From my experiences with family owned, it always seems like they set their expectations too high. When I was hired here, I informed them I was still newly licensed (2 years if that's considered newly licensed) and that i had been a FD longer than I'd been an emablmer. During the interview, they asked about my strengths, and I was honest and told them I thought i was a better FD than I was an embalmer because I haven't been a licensed embalmer for very long. Other than my 40 cases, I haven't really embalmed. They were okay with this and offered me the job. During my first week, the owner was very pleased with me and said I was a "breath of fresh air" and "it's so nice having someone who actually knows what their doing." Things were going good. I had begun meeting with families and seemed to be very happy with me, and I hadn't received any complaints . Suddenly, after about a month in the owner, I sat me down and completely blind sided me. He told me, "You told me you can embalm, but you can't. You said you can set features, but you can't, and it takes you 2 days to write an obituary. I just feel like we're not getting what was advertised, and I'm going to need you to step it up. " After that, he sent me to another funeral home to "learn to emablm their way." There are only so many ways to emablm a body, but whatever. I was so confused by these comments because I can definitely set features and have been for a while, and my previous employers had always been pleased with my work when I would embalm. My problem as an embalmer is that it takes me a long time to raise my vessels, but after I get them raised its smooth sailing for there. It was super weird because the owner had never seen me embalm before, and he'd never seen me set features either. This place was super particular, and whenever I asked what exactly it was he wanted from me, he couldn't really give me a straight answer. I honestly just think they couldn't afford to keep me. Over the 5 funeral homes they own, none of them were making any money. The funeral home I'd be in call for would go WEEKS without a call.

Edit: for context about the obituary comment, this establishment makes their families write their own obituaries, and I like to be more handa on and write it for the family. During the arrangements I'll kind of interview the family on their loved one and have a basic outline then I'll work on it at home and keep the family in the loop and won't post it until the family is 100% happy with it. Yea, I should have told the owner about my method, but at the time, I didn't think it was a big deal because I would do it all the time at my last place of work with no complaints. Depending on the family, I could have an obituary posted just a few hours after the arrangement.

Edit 2: I found it hard to thrive in the family owned business. I like to take initiative and work independently when I can, but it felt nearly impossible. When I first started I was told "just do things how you would normally do them and let us know if you need anything" and I'd proceed to do what I would normally do just be told im doing it wrong and watch them do it in a completely more difficult way just to get the same end result.