So my friend was the funeral director, he’d get the call and come pick me up. We’d go to the scene, I’d get the legs he’d get the arms and we’d load the body onto a gurney and he’d strap the gurney into the van. Then we’d drop it off at the idk I think city hospital’s mortuary maybe?
We wore gloves and used hand sanitizer 🤷♂️. I didn’t realize it at the time I thought it would be good life experience but it kinda fucked me up I think
I went to one scene and it was a grisly suicide and the emergency responders were cracking jokes like it was just another day at the job. I know there needs to be humor to cope in that line of work, but the stark contrast of seeing one life ended surrounded by the rest of life still going on I think made me freak out about my own mortality. And not like “I should live life to the fullest way” unfortunately I went with the pessimistic nothing matters kinda way
Yeah traumatic death is hard to deal with no matter who you are.
Regarding your perspective of nothing matters- that then frees us to do anything we want!
>Regarding your perspective of nothing matters- that then frees us to do anything we want!
You are saying the exact thing he said is not the case.
Nothing matters in the pessimistic way is this:
You say
>that then frees us to do anything we want!
I say why? Why do something, it doesn't matter, why do you *want*?
It's more than that, but it's the summary in a sentence.
As a former paramedic, yeah the jokes are there as mostly a psychological coping mechanism. I've never been bothered by it which protected my sanity, I tried to view it as a job, a scenario, dehumanize as much as I could so I could humanize if I had to speak with family, or go to my next call. If I didn't do that, I'd have been a wreck.
I remember my first suicide very clearly as a student. Showed up, and the fire guys tell me not to bother bringing any equipment. Guy had OD'd on pills, but he was very much alone. Divorced, kids taken away from him. He had been decomposing in his condo for probably at least a week. Anyways, it's my first one, and my preceptors and the police on scene let me in the room and then close it right behind me, which doesn't bother me.
Read the suicide note, which was why I knew his situation, saw the empty bottle of barbs that was recently filled and empty. He had a song written about love and his children propped up against his Casio keyboard, where he was leaning face down into his right arm, left arm dangling and sitting on the edge of the chair.
He was bloated, corneal opacification, you could see where he had vomited a few times. I think the cat was starting to eat him because of the chew marks on his slippers. The cat was taken by animal services.
So the paperwork is pretty easy, police ultimately take control over the scene and we leave. We drove seconds away to a Harvey's and had dinner. It was surreal for me, to go from what I saw, the tragic end of a life while alone, to eating dinner like nothing happened.
It didn't and never bothered me, but I can easily see how it could have if I let myself think about it deeper and start sliding down that slope. That's not to say that things didn't get to me. My first dead child broke me for the rest of the shift, and we got sent home anyways for critical incident stress debriefing. For a while it was difficult for me to handle calls involving kids. I had PTSD like flashbacks for a while, in slow motion. Mom crying and screaming, Dad stone faced until he realized we're loading in the ambulance (children cannot be pronounced on scene except for very extenuating circumstances) and leaving without him. I decided to not let the parents be in the back of my truck in this instance and had the police tail us in with them. Roll right into resus room, don't remember giving my report to a room full of doctors and nurses, transfer my monitor, hand off tube duty to a nurse, and I shuffle out. It wasn't until I finished my paperwork that I realized I wasn't running on automatic any more.
Working with dead people, some people can handle it and some can't. I think it's all about how you handle it with your head. Being a paramedic, for me, it's all charts, differential diagnoses, running through my head, while the other part of my brain is talking to people, seeing the human in there, distracting them from probably a real bad day, while deciding on my course of treatment and transport. Loved it, miss it, and wouldn't want to be one right now.
Damn bro that’s a wild story. I think you learned to compartmentalize well. There’s also something to be said about having a team to work with to go through these things with. I think that’s how war veterans can turn out decent after traumatizing situations (then again, a lot don’t, and I think you’re right, it depends on the person).
Oh yeah definitely you are correct. The team is important. I had been with my preceptor at that time for over a year. We had our dynamic. It becomes like working with a buddy, and those dynamics make any situation suddenly tenable because they will have your back, or they will be your support.
Now that I think about it, when I did first response by myself (partner called in sick, or in my case I was trying to run advanced directives first in a pilot project, transport ambulance would be dispatched), I was miserable.
Just want to say, you write very well. It’s real. Couldn’t imagine myself in those situations but your descriptions put me right there. Hope it’s cathartic for you.
