Christmas: Then and Now

We always celebrated Christmas when I was a boy. To be honest, a lot of the details are kind of hazy, but if memory serves we would either have one of the grandmothers over, or we'd go over there - I'm sure there was some kind of schedule involved that I didn't have to be concerned about. My parents were religious, and back in those days so was I, so attending Mass on Christmas morning was always part of the holiday ritual. One Christmas memory that is very clear involves a visit from Santa Claus. I don't remember how old I was, but I was in that transitionary time when I hadn't given up believing in Santa Claus yet, but was developing some skepticism. My brothers and I were already in bed on Christmas Eve when my parents opened the bedroom door, turned on the lights and came in...accompanied by Santa Claus. I'm sure that this extended the duration of my belief, but to this day my mother has not revealed which neighbor or friend had donned the Santa suit to visit us kids. 

As a young adult I was involved in a group that had some non-mainstream and often contradictory beliefs about Christmas and how to observe it, if at all. There's a verse in the Bible which tells Christians to not be observers of times or seasons, so this group told us that we shouldn't be celebrating Christmas (or any other holiday), but they did anyway, changing the name, but putting up Christmas trees and exchanging gifts, while pretending that they weren't celebrating Christmas. The leader of the group had also published a book wherein he claimed to have calculated the birth of Jesus down to an around 90 minute window on September 11, 3BC. So, not only were we supposedly not supposed to observe Christmas, but Jesus wasn't even born in December according to them. It made for a lot of confusion, but mainly they just gave lip service to the "not observing" and observed anyway. It was around this time that I moved to Nebraska, away from my family and ceased to be involved in family Christmas gatherings. 

After getting married and starting a family I wasn't so involved with my former group, and celebrated Christmas in a more or less traditional manner, although on a small scale. My income was pretty small, so we couldn't afford anything lavish, but we always had a tree and gifts, assisted by my parents who always sent a box with small presents and a check to purchase other stuff. But since we weren't involved in any church and my only family were my in-laws who were very unsociable, I really missed the big family gatherings of my childhood. After being married around 10 years we got back involved in my former religious group. We sometimes did group things - one year we got a few hotel rooms on Christmas Eve and hosted a pool party for our local home Bible fellowship. My kids were also, after hearing Adam Sandler's Chanukah song, became curious about that holiday. Having grown up in New York around many Jewish families, I knew what Chanukah was and for a few years we celebrated, in addition to Christmas, the Festival of Lights. We also had a Christmas ornament tradition for many years. One year, after one of my children complained that our tree had no star, I cut out a photo of Bob Dylan and put it atop the tree. Every year we had a different "star". 

Things changed quite a bit in 2001 when my wife and I separated and then divorced. She had convinced most of my children that I was a bad guy and pressured them to not spend time with me. I spent Christmas 2001 friendless and alone, living in a dingy apartment that I called "The Hovel". On Christmas Eve, after closing the store where I worked, I went back to my apartment, ate dinner and got drunk on eggnog spiked with Jack Daniels. At midnight I went to the nearby Catholic Church where the highlight of the evening was me enthusiastically hugging people who I didn't know at "the sign of peace". On Christmas Day, as I took an afternoon walk, I discovered that movie theaters were open on Christmas Day and I stopped in for a viewing of The Fellowship of the Ring which had just come out. For the next several years that was my Christmas ritual: close the store on Christmas Eve, go to a movie and eat dinner at a buffet on Christmas Day. After a few years I met my second wife, Susie, and we continued the tradition, spending time with Susie's daughter Sami on Christmas Eve. 

This tradition lasted for a few years until, one by one, my children saw through their mother's propaganda and started spending time with me again. We started inviting all the kids over on Christmas Eve and continued our movie and buffet tradition on Christmas Day. Most years we put up a tree and outdoor lights and sent out cards. I was so excited to have my kids as part of my life again, and having put my former religious group behind me, I was also excited to be able to reanimate the family-oriented Christmases that I membered from my childhood. This also lasted a few years, but began to peter out as marriages and jobs and different interests began to interfere. I became a bit jaded about the planning and work I'd put into a family gathering only to have several no-shows. Probably the last Christmas Eve gathering was 2018. We had left town for Thanksgiving, and had a small open house on Christmas Eve. The year before, 2017 we drove to New York to spend Christmas with my mother (whose birthday is Christmas) and siblings. For Christmas 2019 we got together for a movie on Christmas Day with some snacks afterward. The pandemic pretty much killed off any Christmas gatherings - I think the momentum is gone. 

