Spotlight: What I Do As a Funeral Home
Taking action after the death of a loved one is an inevitable part of life, and for some people it is also work. Funeral planners help grieving families cope with the frightening and possibly unexpected bureaucracy of death.
It’s easy to let your imagination run wild when portraying the work of a funeral director on a TV show depicting eerie drama in gothic funeral homes, but of course the truth is far more down-to-earth. (And more about paperwork than anything else.) To learn a little about how a funeral home works, we spoke to Jeff Jorgenson, who owns a funeral home in Seattle.
First, tell us a little about your job and how long you have been doing it.
I am the owner and funeral director of Elemental Cremation and Burial in Seattle. We opened in January 2012.
What prompted you to choose your career path?
When I was finishing my undergraduate and going to graduate school, I needed to find a job to cover the bills and go through the second half of my studies. I had experience working in restaurants and also in aviation. I didn’t want to go back to restaurants, and the aviation job market was very narrow. I took on what I thought was a temporary job selling cemetery property and pre-scheduled funerals, and fell in love with the industry.
How did you get a job? What kind of education and experience did you need?
The truth is, getting a job in the industry outside of funeral / embalming management is actually pretty straightforward. If you don’t mind ending up in a funeral home and have excellent customer service skills, there are many jobs available. In your current position, in Washington State, you need 1,800 hours of internship, 90 college credits, and 25 family arrangements to be licensed as a funeral director. The biggest hurdle people usually face is getting an education: people who want to be funeral directors are usually not the kind of people that academics love. After that, it can be difficult to find a funeral home that would like to accept you for the open position of funeral director.
Do you need any licenses or certificates?
A funeral home license is intended for organizing the disposal (cremation or burial) of the deceased. They are, so to speak, party organizers in the industry. Embalmers [are] preparing the body and require an embalming license to care for the deceased. For restaurant diners, these are “front of the house” and “back of the house”, respectively.
What are you doing besides what most people see? What do you actually spend most of your time on?
Most of the funeral work behind the scenes doesn’t sound like what people think. A funeral director may not see a dead person for months, and sometimes years, depending on the firm. The reality is that it is a lot of paperwork and document flow and outflow management for permits and death certificates. I would say that this is 10% of meetings with families to discuss the details of the agreements, and the remaining 90% are trying to manage the chain of events and paper.
What misconceptions do people often have about your job?
See above. Everyone seems to come up with their own little creepy descriptions of what we do. The reality is much less Victorian and darker. The emo / gothic set ends in disappointment.
What’s your average uptime? Did you have to be in touch or is it more like 9-5?
As an owner, it is 24 hours a day. As a funeral director, I try to keep this time as close to 9-5 as possible for myself and my team. Death does happen at any time of the day, so there are jobs that have different shifts, but funeral management and embalming follows the banker’s schedule pretty well.
What personal tips and shortcuts have made your job easier?
Abbreviations are a bad idea in the funeral industry, and I will officially say that trying to find and use them has really bad results. However, finding ways to improve efficiency with permissions and scheduling reduces a number of conflicts.
Emotionally, people who enter the industry have to be empathetic or they will make very bad funeral workers. The problem is, it’s easy to fall into a well of grief. Taking on the grief of the families you meet and interact with can be a really tough hurdle to overcome. People who come to this area must be prepared to find their boundaries, to be healthy and still be a good funeral director.
What are you doing differently from your colleagues or colleagues in the same profession? What are they doing instead?
This is a good question, and, to be honest, I have been alone for a long time, and I do not know how to answer it – as a funeral director. We do many things that are systematically different from other funeral homes, and our operations are quite unique in terms of our environmental standards and back office operations.
What’s the worst part of a job and how do you deal with it? I believe that helping grieving families comes with emotional losses, but also that helping them do so is part of the call.
It depends on the day, but usually the worst moments come when you are so busy that you make mistakes. The current systems, checks and balances, and chain of custody are very strict about the care of the deceased in almost every funeral home, so “big mistakes” are very rare in reputable businesses. Errors occur due to typos on death certificates or when planning with family. These are little things that may not matter in the general scheme of things, but at the time of someone’s death it is very unpleasant to have the wrong apartment number on the death certificate. Worst of all, these kinds of things undermine trust when you’ve done so many other things to make life easier for the family.
What is the most enjoyable part of the job?
I hug and thank the families I serve. It’s such a tremendous win when you made people’s lives better. I’ve never had another job that consistently rewards you in this way.
How much money can you expect at your job? Or what is the average starting salary?
This is a labor of love, because in this job you will never get rich. A funeral director can expect to earn anywhere from $ 32,000 to $ 60,000, depending on experience, license and location. 60 thousand dollars may even be too high. Funeral home owner? Ugh. for the first few years, you can pretty much count on not getting paid. After that … damn it, I’ll let you know when I get there.
How are you “progressing” in your field?
The difference between the bottom and the top (outside of large corporations) is quite small. From owner to funeral helper or relocator (handing over the bodies), there can be one or a maximum of two layers. Large corporations have about six of them. It sounds corny, but it is actually hard work and craftsmanship. Any work has a network and political component. [It’s] no different from any other industry in the way you climb the corporate ladder.
What do people underestimate / overestimate in what you do?
I believe that people overestimate caring for the dead. There is nothing mystical, difficult, dangerous, or surprising in caring for the dead. Anyone can do it. The problem is they don’t have the tools to transport and cool. I think people underestimate the ability of funeral directors to do things effectively. Everyone has a schedule that they think is realistic, and often people want us to move huge mountains to get things done, but they think that’s the way it is – that their expectations are real (for example, dad died today, and we want his ashes. tomorrow). I think if I need a home, I can pick it up and move in next week, but if you talk to a real estate agent or escrow officer, they might give you a slightly different perspective.
What advice would you give to those who want to become your profession?
Read this blog post and continue your further research. This business is probably not at all what you think, so you need to keep your head straight and have realistic expectations. This isn’t some gothic horror criminologist. Shocking friends is not a profession. It is an opportunity to help people cope with the bureaucracy of death. That if you take a step back and think about it, this is a great opportunity to allow people to experience grief and healing without worrying about doing their own thing.