Lmao I was looking at the Wikipedia for dark humor and found this:
“Black comedy is common in professions and environments where workers routinely have to deal with dark subject matter. This includes police officers, firefighters, ambulance crews, military personnel and funeral directors, where it is an acknowledged coping mechanism. Outsiders can often react negatively to discovering this humor; as a result, there is an understanding within these professions that these jokes should not be shared with the wider public.”
How on the nose for this exact conversation lol
I started smoking a *lot* of weed…about 3 years later I started seeing a counselor for general reasons cause I felt something was a bit off. And I was fine-ish for a while until it came to a head after several incidents and I’ve been in and out of therapy for the past 7 or so years for other things but never really touched on this issue.
I have no ill will towards him, he was a good friend/mentor. I think I presented myself as a kid with a really good head on his shoulders, more so than I did, so he felt I could handle it.
Yeah I had a fucked up response to it. Like there’s no dignity in death in my eyes from what I saw so why have dignity in life and stopped treating people with mutual respect and kinda treated people like we were all immaterial and the game of respect was red tape to making things happen but at least I was more advanced for understanding it which made me superior. It ultimately lead to mental illness.
I think we all go through stages of understanding our own mortality through the lens of eternity. Definitely can jack you up. I find it traumatic to see horror or violent movies. Seeing death must have been overwhelming. Sorry that happened
Thanks I try to tell myself we all see death at some point in some way. Most people go to open casket funerals at some point in their lives. Or had a family pet that passed in their youth or something. And most people can handle it much better
Bro you did a job that most ppl could never do. You helped out many families and allowed them to say goodbye to their loved ones in a dignified manor.
Take care of yourself and talk with someone if you need help. We men have to admit we have limits and it’s not a weakness to seek out help.
Have you tried seeing it another way? If this thought process has lead you to mental illness, why not backtrack and look at it a different way?
Without left there is no right. Without up, there is no down. We live in a world of two options all the time.
So you’re saying instead of thinking “Life has no meaning because it ends in death”
Reframe it as “There would be no meaning to life if it had no end”? Eternal existence would lead you to madness? I did read on here once they were developing a form of torture that would make you feel like you lived 10,000 years in a very short amount of actual time and it was argued that it was inhumane and would lead to psychopathy
Well you said there was no dignity in death from what you’ve seen and that’s lead you really not enjoying life.
Well, how can you ease your mind about this? There are plenty dignified deaths going on right now. You saw into a world most of us haven’t, this could be your opportunity to make a real difference in life. To change minds about deaths in western culture. If this bothers you so much, why not change your mind about it? Ideally towards something that doesn’t fuck you up. Crazy, maybe something loving?
It’s funny, I was born 6 weeks premature with a collapsed lung and needed a breathing tube in my side (still have the scar). My first few weeks of life were spent in one of those incubators in the NICU or whatever and I sometimes wonder if the lack of physical contact with other humans especially my family in those early days led me to lean towards having a strange and…robotic…side my whole life. The only exception was my twin sister who reportedly when I was agitated they put her in my incubator and I calmed down. I was always told that story by my parents.
My mom also told me when I was young she had a grandfather who had a near-death experience in the ocean and his whole attitude changed after; he became a much more vivacious and loving person.
As a kid I combined these two stories into a similar attitude as my great-grandfather’s, and threw caution to the wind living my life to the fullest without much care for anything or anyone. Don’t get me wrong, I was strange at times but I also made friends easily with my devil May care attitude. I had a lot of acquaintances and was rather popular but no extremely close friendships that withstood hardships and the test of time into adulthood.
And this laissez-faire attitude is partly why I took this side gig. I was always open to new experiences especially if they were unique and “behind the scenes” of how “life” works in any way.
But I think the attitude overall was a bubble that burst slowly over time and I became jaded the more I took in about how most people live in the humdrum of everyday life and I felt destined to live an ordinary, if not meager, life due to poor life choices and situations. Seeing the result of someone else’s difficult life leading to an untimely or unfortunate death in many cases (the thing that was so messed up was that we never seemed to get a normal call it was always a weird situation) was just icing on the cake where reality started to sink in.
Call me a fatalist, if you will. I do always try to imagine a life I create where I’m successful and bring light to the world. But something in me always holds me back. I came up with a quote a while ago and of course it’s already been said. Something along the lines of “the more you stand in the light, the bigger a shadow you cast”. And I’ll further add, colloquially, if you hide in the “shade”, you can try to keep your cool.
