Around the end of the year, people start planning their next-year’s vacation so that they can submit their leave requests in January.  But apparently there are more and more people starting to plan a little farther ahead than that.

Finally bringing some financial sense to the mortuary market, Walmart has begun selling caskets and urns through their online catalogue.  Apparently, rival retailer Costco has started selling caskets in their stores, but so far Walmart is limiting their offerings online only.  Last week they began by listing 15 models of caskets and literally dozens of funerary urns on their website, most of them undercutting the funeral homes’ prices by as much as $1,000.

According to their webpage, you could be
the first to review this product.

They are offering delivery within 48 hours, but curiously there is a no-return policy.  The prices on all the caskets, except one deluxe model, are less than $2,000.  Reprtedly, Federal law requires funeral homes to accept third-party caskets as part of their services.  Walmart says that they will be expanding their offerings to include as many as two dozen caskets and up to 200 other products including pet urns and memorial jewelry.

At first glance this seems to be a bizarre sales ploy, but I think it’s really a brilliant bit of planning.  Think back a moment and you’ll recall a lot of hoopla in the past few years about the “aging population” as the Boomer generation, which is the largest current demographic group, reaches retirement age and starts buying anti-cholesterol medicine in greater quantities.  A lot of businesses and service industries are making similar projections for their businesses and beginning to gear up for a different kind of demand for their products.

So what about your Fire and EMS services?  You know all this is coming, but have you started to actually do anything to meet this growing kind of demand?  It’s going to be more than just an increase in heart attack calls.  There will be an increase in group housing for the aged, more people driving like they do down in Florida while you’re responding to a call, and some unusual public service requests.  You can let your imagination run loose on this one.  But it’s a good idea to at least start implementing some policies that will allow you to get ready for this increased focus on related problems.  Most governmental agencies are reactive rather than pro-active and they tend to lag behind when it comes to that sort of planning.  So perhaps you can steer your department or squad onto a path to get ready for it.  Once again, Walmart leads the way.

Now let’s follow the path to the check sheets and get this equipment checked out.  I’ll make sure that there’s plenty of coffee going.  See you in the day room in a little while.