This is a FUNERAL HOME, not a gas station!

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, so I’ve been helping my father out at the funeral home lately, covering for him so he can go and run errands, eat dinner, etc. (He’s the only employee there, the rest work for the cemetary and someone has to be there for the funeral home). So I’m sitting in the lobby, greeting anyone who’s coming in while he went home tonight to grab a bite to eat. Now, it’s not busy-since everyone came for the visitation last night mostly, there were just a few today and none this evening.

Well, a man walks in with a ten year old kid, both of them in shorts and sneakers. The kid looks around, sees the mens room door and makes a beeline. His dad comes over to me, after peeping around and says, “Well, I didn’t know they laid people out there too!”

Okay, so apparently, he’s NOT here to view the deceased. Well, maybe he wants to meet with someone from the cemetary, so I ask if I can help him.

“Oh, no, the boy just needed to stop. H’uh. How about that-you guys do lay outs.”

And I looked at him, and said, “Well, sir, this IS a funeral home.”

“No shit-I thought this was just the cemetary offices! H’uh! Yinz got this play fixed up real nice. All those flowers in there, looks real good.”

And the whole time until the kid comes out, I’m smiling, while desparately thinking:
WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE!!! Who the HELL stops by a fucking funeral home to use the goddamn bathroom? Even if it WAS just a cemetary (and gee, did you miss the huge sign out by the road?) that’s insane! Jesus Christ, there’s a gas station just down the road, I believe-hell, there’s some stores, and a library, etc.

WHY oh WHY would anyone do this? According to my dad, people do this all the time-if they’re out putting flowers on graves, or walking through the cemetary, sometimes they just walk in to use the bathroom. He said it happened at the other places he’s worked too.

Good lord, I’m just glad it was tonight, and not tomorrow, when the funeral takes place! Eeep, imagine going to a funeral and seeing someone poking in the rest rooms and exclaiming, “DAMN! I didn’t know yinz was a fun’ral home!”

:eek:

2

Maybe he was hoping for a lucky windfall.

3

Yinz got some asshats, n’at. :smiley:

4

Eh. When faced with a whinging ten-year-old with a full bladder in the backseat…any port in a storm, no?

And gas stations, in my experience, 1) Don’t always have a bathroom that may be used by non-customers from the general public, and 2) If they do have it, it’ll be really, really skeezy. I’ve got to say I would rather place my bets on a funeral home bathroom than a gas station one.

But then again, I’m quite gauche in these matters…I once stopped by a Baptist church solely to use the loo when I was lost in a strange part of town. And the women’s restroom was closed for repairs, so I had to duck into the (unoccupied!) men’s one.

:frowning:

5

Another golden opportunity to pre-sell funeral services is missed.

No commission for Guin. :frowning:

6

I hate to defend the guy considering his boorish comments to you, but…he may not have driven into the cemetrary just to look for a bathroom (which would be weird I’d say). Maybe they were there visiting a grave. Or maybe just walking through looking at the markers. And the kid had to go to the bathroom, his father says oh look there’s the cemetary office, they must have a bathroom. Not like it’s an option to just go behind a tree when you don’t know who’s under it :eek: .

If I wanted to be very generous I might attribute his babbling to being embarrassed to find it was indeed a funeral home. Although for the use of this phrase “How about that-you guys do lay outs.” I’m not inclinded to be generous…

7

How is it that you can work in one, but not know how to spell it?

It’s cemetery, not cemetary…

Sheesh, Guin.

Sam

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Well, she laid it out there. You’ve got her dead to rights on that one.

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Guinastasia Funeral Services: When You Really Gotta Go.

10

D’oh! I’m a horrible speller.

Oh, I understand they may have been there at the cemetEry, and not just driving by. And yeah, when you gotta go, you gotta go. I was just grateful that the grieving loved ones weren’t there, or that we weren’t in the midst of a funeral. That and trying desparately not to laugh.

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That’s ok, Guin, I just realized how I spelled it :

:o

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Never in 26 years have I been to a gas station that didn’t have a public bathroom, free to all. But yes, they are often very skeezy.

May I assume you don’t live in the US?

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Would you rather he’d pissed on a grave?

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Aside from my little nit-pick, I agree with you. Thank god the two morons didn’t stop in in the middle of a funeral.

Sam

15

Hey now. No reason to call the kid a moron (other than the “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” maxim). He just went (in both senses) where his father told him.

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Speaking of nit-picking…

I’ll amend my last post to read thusly:

Thank god the moron and his son didn’t stop in in the middle of a funeral.

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The only times I would try ANYWHERE for a toilet was when I was pregnant. At one place, the guy told me that they didn’t have a public restroom. I asked him, “Is there somewhere that you pee?” He said yes. I then pointed out my 8 months- pregnant belly and said “Dude- this whole thing is on my bladder, and if I don’t pee right now, you’ll be cleaning up a mess!”

He let me use the bathroom! :smiley:

And I have been to gas stations that didn’t have a restroom. The gal at one felt really bad about it, seeing as there were two pregnant women standing (barely) in front of her! She sent us down one block to a “real” gas station.

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Guinastasia: Do you guys have a Lay Away Plan?

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There’s at least 2 of them in my home town. 1 is 3 blocks away from my house, 1 is a mile north of town. Yup, I live in the US and everything.

I’ve also encountered several as I was driving through Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.
IME, the larger “convenience-store-gas-station-restaurant-donut-shoppe-hair-care-airport-and-tire-salon” type places in general are likely to have public restrooms; however, the average run-of-the-mill, GAS STATION, wherein the only things they sell are gasoline, diesel, and kerosene (and maybe some junk food & pop) do not have said restrooms.

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To be fair, peeps, “laid out” is a local term, referring to visitations, basically, the wake.

And EJsGirl, I would never have had a problem with a pregnant woman using the restroom there. It was just his whole attitude, he didn’t say, “Oh gosh, I didn’t know this was a funeral home,” he seemed rather amused. Plus, remember the restrooms at KrapMart, I don’t even want to THINK of what a funeral home bathroom would look like if we had them open like that all the time. (The bathrooms are really nice).

(Don’t even get me started on the idiots who come in, fix themselves a cup of coffee, and then just abandon said cup, still half full, on one of the end tables, when they leave. Yeesh!)