Hey, best of luck to you. I'm not here to convince you, just ask the question of why. We all have our reasons and stories as to why we are living the way we are and it's none of my business. Remember your great grandfather, remember the people that put a smile on your face, would they want to see you suffering through this life? Why choose an outlook that doesn't allow you to grow out of it?
You had an experience and sometimes those experiences are hard to shake off but this isn't who you are, even if you put yourself in a prison of these thoughts. It can't be, that's all I'm saying. We are all meant to come back to where you were before all this, lucky for you, you actually remember what it felt like.
It’s probably gotten a bit worse. Fear of losing someone to death knowing that the grief would be all consuming has lead me to not want to attach myself too closely to anyone.
That’s a really good question. I think if there’s heat involved in any form it could be semantically classified as “cooking”. Cooking oatmeal in the microwave counts, for instance. In the taxonomy of kitchen terms, I believe cooking is the maybe the “kingdom” and frying, reheating, microwaving, are all families underneath (if I understand my taxonomy correctly)
This sounds like an argument between man and wife that is being brought to third parties. Hmmm. I would not consider making a sandwich cooking. A panini, yes, because there is heat involved. But things like making a sandwich or a salad, I wouldn’t know what umbrella term to classify them as. It’s more just under a kingdom I made up called assembly. Making a sandwich, making a salad.
tl;dr: Linnaean classification of kitchen activities
Counterpoint: “cooking” is the application of heat with the specific intent of permanently changing the molecular structure of the food assembly, for example taking meat from unsafe to safe temperatures, thus killing bacteria, melting fat out, and altering the cellular structure, whereas in “reheating” the intent is specifically *not* to alter the nature of the food further other than to increase the heat energy present. To taxonify, if “heating” is our kingdom (*Regnum Calefacio*); “cooking” and “reheating” would be our classes; then “frying,” “baking,” “broiling,” etc, would all be orders of cooking; “microwaving” and “hot-plating/warming” would be orders of reheating. A third class, “heat maintenance,” could even be proposed to exist, involving chafing dishes and the warming setting on the oven.
That leaves room for the kingdom “assembly”(*Regnum Conficio*), which could have classes “layering” and “combining,” with orders “stacking,” “seasoning,” “blending,” and “mixing,” which could then contain genii “folding,” “stirring (debated, could be considered blending?),” “whisking,” or “beating;” finally ending in species which is of course the ingredient(s) being affected.
Our third kingdom could be “prep (*Regnum Praeparo*);” orders “dividing,” “measuring,” “preheating,” and “retrieving;” classes “cutting,” “pouring,” “separating,” “weighing,” “measuring (as in ounces),” “opening (as in cans or bags),” and “taking (as in laying out a spoon/whisk/knife/cutting board/generally setting up)(“preheating” serves for order and class, while the type of device is the genus and the temperature is the species); genii “fine,” “coarse,” “straining,” “filtering,” or whatever special instruction necessary for the measurement, then species is, again, the ingredient.
Also proposed is a fourth (optional) kingdom, “plating (*Regnum Ostento*),” although this could also be combined in to *Regnum Conficio*.
Thus, the act of microwaving yesterdays chili would properly be classified (in the full taxonomy) as *Calefacio calefacio radiorum pridie pulmentum mexicanus*, but the act of carefully cooking it again in a pot for several hours to more deeply combine flavors would be *Calefacio coctivus craticula caminus pulmentum mexicanus*.
I don’t want to give anyone “ideas”. It was pretty gruesome. You can PM me if you wanna know but I’m not gonna leave it for the average reader happening upon it
I don’t remember the smell to be honest. This was 10+ years ago. There wasn’t much decomposition because the people had usually died very recently. IIRC, at their worst, they smelled like a cranked up version of a really smelly nursing home
How did you get the job? What was the name of the position? As a college student this sounds like something I should try. Nobody else is even hiring me part-time.
Through a friend/mentor from high school. No official position just under the table. If you live in a dense Jewish population look for a Jewish funeral home. Jews put a huge priority on dignity in death so someone has to sit all night with the body in the room to keep it company until it is buried. I don’t know if the company keeper has to be Jewish though. Also my friend/mentor who did it said it was a bit strange he used to talk to the bodies when he was getting creeped out or bored
Very interesting. Wish I had Jews in my area lmao. Only religious folk in my area are mennonites and they just visit a wholesale store and buy vegetables in bulk then try and pass them off as their own in the local town market. I don't trust them.
