I am unemployed. The last 10 years of my job history are in the animal field.
There was an article in today’s paper about a business starting up here - doing pet cremations. Yes, it is morbid, but…
I have a degree in Social Work;
I have experience in Veterinary Medicine as a vet tech;
I have experience working at a Humane Society;
I don’t think pets are always “just animals”.
Should I go to this new business with a newly brushed-up resume and tell them why they need to hire me? Or am I out of my mind to even consider it?
If you have read this far, any comments on the “animal” or “just throw them out” status of pets will be considered a rude hijack. Please Pit me if you feel so inclined. I would like employment-only responses as much as possible.
Your background sounds great for a job with such a business. I’d go for it if I were you. As a bigtime pet-lover, I understand people’s need for pet cemeteries, pet funerals, and such. A pet cremation service sounds to me like a good idea.
Why not? Sounds like you’re qualified, and I can’t imagine them just blowing you off. At worse you’ve connected to some folks in the field and enhanced your network. At best you might have a new job.
But that isn’t necessarily the best thing. You demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit, and these folks might know of other people working with animals who might be looking for help as well. So it could open a bunch of doors for you. Go for it!
You sound like the perfect type of candidate for a job like this. I’m sure the people setting up the business don’t think pets are always “just animals” either.
There is a quite successful pet crematorium/cemetery near me and looking at some of the memorials I am sure lots of customers would have benefited from the ministrations of a good social worker.
pinkfreud, there are no “job duties”. They are not looking for help, the business just started. I want them to hire me because they need me. They need a large woman who can comfort people who are crying. They need someone who can answer the telephone and give details of cremation while listening through the tears of the person calling.
In addition I can custom-craft stained glass or clay memorials as needed.
Go for it, the job I had directly before this one came from that kind of action. Back when I contacted them originally, they didn’t have any kind of “Nava-shaped” openings, but my CV interested them enough to give me a full interview; when a Nava-shaped opening came up, they were on the phone to me within minutes.
Will that business be dedicated to pets or will it also handle zoo or farm animals? The “garbage treatment facility” back home was built on land donated by one of the villages in the area, which already housed one of the minicipal pens - because of this, they built an area specifically for animal cremations. Now they cremate farm animals from several provinces around!
I have some experience with a local pet cremation guy, having lost two dogs last year. He picked up my pets at my house after they died, and I went to his building afterward. He didn’t have any staff, certainly no one to provide comfort. I think for the most part he deals directly with vets’ offices (and the local dog pound), picks up the animals and cremates them en masse in his big oven. If you request your animal’s ashes back he’ll do that animal separately for an additional charge. At least he says he does it separately - how would you know? In any case, there wasn’t any sort of support service provided.
In fact, it would’ve been useful if he had a helper, simply because when he came to get Simon, who was avery large dog, I told him to bring someone to help lift. In the end I end to help load his body in the back of a van filled with dead animals. Not my happiest time.
It certainly would be a very lucrative business. I cremated Bear a few years ago, he’s my cat. I believe it was about $200.00, he came back in a little jar with a cremation certificate and I buried him under one of my rose bushes. I couldn’t stand the idea of him being buried somewhere, cold and alone. It was an easier way to keep him with me.
I also wonder how much contact you’d have directly with clients. If you get an interview (and you certainly sound more than qualified), I’d ask how much of the business is direct and how much is through vet’s offices, though as a new business that could change over time. It sounds like you’d be more interested in working with clients than, say, helping to pick up and drop off remains, etc.
We’ve always arranged with our vet’s office for the cremation of our dogs. Where we used to live in VA, though, the cremation facility they used was owned by a funeral home, who had built a new crematory for humans and then used the old one for pets. They had an option of delivering the cremains to your home if you didn’t want to go back to the vet’s office to pick them up. I thought that was a good idea - some people aren’t ready to go back to the vet if they’ve had their animal euthanized only shortly before. If you chose to have your pet cremated singly, they’d also give you a certificate, signed by the funeral home director, certifying that the cremains you got back were actually your pet’s and listing the date and time of the cremation. Obviously being in the funeral home business, they were very professional about it all and I’m sure they were very successful. Though the crematory is located on Happy Street … kinda creepy, that.
Yes, you should, because if there had not been competent, understanding employees at the pet crematorium today, I wouldn’t be posting this because I’d be trying to figure out how to put a stop payment on a credit card while having strong hysterics.
As it is, I wrote a thank you note to the wonderful employee who happened to be wearing a tiny Wranglers (local hockey team) pin on her blazer.
I took my resume down to the place today, and the owner was very nice. He was up-front about them not needing anyone right now, and I told him I knew that when I came in, I just wanted to make sure he knew I was out there when he did! He gave me a tour of the facility; they have an on-site crematorium and have it set up so that the owners can view their pet being put in if they so desire. I was impressed with the owner and the layout and am crossing my fingers that business will pick up for them so they can hire me!
