4

Some Morgues Are Disorganized, Filthy Places

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The morgues that I saw were chaotic and nasty places. And while that's fine for a teenager's bedroom, it causes problems in the designated corpse hangout. Take the time my trainer-type-guy and I did a late-night pickup -- once we got to the morgue and stuck the deceased in the cooler, we started looking for a hand towel to wipe up some fluid that had spilled on a gurney. He found a lidless cardboard box that looked to be filled with them. He picked up the top towel, only to find -- oh yes -- a baby.

A dead baby.

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And just like that, my job turned into an eighth-grader's awful comedy routine.

We bolted immediately, wet gurney be damned. I never found out if they did anything with the baby, like, you know, send it back for a proper burial so the place wouldn't be haunted by a tiny ghost. Hopefully they've at least remembered it's there by now.

3

There's a Lot of Slapstick Comedy in Transporting the Dead

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2

Yes, of Course It's Disgusting

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The stench of a decomposing body is one I will never, ever forget. It permeates everything, even when the body is properly stored and refrigerated. And that, sadly, doesn't always happen. A girl was murdered, and I couldn't get her for four days thanks to a major snowstorm shutting down the roads. Hospital officials were ecstatic to see me when I finally arrived, and I soon learned why -- their version of "storing a body" was to stuff the poor girl into a broom closet six feet from the receptionists' area. A non-refrigerated closet. FOR FOUR DAYS. If there had been anything in my stomach, it would've gotten an eviction notice.

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Skipping breakfast is kind of a given when your day's to-do list involves the phrase "week-old corpse."

There were disgusting sounds, too. The guy who sorta-trained me said that, during one of his runs, the corpse let out a low, guttural moan -- the result of carbon-dioxide buildup in the lungs. It sounded like a zombie rising up for a heaping plate of Brains Benedict, but in reality the screaming undead are just another day at the office for this job.

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Presumably, "9 to 5" was playing as he casually ignored the moaning, restless dead.

1

The Body Isn't Always Dead When You Arrive

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A co-worker mentioned that, on several occasions, he had gotten calls to pick up a body that hadn't officially become dead yet. They were usually on a respirator or some other type of life support and weren't expected to last much longer. So there he was, just hanging around the lobby, sipping coffee and patiently waiting for his cargo to be ready. If you're ever in that situation and some visitor who wants to make small-talk asks what you do for a living, learn how to lie.

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"I'm a courier of the ... bread."

An even more unsettling situation took place fairly recently. Two locals were in a terrible accident. The local news reported that they were killed instantly, except that wasn't true. I worked with the guy who ended up transporting them to the morgue, and they weren't dead when he showed up. They weren't exactly up and dancing, but their hearts were still beating and they were both breathing. Their injuries were too severe to survive, however, which is why they called for a transporter.

Worse still -- they held on forever. It was a painfully long wait before they died, meaning the transporter had time to make a sort of emotional connection to them. He even attended their funerals after they finally passed. Making a connection is perhaps the worst thing you can do when working around death. The more distance you keep between yourself and the "cargo," the easier it is to just load them up, send them to the cooler, and move on to the next chunk of flesh. It's not a pretty way to think, but then, it's not a pretty business. Hey, that's why they pay you the big bucks to do it.

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All nine of them.

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For more insider perspectives, check out The 6 Strangest Things Nobody Tells You About Life in Korea and 5 Things You Only Know If You Grew Up in a Communist Regime.

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