Category: real calls

The story below is a real call account from an Always on Call answering specialist. Names are hidden for privacy purposes.

I had a death call this morning from a woman who had just lost her husband. As we were ending the conversations she said through tears:

“I wouldn’t like to have your job – doing this all the time, but you were very very helpful. Thank you.”

Not all answering services handle funeral home calls with the level of care that we have been trained to. Hopefully, none of you have had to call a funeral home about a loved one and had an experience that felt like you might as well have been ordering cable. I have, and I can tell you it can make a bad day feel very lonely.

Most of the time when we take family death calls, we get little response from the callers and that’s ok because it’s not about us, it’s about their needs. It’s important to remember though that as difficult as some death calls may be, when we handle them with compassion it is meaningful to the family, even if they rarely express it. 

It’s 7 p.m. on a Saturday evening and an elderly woman who lives alone, has just finished making some soup on the stove. As she’s eating, her cats, Roscoe and Lily, meow and nuzzle up to her. The woman suddenly realizes she forgot to feed them. She sets her food down and gets the bag of cat food from the pantry and fills their bowls. As she gets back to her meal, she starts to smell smoke. Oh no! She accidentally put the cat food on the burner, which was still quite hot and has caused a small fire. Thankfully, she is able to quickly extinguish the fire with a dish towel, but there is a bit of a mess left behind. She is frantic and terrified so she calls the property manager to help guide her on what she should do next.

Who would your tenants have to call in a similar situation?

Luckily in this situation, we WERE there for her. We were able to contact maintenance and send them over to help her clean up the mess and ensure there was no more danger.