Now, as the second Covid Christmas is almost upon us, I reflect on my expectations for the holiday. The local family just doesn't seem interested in doing anything for Christmas. So we're not. I still put up Christmas decorations (no tree), watch Christmas movies and listen to jazz, blues and rock versions of Christmas songs, but we're not even attempting to organize a family Christmas. And that's okay. I've gotten comfortable with not beating myself up over not conforming to societal expectations for the holiday, and accepting that the warm and fuzzy memories of Christmases past don't necessarily paste onto the present. 

This doesn't mean that I'm sad about it. Quite the opposite. I'm happy and thankful that I am in regular contact with family, both local and far-flung, and that we all can do what makes us happy on the holidays and any other day.

Happy Hogswatch!
 

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXII

To say that the people of Sidney were fortified against us was an understatement. In addition to the "Jericho March" incident there were frequent threats of violence and attempts to run us out of town. We were confronted in the grocery store by shouting church members; cars driven by those opposed to our presence attempted to run us down in the street; objects were thrown at us in public; we were evicted from our home on New Year's Eve; we were the subject of a radio program warning the town about us; continuing attempts to get us fired...it was constant.

One thing that this treatment solidified in me was a tendency toward anti-bigotry. I remember thinking at the time that while this persecution was horrible, I could convert to one of the mainstream churches and it would all stop, or I could move to the next town and no one would know that I was in a cult. A Black person on the other hand, couldn't un-Black himself in order to stop the racism. This lesson stayed with me. Although there was still work to do ridding myself of racist mindsets and habits, being the target of virulent prejudice made me think twice about engaging in it myself. 

But when you're in a cult, your thinking tends to follow certain grooves. Just like the opposition from our families was seen as proof that we were angering "the adversary" (aka The Devil), and therefore doing God's work, the steady opposition from the townspeople put us in the company of the followers of Jesus in the Bible's Acts of The Apostles. We were being persecuted for speaking "The Word". Of course this widespread antipathy in such a small town meant that we had quickly worn out our welcome. Door knocking was out of the question, and there weren't many public venues where people hadn't made up their minds about us already. But we somehow found the energy to pat ourselves on the back for being such devoted and committed followers of The Way, Jesus Christ. 

After the first of the year, after having to find a new place to live after being evicted, Ronnie, our state leader decided that we would be relocated halfway through the year, in February. Our witnessing wasn't without any results, we had two men signed up for the PFAL class, but since we needed seven to run a class, we hadn't been able to run one. Once we found out we were moving, both of our "new people" decided to move with us, to Kearney as it turned out. Although one of them was having sex with one of the WOW women and the other one had some serious mental issues, so they weren't quite as devoted to "The Word" as we thought. 

Our time in Sidney ended on an amusing note. We had invited Rev. Jerry over for coffee to say goodbye. While in our home he made a big deal about how "The Lord" had informed him that two of us were staying in Sidney while the other two moved on. I still remember Gail laughing and telling him that The Lord must have thrown him a curve since we were all leaving. The next day, after selling or giving away our furniture and packing up the car, we headed for Kearney.

New problems awaited us there.

Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XXIII

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/12/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxiii.html

Hypothesis Contrary to Fact

What is a logical fallacy?

In philosophy, a formal fallacy, deductive fallacy or non sequitur is a patter of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in its logical structure.

Some logical fallacies are pretty easy to explain. 

• 'Ad Hominem' is when, instead of addressing, attacking or arguing against a person's position, the person himself is attacked. For example, claiming that a person's position on Medicaid for All is wrong because she once got a DUI
• A 'Straw Man' is when a weaker (or sometimes an imaginary) version of an argument is attacked rather than the argument itself
• A 'False Dilemma' supposes that there are only two alternatives, for instance "We either pass this bill or we are no longer a Democracy", when there are in reality multiple intervening positions. 
• An 'Appeal to Authority' is when a person's intelligence, credentials or background are substituted for actual evidence, like when the opinion of Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Steven Hawking, eminent physicists, is treated as valid in the realm of economics or public health. 

