13 Embalmer
Let’s take a trip into the morbid side of employment, because even serial killers need a day job. Many people go to medical school and decide they do not have the nerve tolerance for the high-stress nature of conducting potentially life threatening surgeries and decide that working with the already deceased is a safer career choice.
The problem with this is that dead bodies are alot more putrid, creepy, and tough to look at than living ones, but this is the trade-off an embalmer makes when he chooses to use his medical expertise for preparing the dead for their funeral or other purposes. Because the dead require less urgent care and we as a society put much more importance on preserving a life than a corpse, embalmers do not have the luxury of a lucrative paycheck like doctors.
Their average salary of $19,000-$51,000 a year means that the job of embalmer does not carry with it a huge financial incentive, a fact that sheds those who choose to do this job in a creepier light. Embalming involves the preservation of human body parts in certain agents and fluids that maintain them until the body is to be presented at a showing. The embalming process eliminates some of the ghastly smells we associate with dead bodies, but the aroma in an embalming room would be described as less than pleasant.
The bottom line is that it takes a unique type of person to essentially play many peoples’ version of Fear Factor everyday without the cash prize waiting at the end.