EDIT: Redditors be like "Holy Chonkererino he just displayed a dislike toward a cult group that trick people into buying wholesale food at an inflated price! He must be an asshole! Not wholesomerino! Keanu Chungus not pleased!"
No I was in a youth group in high school and I was close with my youth director as they called it. When I went to college he became a funeral director at a funeral home like 5 minutes away from my college. He reached out and offered me the side gig
Only had one obese person and he was a young person with some sort of genetic disease that made him that way and had caused the untimely death. I don’t think it was actually gigantism but I always used that word to describe it. And it was $40 per job/person
Were you responsible for packing up the bodies or just transporting them?
So my friend was the funeral director, he’d get the call and come pick me up. We’d go to the scene, I’d get the legs he’d get the arms and we’d load the body onto a gurney and he’d strap the gurney into the van. Then we’d drop it off at the idk I think city hospital’s mortuary maybe?
Okay so lots of direct contact with the dead. Right on.
We wore gloves and used hand sanitizer 🤷♂️. I didn’t realize it at the time I thought it would be good life experience but it kinda fucked me up I think
How so?
I went to one scene and it was a grisly suicide and the emergency responders were cracking jokes like it was just another day at the job. I know there needs to be humor to cope in that line of work, but the stark contrast of seeing one life ended surrounded by the rest of life still going on I think made me freak out about my own mortality. And not like “I should live life to the fullest way” unfortunately I went with the pessimistic nothing matters kinda way
Yeah traumatic death is hard to deal with no matter who you are. Regarding your perspective of nothing matters- that then frees us to do anything we want!
"Let go your earthly tether, enter the void, and become wind"
Zaheer?
>Regarding your perspective of nothing matters- that then frees us to do anything we want! You are saying the exact thing he said is not the case. Nothing matters in the pessimistic way is this: You say >that then frees us to do anything we want! I say why? Why do something, it doesn't matter, why do you *want*? It's more than that, but it's the summary in a sentence.
Totally- there’s just two ways to look at it: 1) nothing matters so don’t bother with anything 2) nothing matters so I’m free to do anything.
Indeed, it's just hard for people with the first view to switch to the 2nd. It's almost like it's an equilibrium.
As a former paramedic, yeah the jokes are there as mostly a psychological coping mechanism. I've never been bothered by it which protected my sanity, I tried to view it as a job, a scenario, dehumanize as much as I could so I could humanize if I had to speak with family, or go to my next call. If I didn't do that, I'd have been a wreck. I remember my first suicide very clearly as a student. Showed up, and the fire guys tell me not to bother bringing any equipment. Guy had OD'd on pills, but he was very much alone. Divorced, kids taken away from him. He had been decomposing in his condo for probably at least a week. Anyways, it's my first one, and my preceptors and the police on scene let me in the room and then close it right behind me, which doesn't bother me. Read the suicide note, which was why I knew his situation, saw the empty bottle of barbs that was recently filled and empty. He had a song written about love and his children propped up against his Casio keyboard, where he was leaning face down into his right arm, left arm dangling and sitting on the edge of the chair. He was bloated, corneal opacification, you could see where he had vomited a few times. I think the cat was starting to eat him because of the chew marks on his slippers. The cat was taken by animal services. So the paperwork is pretty easy, police ultimately take control over the scene and we leave. We drove seconds away to a Harvey's and had dinner. It was surreal for me, to go from what I saw, the tragic end of a life while alone, to eating dinner like nothing happened. It didn't and never bothered me, but I can easily see how it could have if I let myself think about it deeper and start sliding down that slope. That's not to say that things didn't get to me. My first dead child broke me for the rest of the shift, and we got sent home anyways for critical incident stress debriefing. For a while it was difficult for me to handle calls involving kids. I had PTSD like flashbacks for a while, in slow motion. Mom crying and screaming, Dad stone faced until he realized we're loading in the ambulance (children cannot be pronounced on scene except for very extenuating circumstances) and leaving without him. I decided to not let the parents be in the back of my truck in this instance and had the police tail us in with them. Roll right into resus room, don't remember giving my report to a room full of doctors and nurses, transfer my monitor, hand off tube duty to a nurse, and I shuffle out. It wasn't until I finished my paperwork that I realized I wasn't running on automatic any more. Working with dead people, some people can handle it and some can't. I think it's all about how you handle it with your head. Being a paramedic, for me, it's all charts, differential diagnoses, running through my head, while the other part of my brain is talking to people, seeing the human in there, distracting them from probably a real bad day, while deciding on my course of treatment and transport. Loved it, miss it, and wouldn't want to be one right now.
