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In 1962, a college student answers an ad: “Mortuary Assistant required”

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11–20 of 98 posts

Re: In 1962, a college student answers an ad: “Mortuary Assistant required”

#12
post #8

Its stories like this why I come to HN. HN may have started as interesting stuff for the Silicon Valley VC circuit, but you can't survive on a diet of just high risk investing weirdness.

You don't have to come to HN exclusively. I like the idea of HN or any other website being focused on single-theme. If I want to read about startups and tech I come to HN. If I want to read about something else, I go else where.

I enjoyed this post very much but I would be very sad if posts like these became more frequent over here as I wouldn't have a good source of startups and tech anymore.

Re: In 1962, a college student answers an ad: “Mortuary Assistant required”

#14

The worst job I've had was called 'putting up hay'. It amounted to climbing into the loft of a very dust-laden barn with 3 or 4 of my college buddies, catching hay bales as they spat out of the hay elevator, and running them over to stack in uniform 3-d arrays. After a couple of hours, our employer called us down for rejuvenation with Coke-a-cola and glazed donuts, and we'd blow what seemed like pounds of dusty mucou…

Whilst a mask seems a good idea, I presume that the organic material that built up in your lungs would be broken down and washed out by the lungs natural processes within a few days or weeks?

Perhaps a doctor could clarify?

Re: In 1962, a college student answers an ad: “Mortuary Assistant required”

#15
>On the other hand, the pathologist assigned to work on the bodies I would prepare was a German, and she was named Fleishhacker, which sounded to Mr. Utton as though it should mean butcher, but actually didn't.

It actually does though: http://dict.leo.org/ende/index_en.html#/search=Fleischhacker

Re: In 1962, a college student answers an ad: “Mortuary Assistant required”

#16
We really need to appreciate how lucky we are:

More than once the bus I rode to work had to be led by a policeman walking on the road with a red flashlight, so thick were the greasy, sulfur-dioxide-laden pea-soup fogs that in 1962 were so bad as to send people by the hundreds to hospitals some days. One Monday, after a weekend of especially thick smog, I arrived to find no fewer than thirty bodies waiting for their preparation, all of them felled by respiratory complaints.

Re: In 1962, a college student answers an ad: “Mortuary Assistant required”

#17
German native speaker here. Fleischhacker actually does mean butcher. It's just that most Germans would call a butcher a "Metzger" I guess. Us Austrians tend to call it a "Fleischhauer".

To be honest though, I think the term Fleischhacker is used more often to describe a foul playing soccer player than a butcher.

Re: In 1962, a college student answers an ad: “Mortuary Assistant required”

#18

>On the other hand, the pathologist assigned to work on the bodies I would prepare was a German, and she was named Fleishhacker, which sounded to Mr. Utton as though it should mean butcher, but actually didn't. It actually does though: http://dict.leo.org/ende/index_en.html#/search=Fleischhacker

[deleted]

Re: In 1962, a college student answers an ad: “Mortuary Assistant required”

#19
post #8

Its stories like this why I come to HN. HN may have started as interesting stuff for the Silicon Valley VC circuit, but you can't survive on a diet of just high risk investing weirdness.

You don't have to come to HN exclusively. I like the idea of HN or any other website being focused on single-theme. If I want to read about startups and tech I come to HN. If I want to read about something else, I go else where. I enjoyed this post very much but I would be very sad if posts like these became more frequent over here as I wouldn't have a good source of startups and tech anymore.

This sort of article, with its's well written, amusing, compellingly "human" narrative is precisely how startups should be writing their blogs. It's exactly the sort of thing founders should be reading to learn the subtle and nuanced art of writing. It's very relevant to HN; not in content perhaps, but definitely in style.

Re: In 1962, a college student answers an ad: “Mortuary Assistant required”

#20
post #13
post #11

A girlfriend of mine once had this job, she said it was a dead end career.

Weird, seems to me like everybody could see their future in it.

Ok, joke aside, the article was well written and as you say it must have been quite an experience to observe death so personally.
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