I quit banking to clean up crime scenes and homes where people have died. It can be absolutely horrific.

• Stacey Foyster specializes in "crime-scene cleaning," often after violent or traumatic incidents.
• She quit her job at a bank to work as a domestic cleaner before training in the specialty.
• Now she takes jobs involving cleaning prisons smeared with feces or the sites of serious assaults.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Stacey Foyster, a 34-year-old crime-scene cleaner from Kent, England. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

After 10 years of working for the Royal Bank of Scotland in risk analysis, I felt like I was trapped and wasn't growing as a person or in my career. There were office politics and micromanagement.