In any logical fallacy, the person resorting to its use isn't necessarily wrong, just that they have not presented facts or evidence sufficient to back up their position. A person who says that Donald Trump was a bad president because he was a New York real estate developer may have been 100% correct about him being a bad president, but the fact that he was a New York real estate developer had nothing to do with it. That would be the ad hominem fallacy. 

The fallacy 'Hypothesis Contrary to Fact' gets used a lot, but the casual  participant in social media arguments may be unfamiliar with it. Simply put, the premise is something that didn't actually happen, which is used to support the conclusion. The fictional literature subgenre called "alternate history", or sometimes "contrafactual history" uses this fallacy. We've all likely heard of, if not read, the "If The South Won the Civil War" books. "The Man in the High Castle" by Phillip Dick builds upon the premise that the Allies lost World War II. (In a neat twist, the book references a fictional account of how the Allies won World War II). All of these stories are extended version of 'Hypothesis Contrary to Fact'.

How does this relate to current events? Many of us reacted to the news that the killer of two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year by making statements that started with "If the killer was Black..." and drawing various conclusions about the outcome if this was true. I recently saw these types of statements described as "flawed and worthless" since the "if" portion of the statement, the premise, was false. I will concede two points: (1) The premise is not factual, the killer isn't Black and (2) We can't prove that the conclusion based on the contrafactual premise would have come to pass if the premise were true. 

So what?

No one who makes statements or shares opinions about what they think would have happened if the murderer of two people in Kenosha were Black thinks that they are proving anything. We'll never know for certain how the verdict would have been different, or even if he would have gotten past the police alive, if he had been Black...not with 100% certainty, but we can make a pretty good guess based on the difference between how armed White people and armed (or even unarmed) Black people are treated by law enforcement and by the courts. The lack of certainty is only a technicality within the laws of logic, which don't always align with the real world. There's certainly examples where, despite the presence of this particular fallacy, we can speculate pretty accurately how things would have turned out. I can state with a high degree of confidence that if I had begun contributing to a retirement account when I was 25, instead of when I actually did, at age 45, that my financial situation would be much better. Technically and logically, I don't know that, but...c'mon. 

There have been enough examples, enough of a trend, about how White and Black people have been treated and how they're viewed differently to come to reasonable conclusions. I think we can reasonably extend our suppositions to the difference in how progressive/left wing protesters are treated versus right wing protesters. There hadn't been a lot of shootings at last year's protests, but we have one example of Michael Reinoehl, a self-described Antifa activist, who allegedly shot and killed a right wing counter-protester in Seattle. Reinoehl never had the opportunity to plead self-defense at his trial because he didn't have a trial. He was shot and killed by police. We can also look at, specifically in Kenosha, how Black Lives Matter activists were viewed as a threat, while armed counter-protesters were allowed to roam freely, despite there being a curfew that the police were attempting to enforce on the BLM protesters. Of course, unless you have been hiding under the proverbial rock for the last few years we see how quick police are to shoot first, ask questions later when it comes to Black men. Right next to you under that same rock will be people who deny that there is racial bias in our legal system despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. 

So, even though, according to the rules of logic, a hypothesis contrary to fact is a logical fallacy, that doesn't mean that the conclusion is wrong, just that it can't be proven logically. Based on the long history of unequal justice in this country it's certainly reasonable to conclude that if the killer who roamed the streets of Kenosha with a deadly weapon, who had killed two people and wounded a third in plain sight, had been Black, he would not have been allowed to walk away, and likely would have been shot as a threat. And if he had survived that night, it's also reasonable to presume that he would have had a less friendly judge and spent time in jail. 

Not everything can be neatly tied up in a logician's bow.

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXI

If you were to stop in Sidney Nebraska today, you'd see a built up interstate exit dominated by the Cabela's headquarters, several restaurants, hotels and a truck stop. In August 1980 there was a couple of gas stations leading to a County Road 17J, which passed a trailer park along several lonely miles of...nothing...before meeting up with Highway 30 east of Sidney. As we drove into town and saw that trailer park I had a horrible feeling that I was seeing Sidney in its entirety. No, it wasn't that bad, but it wasn't much better. 