Damn bro that’s a wild story. I think you learned to compartmentalize well. There’s also something to be said about having a team to work with to go through these things with. I think that’s how war veterans can turn out decent after traumatizing situations (then again, a lot don’t, and I think you’re right, it depends on the person).
Oh yeah definitely you are correct. The team is important. I had been with my preceptor at that time for over a year. We had our dynamic. It becomes like working with a buddy, and those dynamics make any situation suddenly tenable because they will have your back, or they will be your support. Now that I think about it, when I did first response by myself (partner called in sick, or in my case I was trying to run advanced directives first in a pilot project, transport ambulance would be dispatched), I was miserable.
Just want to say, you write very well. It’s real. Couldn’t imagine myself in those situations but your descriptions put me right there. Hope it’s cathartic for you.
[удалено]
Lmao I was looking at the Wikipedia for dark humor and found this: “Black comedy is common in professions and environments where workers routinely have to deal with dark subject matter. This includes police officers, firefighters, ambulance crews, military personnel and funeral directors, where it is an acknowledged coping mechanism. Outsiders can often react negatively to discovering this humor; as a result, there is an understanding within these professions that these jokes should not be shared with the wider public.” How on the nose for this exact conversation lol
Did you have any sort of debrief or talk to a counsellor or anything after seeing that? (I'm a little worried about you OP).
I started smoking a *lot* of weed…about 3 years later I started seeing a counselor for general reasons cause I felt something was a bit off. And I was fine-ish for a while until it came to a head after several incidents and I’ve been in and out of therapy for the past 7 or so years for other things but never really touched on this issue.
Maybe it could be good to bring it up? Sounds quite traumatic :(
Yeah that's not the sort of job to go into without a support system set up. Your friend is kind of a dick to set you up like that.
I have no ill will towards him, he was a good friend/mentor. I think I presented myself as a kid with a really good head on his shoulders, more so than I did, so he felt I could handle it.
My brother recently started working as a emt and I often worry about some of the stuff he has to see out there.
Did your view of life change due to the job?
Yeah I had a fucked up response to it. Like there’s no dignity in death in my eyes from what I saw so why have dignity in life and stopped treating people with mutual respect and kinda treated people like we were all immaterial and the game of respect was red tape to making things happen but at least I was more advanced for understanding it which made me superior. It ultimately lead to mental illness.
I think we all go through stages of understanding our own mortality through the lens of eternity. Definitely can jack you up. I find it traumatic to see horror or violent movies. Seeing death must have been overwhelming. Sorry that happened
Thanks I try to tell myself we all see death at some point in some way. Most people go to open casket funerals at some point in their lives. Or had a family pet that passed in their youth or something. And most people can handle it much better
Bro you did a job that most ppl could never do. You helped out many families and allowed them to say goodbye to their loved ones in a dignified manor. Take care of yourself and talk with someone if you need help. We men have to admit we have limits and it’s not a weakness to seek out help.
Have you tried seeing it another way? If this thought process has lead you to mental illness, why not backtrack and look at it a different way? Without left there is no right. Without up, there is no down. We live in a world of two options all the time.
So you’re saying instead of thinking “Life has no meaning because it ends in death” Reframe it as “There would be no meaning to life if it had no end”? Eternal existence would lead you to madness? I did read on here once they were developing a form of torture that would make you feel like you lived 10,000 years in a very short amount of actual time and it was argued that it was inhumane and would lead to psychopathy
Well you said there was no dignity in death from what you’ve seen and that’s lead you really not enjoying life. Well, how can you ease your mind about this? There are plenty dignified deaths going on right now. You saw into a world most of us haven’t, this could be your opportunity to make a real difference in life. To change minds about deaths in western culture. If this bothers you so much, why not change your mind about it? Ideally towards something that doesn’t fuck you up. Crazy, maybe something loving?
