Working at the Morgue Seems Pretty Good

I think it’s a job that offers some unique perks

I think that complaining a little bit can be a positive thing. I don’t think it’s good or healthy to be a whiny ass, but a little bit of complaining can help you vent your frustrations, put things into perspective and so on. And I also think that enjoying a little down-time in your life, just relaxing once in a while, can be good too.

But if you’re talking about your job, you can often catch some crap by complaining or gloating about such things.

For instance, if you complain about how you have too much work to do, people tend to tell you that you shouldn’t complain about that; it just means that business is good. You should be happy about that! It’s good for job security, likelihood of pay raises and so on, so don’t complain! Such responses really take the fun and pleasure out of complaining.

Likewise if you gloat a tiny bit and tell someone that you’ve had a really relaxing time at the office, with very little work to do. Then they tend to say that you shouldn’t be happy about that, telling you that you’re just being lazy and that you should look for some career advancement if your current job is too easy. Again very irritating responses, taking all the fun out of being lazy.

But imagine if you work at a morgue. If you complain to your friends about how busy you’ve been, they can’t turn it around on you and say it’s good to be busy. Because if you are busy it means that there were a lot of bodies coming in, and that’s a tragedy. Very hard to put a positive spin on it.

And if you seem very happy about having nothing to do, people can’t say that you shouldn’t be happy about that. It doesn’t mean that you are lazy or un-ambitious, just that you’re glad that there aren’t a lot of people dying.

Of course, these perks apply to work in hospitals and clinics too, especially emergency rooms. It’s always good when there’s less to do there. But the morgue does offer an additional thing beyond that:

Regardless if things have been slow or not, when you end your shift and your friends ask how your day was, you can always make them really uncomfortable by replying with the joke “It was really dead.”

Of course you also have to get used to the fact that you have to deal with death every day, but every sweet deal has its downsides.