The opposition started right away. The hardware/carpet store where I worked was owned by one of Sidney's leading families. Ken was a nice enough guy and in addition to hiring me to clean up around the place and run errands, I was being trained in the back room as a glass cutter and carpet installer. But Ken was also active in his church, the local Episcopalian congregation. Apparently there was a meeting to discuss the cult that had invaded their city and Ken was pressured to fire me. Many of the churches were having similar meetings. One of the more active churches in their crusade against cults was the Foursquare Gospel Church, led by the Rev. Jerry Skinner. 

One of the "witnessing" (aka recruiting) techniques in the bigger cities was to visit mainstream churches. In the Way's early days many new recruits came from the larger denominations where they were disillusioned with the way things were done and weren't getting any answers to their spiritual questions. Naturally we thought this would work in Sidney. We didn't consider how different small town, rural Nebraska was from New York, Philadelphia or Baltimore. The first church we visited was having a "healing service" and Gail and I decided to attend to see if we could pick off any stragglers - it was Jerry Skinner's Foursquare Gospel Church. Foursquare Gospel Churches are an offshoot of the Assemblies of God, a strict, fundamentalist, evangelical, Pentecostal denomination. There weren't any members looking for something better. As we left the meeting Rev. Skinner greeted us - knowing exactly who we were and what organization we were with. He made it clear that Sidney Nebraska wasn't interested in being the home to any cults. He was to become our main nemesis during our time in Sidney, as host of the local radio show There's Good News Today he devoted a lot of air time whipping up the church-going citizens of Sidney in an anti-Way frenzy. 

Skipping ahead a few months, after we had moved (more on that later), one night we happened to notice a lot of people walking past our house. Considering that at the time we lived in a fairly isolated part of town, north of the railroad tracks on a street that didn't lead anywhere, we naturally thought this quite odd. It was the Foursquare Youth Group conducting what they called a "Jericho March", based on the Biblical story of the Israelites marching around the Canaanite city of Jericho seven times and causing the walls to fall down before slaughtering the inhabitants. So they were in the process of marching around our block seven times and claiming it for God. At some point during the march Steve snuck out through our backyard and joined the march and made it back to their church unnoticed in the back pew. Once inside they all closed their eyes, joined hands and spoke in tongues. When they opened their eyes Rev. Jerry spotted Steve in the back. Steve smiled, waved and headed out. 

There was a certain amount of humor in the way we handled it, but here was a group of people who seriously believed that we had no right to be in their city. All they were willing to do was pray about it, but not all opposition to us was so benign. Violence was on the menu. 

Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XXII

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/11/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxii.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XX

One thing that I want to make clear is that despite my characterization of The Way as a cult, I believe that many of the tactics that people have used to oppose cults is also wrong. 

Many people define a group as a cult based on what they believe rather than what they do. Scientology has a lot of bizarre beliefs, but are the beliefs harmful, or is it the level of control that they exert on their members what is actually harmful? And what constitutes a bizarre belief? Are the Scientologists sci-fi based doctrines really more unbelievable than an invisible god who is really his own son born from a mother who never had sex? Or this same god-who-is-really-his-own-son ascending bodily after being dead for three days? What about a boat with two (or is it seven) of every animal in it surviving a world-wide flood? The difference is that the majority of religious groups don't attempt to control every aspect of your life, and if your behavior is far enough outside their norms, you can just leave. The church that I grew up in was pretty oblivious to whether I attended services every Sunday and likely didn't notice when I left. Cults, on the other hand, engage in harmful practices. It's true that sometimes these harmful practices are based on harmful beliefs, the beliefs by themselves are not harmful. 

The opposition of the people of Sidney (which I will get into shortly), was based on ignorance. They may have heard about a few things that The Way taught that deviated from standard Christian teaching, but it is highly unlikely that they were aware of the harmful practices that went on inside The Way. Groups that received the cult label based on their beliefs (or misunderstanding of their beliefs) were lumped in with the People's Temple and in the minds of the ignorant: dangerous. This ignorance fueled a counter-belief that any opposition to a cult was justified. People were kidnapped and mentally tortured under cover of the pseudo-righteous term "deprogramming". Families were broken up over these differences. Much of what I will describe about my time in Sidney is akin to the "villagers with pitchforks and torches storming the castle" that you see in old school horror movies. My own assertion that I was involved in a cult in no way absolves them of ignorant and bigoted thinking and actions. The very acts of persecutions was in fact something that stiffened my resolve and stick with The Way despite the obvious red flags that popped up throughout my WOW year. 

Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XXI

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxi.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XIX

Having driven from my home in New York City to Way headquarters in rural Ohio a few times, I was familiar with the concept of small town and farms, but living in a small town was big-time culture shock. One of the biggest shifts was the prevalence of churches. I grew up in the New York City neighborhood of Rosedale, Queens. The 2010 census put Rosedale's population at around 25,000. At the time there were six churches - two Catholic, one Presbyterian, a Lutheran and an Episcopalian, plus a small Baptist church that may have actually been in Springfield Gardens. Sidney, on the other hand, with one-fifth the population, had twenty-five churches of various denominations. Of course, there was the size. Sidney was small enough to walk across in a half hour - glancing at the map,  the populated areas look to be around 2 miles east-west and 2.5 miles north-south, excluding the area on the interstate and other areas within city limits that are not developed - and Sidney is the largest town for hours in any direction. Another feature of a small town (at least from my perspective) is the suspicion with which "outsiders" are viewed. Everyone seems to know everybody else, and families that had been in Sidney for decades were still referred to as "the new people". This may seem paradisal to many, but for four young people (we were aged 20-22) from outside the community who were representing a religious cult, this was anything but. 

We arrived in Sidney a week late, and after a night in a hotel and a dinner of chicken-fried steak (a first for me) at Dude's Steakhouse we set about finding housing and jobs. This was surprisingly easy. The next day we rented a two-bedroom duplex one block off the main drag of Illinois Avenue/Highway 30. Steve, as the interim Way Corps leader, had been sent to scout out the city a few weeks earlier and already had a job lined up detailing cars at a local dealership. Rosemarie and Gail found jobs waitressing at a Dairy Queen and at a hotel restaurant respectively. I was the last one to secure employment - an apprentice glass cutter and go-fer at carpet store just a few blocks from our new home. 

The WOW year, especially the portion spent in Sidney, (we were reassigned to Kearney, a larger college town mid-year) was another of those red flags which should have inspired me to leave the group. On one hand we were subject to non-stop persecution by the locals and on the other the supposed "spiritually aware" leadership was incompetent. But these pressures, at least in my case, paradoxically served to make me more committed. 

Steve was a member of what was called the 10th Way Corps, i.e. the tenth group to start the alleged leadership training by The Way. He had made it through his first year of training at various Way training locations and was now on what they called an interim year where he was to put his training into practice before returning for his second year "in residence". Steve was supposed to be a leader, someone who we were to look up to, someone who would keep us on a godly path  and lead us to success. Steve was also an irresponsible, immature, entitled, horny twenty year-old who was impressed with his own status as a member of the Way Corps without the slightest idea how to motivate or lead. Part of this was due to the top-down style that was ingrained in Way "leaders" who believed that they were blessed with a version of the divine right of kings (including droit du seigneur). Steve's weakness as a leader would be exacerbate the pressures that resulted from opposition of the townspeople. 

Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XX

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xx.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XVIII

One of the things that The Way drilled into us was the expectation that we would be persecuted. While the upwelling of anti-cult animus starting in 1978 following the People's Temple massacre surely drove some people away, it also mobilized a lot of people against groups like The Way, groups which weren't as extreme as Jim Jones' bunch, but which nonetheless were enough outside the mainstream to make the mainstream nervous. The Way played up this very real opposition to its operations and framed it as equivalent to the persecution suffered by Jesus, his apostles and the early Christians. In New York I was aware of anti-Way sentiment as part of the fear about cult involvement, but in a city that large it kind of got lost in the background noise of life. In a city of 5,000 we stood out as if we had a spotlight trained upon us all day, every day. Because that where I was sent -- Sidney, Nebraska, a city, if you could call it that, of around 5,000 people. 

The Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program was in its tenth year in 1980. After a decade or more of slow growth from the mid-fifties to the late sixties, Wierwille made a move that would change the course of The Way. He travelled to San Francisco and found several leaders of the nascent "Jesus People" movement that had sprung up there. He convinced some of them to follow him back to New Knoxville and learn his version of Biblical research. They became the seed from which the fast growing "Way Tree" would spring, teaching Wierwille's Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) class to their followers, who tended to be young - college or even high school students mostly. Centers of Way activity sprung up mostly organically as people "witnessed" to their family and friends. Associated "ministries" were especially active in the San Francisco and Long Island areas. In addition to this type of growth several Way followers in the Wichita Kansas area participated in a test program - leaving their home areas and attempting to start Way "twig" fellowships and run PFAL classes in new areas. This pilot program  was so successful that at a Way gathering in August 1971, Wierwille asked for volunteers to participate in the new WOW outreach program. For many years this was one of the main sources of new Way members. 

