still piss me off. Today, a couple walked in asking for him. It seems he had given a seminar about preplanning a while back, and they were so impressed they only wanted to make arrangements with him. I tried to help them or see if the owner could help them, but they were bound and determined to only talk to my former boss. So I told them where he was working, and that they could find him there. So they left, and I assumed they went to find my old boss. Later in the day, our courier was at the crematory picking up ashes, and my old boss was gloating about how he wrote two prearrangements at $7,000.00 each because I was unable to "close the deal" when the couple came in.
What pisses me off is that it was not that I was unable to close the deal, it's that there was no deal to begin with. They were absolutely determined to speak only to him, and since he wasn't there, they left.