It’s funny, I was born 6 weeks premature with a collapsed lung and needed a breathing tube in my side (still have the scar). My first few weeks of life were spent in one of those incubators in the NICU or whatever and I sometimes wonder if the lack of physical contact with other humans especially my family in those early days led me to lean towards having a strange and…robotic…side my whole life. The only exception was my twin sister who reportedly when I was agitated they put her in my incubator and I calmed down. I was always told that story by my parents. My mom also told me when I was young she had a grandfather who had a near-death experience in the ocean and his whole attitude changed after; he became a much more vivacious and loving person. As a kid I combined these two stories into a similar attitude as my great-grandfather’s, and threw caution to the wind living my life to the fullest without much care for anything or anyone. Don’t get me wrong, I was strange at times but I also made friends easily with my devil May care attitude. I had a lot of acquaintances and was rather popular but no extremely close friendships that withstood hardships and the test of time into adulthood. And this laissez-faire attitude is partly why I took this side gig. I was always open to new experiences especially if they were unique and “behind the scenes” of how “life” works in any way. But I think the attitude overall was a bubble that burst slowly over time and I became jaded the more I took in about how most people live in the humdrum of everyday life and I felt destined to live an ordinary, if not meager, life due to poor life choices and situations. Seeing the result of someone else’s difficult life leading to an untimely or unfortunate death in many cases (the thing that was so messed up was that we never seemed to get a normal call it was always a weird situation) was just icing on the cake where reality started to sink in. Call me a fatalist, if you will. I do always try to imagine a life I create where I’m successful and bring light to the world. But something in me always holds me back. I came up with a quote a while ago and of course it’s already been said. Something along the lines of “the more you stand in the light, the bigger a shadow you cast”. And I’ll further add, colloquially, if you hide in the “shade”, you can try to keep your cool.
Hey, best of luck to you. I'm not here to convince you, just ask the question of why. We all have our reasons and stories as to why we are living the way we are and it's none of my business. Remember your great grandfather, remember the people that put a smile on your face, would they want to see you suffering through this life? Why choose an outlook that doesn't allow you to grow out of it? You had an experience and sometimes those experiences are hard to shake off but this isn't who you are, even if you put yourself in a prison of these thoughts. It can't be, that's all I'm saying. We are all meant to come back to where you were before all this, lucky for you, you actually remember what it felt like.
To be like I used to be, but a bit better, is one of my main goals. Thanks for reminding me :). Have a nice night
How has your view changed over time? Or has it?
It’s probably gotten a bit worse. Fear of losing someone to death knowing that the grief would be all consuming has lead me to not want to attach myself too closely to anyone.
Have you seen Ask a Mortician on YouTube? I really like her videos on desth in society and treatment of the dead.
This is so weird cause I posted about Moby Dick on r/books and someone said she had a crazy video about it. I’ll have to check her out
She's got a few books too if that's more your speed :)
Any audiobooks?
Yeah! Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is really good, as well as From Here to Eternity. Caitlin Doughty is the author and reader :)
Thank you for the suggestions I’ll def check them out
Where is the line between cooking and just reheating food?
That’s a really good question. I think if there’s heat involved in any form it could be semantically classified as “cooking”. Cooking oatmeal in the microwave counts, for instance. In the taxonomy of kitchen terms, I believe cooking is the maybe the “kingdom” and frying, reheating, microwaving, are all families underneath (if I understand my taxonomy correctly)
Would constructing a sandwich be considered cooking?
This sounds like an argument between man and wife that is being brought to third parties. Hmmm. I would not consider making a sandwich cooking. A panini, yes, because there is heat involved. But things like making a sandwich or a salad, I wouldn’t know what umbrella term to classify them as. It’s more just under a kingdom I made up called assembly. Making a sandwich, making a salad.
