Adam Akin offers free graves to people over the phone. Jasmine Shope shimmies around restaurants in a sequined outfit and a wig. Sara Vertrees feeds grizzly bears.
And they all get paid for it.
While most University of Memphis students make extra cash waiting tables or jockeying a cash register, these three students have taken the job road less traveled. Way less.
Akin, a music education major, works for SCI, a company that does telemarketing work for area funeral homes, including Memphis Funeral Home and Collierville Funeral Home. He calls people at their homes to offer them “complementary cemetery space” in area graveyards.
“We can’t say ‘free grave,’ because that sounds cheap,” Akin said. “But yes, it’s a free grave.”
In order to get the free grave, customers must set up an appointment for a funeral home representative to meet with them at their home to discuss, and hopefully sell, pre-arranged funeral plans, which range from $5,000-6,000. However, customers do not have to buy anything to get the free cemetery plot, worth $1,095.
“Some people are just in it for the grave. They hear the word ‘free’ and they’re like, ‘Hell yeah!’” Akin said.
Akin said many people hang up when he tells where he’s calling from. Even if he’s lucky enough to get past “hello,” he has trouble making the sale.
“Lots of people tell me they already have their plans pre-arranged, but probably 50 percent of them are lying,” he said. “They refuse to tell me where they have cemetery space, like I’m gonna jump into their grave and steal it from them. That’s ridiculous.”
Other reactions range from hysterical laughter to hysterical sobbing.
“I’ve had people tell me they don’t need the grave because they’re never going to die,” Akin said. “And sometimes people cry if they’ve just lost a loved one. One woman asked me if I was trying to destroy her.”
Akin said that although he got emotional during teary phone calls when he first started the job in August, he’s since become immune.
“Yeah, I’m over it now,” he said. “If people get weepy on me, I just end the conversation and move on.”
Akin said he’s grateful to not be a funeral home representative who actually goes to people’s homes.
“One of the greatest things about telemarketing is that you don’t have to look people in the eye,” Akin said. “People can’t physically harm you over the phone, and if they start yelling, I just hang up.”
Akin also said he’s glad to be peddling graves rather than selling something less shocking, like long distance service.
“I feel like I’m violating people less than I would if I was actually selling something, like credit cards or carpet cleaning,” he said. “But really I’m giving stuff away that everyone’s eventually going to need.”
While Akin deals in death, Shope breathes new life into an ancient art.
Shope, a first-year graduate student in communications, has been a belly dancer with Pyramid Belly Dance Company since January 2000. She performs two or three times a month, mostly at restaurants such as Mojo’s and Cafe Samovar.
“Belly dancing is an art form,” Shope said. Her style of belly dancing includes moves from Middle Eastern, Indian and Spanish dancing.
Shope said the different styles have accompanying traditional costumes, which she and the other Pyramid dancers also mix and match.
“The typical costumes for restaurant gigs are a flowing skirt and bra, but you can always wear harem pants,” Shope said. “There’s also a bra-and-belt set, which is cabaret style. And a lot of it is see-through material.”
The costumes are often decorated with intricate beadwork or coins that jingle when the dancer moves her hips and chest.
“The costumes are visually attractive because of the sequins, and aurally attractive because of hearing the coins make noise,” Shope said.
Shope, who has very short hair, has to wear a wig when she dances to maintain an authentic look.
“You dance with your hair,” she said. “It’s an extension, another limb you dance with.”
Shope said that although the original intent of the flashy and revealing costumes was to be sexual, today’s belly dancers aren’t in it for the sensuality.
“I’m sure a lot of men think it’s sexual, but it’s not,” Shope said. “Many people think I’m a stripper. I have to tell them no, that I keep my top on.”
But some still think Shope is doing more than dancing.
“I had a man ask my parents for my dowry,” she said. “I had to say ‘not interested.’ He was kinda old too.”
Shope may brave forward men at her dance gigs, but Memphis Zoo employee Sara Vertrees braves much wilder creatures — children.
Vertrees, a biology major, is an instructor for “A Zoo Snooze,” an overnight camp for kids at the Memphis Zoo. As an instructor, she gets to traipse about the zoo at night, feed the bears and the hippos and even handle live animals.
“We have some animals in the education building in cages, and I get to hang out with them,” Vertrees said. “But the tigers and bears, no one gets to go in with them.”
The children in the overnight program get to meet and sometimes touch animals from around the zoo, including barn owls, hedgehogs, chinchillas and turkey vultures.
“The turkey vulture is kinda weird because there are only two people in the whole zoo who can handle him,” Vertrees said. “His natural defense mechanism is to puke when people get too close, so no one ever wants to learn how to handle him.”
Vertrees said it’s interesting to watch the animals and the kids interact.
“Our big python, the one who eats a pig, gets really excited when it’s close to feeding time and little kids come up to the tank,” she said.
Vertrees said she loves her job, but has one problem with it.
“Sometimes the adult chaperones can be a real drag,” she said.