The main goal of a "family" of WOWs was to "witness" to new people in their assigned city, run PFAL classes and ultimately, if there wasn't already a Way presence, to plant a brand new Way twig fellowship there. You were to arrive at your assigned city with $300, find housing and a part-time job and then get to work "witnessing", which you were to spend 8 hours a day, seven days a week doing. Witnessing was , in effect, your unpaid, full-time job. As I revealed in Part XVII, the bus we were travelling on broke down in central Iowa. By the time we made our way out to Sidney, which as only 60 miles east of the Wyoming border, we were almost a week late.  We were raring to go, but what we didn't know was that Sidney knew that we were coming and they weren't happy about it. 

Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XIX

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xix.html

 

Managers - Part XXIII - What Do You Expect of People?

A lot of attention lately has been given to workers walking out of jobs because they have had enough. Enough of abusive customers, enough of managers who don't support them, and enough of poor working conditions. I completely understand. Entry-level workers have been told for years that if they didn't like an aspect of their jobs they should just quit, so that's what many of done. The center of gravity in the employer-employee relationship has shifted in many situations to favor the employee. 

I have long said that while no job is perfect, every job is a balance between the good things about it and the bad. Where the fulcrum lies is going to differ depending on an individual's priorities. For some, a big paycheck might outweigh abusive customers, for others quality of life balance or a flexible schedule might be more important. When the bad outweighs the good, that's when an employee is going to quit. That's entirely appropriate - an employee has to decide what's best for the individual; everyone has to weigh for themselves what they are willing to do. 

As a manager in several different industries for most of my life, I hired (and fired) a lot of people. One of the things that I had to deal with in that role, was people who, for one reason or another, did not understand what the job was and expected the very nature of the job to conform to their expectations. For example, if you were hired to work on a road construction crew, it would not be reasonable to be upset that you had to work outside. The nature of the job is outside work. It would be reasonable to complain if you were not allowed rest or meal breaks, were not provided with protective equipment, or were not paid on time. But you can't work a road construction job inside an air conditioned office. One of my early management positions was as a district manager for a local newspaper circulation department. Delivering newspapers is not an easy job. Firstly, newspaper carriers are considered independent contractors, not employees. (This may have changed in recent years, but it was the case when I was in the business) What this means is that you don't have days off, you can't call in sick and you have to find your own substitute if you get sick or your car breaks down. You don't get snow days; you are out working in the dark in all kinds of weather and on all the holidays. This was all explained in detail to every person that we contracted to deliver papers, yet we would still get carriers attempting to "call in sick", or who quit suddenly when the first snowstorm of winter hit. It may have been a terrible job, but it was the job that you agreed to when you signed up. 

Much of my management career was spent in various roles in retail grocery stores. While not as grueling as a job delivering newspapers, if you worked in a grocery store you weren't an independent contractor, but an employee, with all of an employee's legal protections. There were many things that retail employees put up with that are not intrinsic to the job, but can be found in many retail environments. Varying schedules, and abusive customers are two top problems. The companies for whom I worked were obsessed with "making labor". A budget was set for payroll expenses for each store and each department within each store that was based on a percentage of gross sales. Dividing that dollar amount by the average wage told you how many hours you could schedule. Problems arose when sales were inconsistent - for example if the sales at the beginning of the month were regularly much higher than at the end of the month, or holiday sales were much higher than average. An employee might find herself scheduled for 40 hours one week, 28 hours another week and 15 on a slow week. As a manager I did my best to try to keep schedules and hours somewhat consistent for my employees.

