We were raised to live by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. In fact, some form of this saying is found in every culture and religion in the world. It is the simplest code of conduct and words to guide us each day. One of my personal mantras is: How you do anything is how you do everything. We cannot move our moral and ethical line based upon the circumstance. I know that I can trust someone when I witness them doing the “difficult right” rather than the “easy wrong.” Character, integrity and responsibility are some of the standards that are expected to be met by members of the Order of the Golden Rule, an organization for independent funeral homes. I was honored to speak to this group and witnessed their commitment to the funeral industry. This is not to imply that only OGR members live by this rule; in fact I have met many funeral professionals across the country who are exemplary examples of what it means to be in this industry. They are committed to serving their families with the highest level of integrity and care. I am awed by the many who go beyond the expected to provide the families they serve with an experience that they will never forget. Each one of you who sets high standards and exceeds them, who lives into ensuring that the funeral industry remains a “noble profession” and who dedicates your life to  providing comfort to the bereaved are to be applauded.

  Unfortunately, there is a small minority who lack ethics and focus on the dollars rather than the service. This was again brought to my attention by a funeral director who hired me to speak to a group on behalf of his funeral home. He had recently discovered that another funeral home had purchased his company name as Google ad words and was siphoning business away from him. He found out because a family he had a pre-plan contract with had googled his firm’s name when the death occurred and called the number that showed up at the top of the search engine. The next day the family called him again, with paperwork in hand, and questioned why his price had gone up so much. Since he had not spoken with them the night before, he did not know what they were talking about. The family was quite upset when they learned that their loved one had been picked up by the wrong funeral home! The firm they planned to use had to retrieve the body, much to their distress. Only then did he learn what had happened. The offending firm does not think they did anything wrong in placing those ads and taking the death calls. To them it is a business and marketing plan. To the family who was impacted it was a traumatic experience.

  This is not an isolated case. The cemetery where I used to work had a local funeral home buy the names of our cemeteries so that their firm came up in searches rather than our office number and website. We must not allow this to become “business as usual.” I question how these firms treat the families they serve, if they are willing to do this to their own colleagues. We must be better than this. All of us in this industry. Today I watched yet another video on the internet blasting our industry for “ripping off the customer” and “charging too much for services rendered.” We have enough negative publicity from the outside and the last thing we need is for a small minority to create this type of business model that proves the naysayers right. Do unto others…a worthy code to live by.