Is it always like this?
I’m a newly licensed funeral director at a small town funeral home owned by a larger corporation. I started here after I finished mortuary school and have only ever worked at this funeral home.
My boss is verbally and emotionally abusive, takes no accountability for his mistakes but will berate me and my coworkers for any of our errors, gatekeeps important information, cherry picks cases, and hijacks cases after I have been the director to make arrangements with the family. He expects me to work 60+ hours a week and 7 days a week and denies lunch breaks because “he does too so it’s fair”. My entire apprenticeship under him I hardly ever received any teaching or training on how to be a funeral director. I would be either denied the opportunity to step into a director role or (usually after I’d made repeated requests be able to learn) I would be thrown into situations with no guidance and then berated for making mistakes.
He and the entire team basically check every bigotry box possible. They are racist, sexiest, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ableist, and religiously intolerant to any non-Christian ideology. Discriminatory comments are made openly and regularly in the office about families and members of the community.
I have brought up some of these issues to his boss. When I described the work expectations her response was “well you know we have a business to run and (my boss) works that much too so it’s fair. And you know, we have a business to run”. Before I could even get to the way he treats me and the other team members she said “he’s (my boss) is such a great guy, you’re lucky to learn from him. You have it so good here”
My question: Is this normal in funeral service? If upper management is telling me how good I have it, is this just the reality of what it’s like to work in the industry?
Everything I’ve experienced has made me question if this is the right career path for me. I was so excited to go into funeral service but now it’s taken a dramatic toll on my mental and physical health, ruining my relationships, and burning me out before I’ve even really started.