ABSTRACT
Implicit in the definition of a service occupation is that its members provide a specialized service to individuals with whom the server has direct contact and personal communication. To begin, consider some important contrasts between “normal” individual death and “accidental” collective death as the result of a disaster. A capsule formulation of changes over time in the organization of aftermath operations is that, first, people were just milling around wondering what to do; and second, there was a decision-making process in which tasks were allocated to specific individuals and occupational groups. Bureaucracies are sometimes secretive to protect themselves from outsiders, and sometimes because they can get their work accomplished more efficiently and effectively if they do not have to pay attention to outsiders’ personal interests. The disaster experts continually learned of secrets about the dead; thus, they possessed guilty knowledge which had the potential of inflicting further hurt upon the sufferers.