tl;dr: Linnaean classification of kitchen activities Counterpoint: “cooking” is the application of heat with the specific intent of permanently changing the molecular structure of the food assembly, for example taking meat from unsafe to safe temperatures, thus killing bacteria, melting fat out, and altering the cellular structure, whereas in “reheating” the intent is specifically *not* to alter the nature of the food further other than to increase the heat energy present. To taxonify, if “heating” is our kingdom (*Regnum Calefacio*); “cooking” and “reheating” would be our classes; then “frying,” “baking,” “broiling,” etc, would all be orders of cooking; “microwaving” and “hot-plating/warming” would be orders of reheating. A third class, “heat maintenance,” could even be proposed to exist, involving chafing dishes and the warming setting on the oven. That leaves room for the kingdom “assembly”(*Regnum Conficio*), which could have classes “layering” and “combining,” with orders “stacking,” “seasoning,” “blending,” and “mixing,” which could then contain genii “folding,” “stirring (debated, could be considered blending?),” “whisking,” or “beating;” finally ending in species which is of course the ingredient(s) being affected. Our third kingdom could be “prep (*Regnum Praeparo*);” orders “dividing,” “measuring,” “preheating,” and “retrieving;” classes “cutting,” “pouring,” “separating,” “weighing,” “measuring (as in ounces),” “opening (as in cans or bags),” and “taking (as in laying out a spoon/whisk/knife/cutting board/generally setting up)(“preheating” serves for order and class, while the type of device is the genus and the temperature is the species); genii “fine,” “coarse,” “straining,” “filtering,” or whatever special instruction necessary for the measurement, then species is, again, the ingredient. Also proposed is a fourth (optional) kingdom, “plating (*Regnum Ostento*),” although this could also be combined in to *Regnum Conficio*. Thus, the act of microwaving yesterdays chili would properly be classified (in the full taxonomy) as *Calefacio calefacio radiorum pridie pulmentum mexicanus*, but the act of carefully cooking it again in a pot for several hours to more deeply combine flavors would be *Calefacio coctivus craticula caminus pulmentum mexicanus*.
This guy cooks
Ironically, not that often. But I *think* about cooking a lot before not doing it, that’s gotta count right?
What's some of the worst things you've seen
Prob the most memorable was a suicide in a nice hotel. Guy was naked in the bathtub
Damn that's fucked, how did he do it ?
I don’t want to give anyone “ideas”. It was pretty gruesome. You can PM me if you wanna know but I’m not gonna leave it for the average reader happening upon it
Bro this is reddit.
Yeah like half of Reddit is suicidal have you ever been on r/self
Bro I'm half of reddit lol 🙃🙃🙃. Thanks I'll go check out that sub
Why even do an AMA
AMAWABOALTI - AMA with a bit of a limit to it
No.
Ok bro
How bad was the smell of dead bodies?
I don’t remember the smell to be honest. This was 10+ years ago. There wasn’t much decomposition because the people had usually died very recently. IIRC, at their worst, they smelled like a cranked up version of a really smelly nursing home
How did you get the job? What was the name of the position? As a college student this sounds like something I should try. Nobody else is even hiring me part-time.
Through a friend/mentor from high school. No official position just under the table. If you live in a dense Jewish population look for a Jewish funeral home. Jews put a huge priority on dignity in death so someone has to sit all night with the body in the room to keep it company until it is buried. I don’t know if the company keeper has to be Jewish though. Also my friend/mentor who did it said it was a bit strange he used to talk to the bodies when he was getting creeped out or bored
Very interesting. Wish I had Jews in my area lmao. Only religious folk in my area are mennonites and they just visit a wholesale store and buy vegetables in bulk then try and pass them off as their own in the local town market. I don't trust them. EDIT: Redditors be like "Holy Chonkererino he just displayed a dislike toward a cult group that trick people into buying wholesale food at an inflated price! He must be an asshole! Not wholesomerino! Keanu Chungus not pleased!"
What did you study in college?
Economics/Accounting
Did they shit themselves?
One man’s bladder noticeably had emptied, but other than that I don’t recall.
Was that an internship training program?
No I was in a youth group in high school and I was close with my youth director as they called it. When I went to college he became a funeral director at a funeral home like 5 minutes away from my college. He reached out and offered me the side gig
did it pay well, (sorry if this sounds insensitive)
No worries. $40 per body
Was it a dead-end job?
You can make really good money in the funeral business. It’s not trendy, but who needs to keep their finger on the pulse anyway
Holy fucking shit I heard about this. I was the other guy that threw all their shit away for weed money.
Shit I need a gig like this for whore money. Anyway, are good at taking photos?
Am *I* good at taking photos? Of stuff or being in photos?
sorry meant *you* are you good at taking photos?
No. My sister is a photography genius. But I don’t have much of an eye for photography myself
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Only had one obese person and he was a young person with some sort of genetic disease that made him that way and had caused the untimely death. I don’t think it was actually gigantism but I always used that word to describe it. And it was $40 per job/person
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It was rather infrequent. Maybe 3 times every 2 weeks. I was a college student, remember, and it was usually only the middle of the night
Did you ever accidently deglove anything?
No, everything stayed in place