My Very Worst Job was at a funeral home when I was 19. It was during summer at college and I was actually working three jobs at the time: full time days answering phones at a law firm, part time at a department store and on-call at the funeral home. The funeral home was a family owned affair and housed in an older home. The offices and viewing rooms were on the first floor, the basement held the embalming room and other gross functions (the door opened off the kitchen area) and the upstairs was actually an apartment for the director (creepy, no?). They had a full time receptionist/office manager, but they did not want to pay her any overtime, so they had me on call for anytime there was an evening visitation. Someone had to man the phones and direct visitors to the restroom. Also I later found out that part of my duties would be to go into the visitation room (where there would be prepped bodies) and write down details about all the floral arrangements: who sent them and what they were. While I think this is a nice service the funeral home provides to the family, I certainly didn’t want to be the one who did it and it wasn’t in the job description.

I really had no training and wasn’t there very often, so the worst part was when the office manager went on a week long vacation and they asked me to fill in. I had to answer the phones, which wasn’t too bad, but then the director came in and needed me to send a newsletter to all the other locations. I had no idea how to even consider doing this. None of the other employees were helpful, as all of them hated their jobs but also had no clue what the office manager did or how she did it. There was a terrible video I had to watch about selling pre-paid burial plans and caskets and while I know this is a part of life (and death) it was just more than I bargained for. Then the director, who was a jerk and made me feel uncomfortable, took me upstairs to the apartment to show me some stuff that he easily could have brought down to the office. I was so nervous I didn’t comprehend any of it. I managed to muddle through the week, barely. The next time they called me to come in for a visitation, they woke me up from a nap and I mumbled, “I’m sorry, I can’t come in, I have to … do … something … else.” They never called me again.