The biggest disconnect between the needs of the company and the expectations of employees was holiday schedules. Like in my newspaper days, we made sure that we explained our expectations to new employees. One very important expectation was that during certain holidays we were much busier than normal and that we couldn't grant vacation time off during these holidays. That didn't mean that there were no days off. Everyone still got their two days off a week, but you couldn't expect to take off from December 20 through January 5 - those were extremely busy times and we needed all hands on deck. There was also the issue of fairness: everyone wanted July 4th off, wanted Christmas Eve off, but someone had to be there. But every year we still received requests for extended vacations. People were naturally disappointed when they couldn't have the time off that they wanted, but that was the job. 

It might be argued that some of these expectations, independent contractor status of newspaper carriers or no holidays off for retail workers shouldn't be part of the job. And that's where the free market comes in. Many industries, food service and retail in particular, are having trouble filling positions and have had to change the way that they do business. Some have responded with higher pay scales. But if the problem is working conditions and not pay, they will still have trouble filling positions. If enough people stay away from grocery store, or other retail, jobs due to expectations like working all holidays, eventually some of these companies might start closing on holidays. Or perhaps some other creative solution. Agreeing to certain job conditions, like working holidays, but then complaining or quitting when asked to work holidays, is dishonest. Ask questions, find out exactly what the job requirements are; if the employer deviates, stand your ground. If the job conditions don't meet your requirements, go somewhere else, which is more efficient and less stressful than taking a job where you know that you'll eventually quit because you'll be asked to do what they said you would be asked to do. 

So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part XVII

World Over the World Ambassadors (aka WOW Ambassadors or simply "WOWs") had been sent out every year since 1971 from the annual "Rock of Ages" (ROA) and returned a year later to the following year's ROA. In 1980 the 10th "wave" of WOWs was being sent out, or commissioned. A record number had signed up, well over 3,000. A large number were being sent to what were called Outreach Cities. These Outreach Cities would receive whole "branches", i.e. 10 or more "teams" of two WOW "families", which usually included four WOWs. Teams were usually overseen by a Way Corps person who was on their "interim" year. (At the time Way Corps training included a "Apprentice" year in their home town, the second year and fourth "in-residence" at a Way location, with the year between the in-residence years on some kind of "field" assignment. There were also WOW families sent to isolated cities or towns. I was sent to one of those: Sidney, Nebraska, a city of around 5,000.

Before my WOW family and I were sent to Nebraska, most Way Twig fellowships were clustered in Lincoln and Omaha, plus a few small groups founded by the previous year's WOWs in Fremont, North Platte and Beatrice. My group of WOWs included families in Sidney, Scotts Bluff, Nebraska City, McCook and Grand Island. 

 In 1980 the ROA lasted for seven days. We spent a few hours each day in training and on the sixth night, we were "commissioned", i.e. received our assignments in a sealed envelope to be opened at a big ceremony in the big top tent where evening teachings were conducted. All of us Queens WOWs sat together for the ceremony. Most of my friends were sent to Outreach Cities, including my girlfriend Lori, who was sent to Chicago. In addition to my Nebraska assignment, only one other person from our circle was sent somewhere other than an Outreach City, Kevin F to North Dakota. We were to spend the seventh and last day of the ROA meeting our new WOW family and making travel arrangements. Our family consisted of Steve, an interim 10th Corps man from Texas, who would be our coordinator/leader; Gail, a veteran of a previous WOW year from Philadelphia; and Rosemarie, a relatively new PFAL grad from California. Because there were only two cars, one of them a two-seater, between the two western Nebraska families, Rosemarie and I rode on a bus with some Way people from Grand Island, Gail, who owned one of the cars, who take Steve and two Scotts Bluff WOWs in her car, while the other two Scotts Bluffs WOWs would carry all our luggage in their pickup. The bus broke down in the middle of Iowa. 

Even though, in retrospect, this was another one of those recurring red flags, I saw it as a bit of an adventure. While the bus was being repaired several of us went to work for the repair shop and lived in tents behind the gas station. Eventually, after the bus was repaired we made it to Sidney, Nebraska a week late and set about the task of finding jobs and housing. 

Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XVIII

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/09/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xviii.html

Havelock Burger King & Supply & Demand

For any business to run properly, make a profit, provide good customer service and also provide a good work experience for the employees there must be mutual respect among management, owners, employees and customers. For a long times employers have had the upper hand. The ever-popular "If you don't like it, find another job" has finally become a reality, with the power pendulum swinging in employees' favor due to variety of conditions.

The capitalist ethos teaches us that the business owner gets to call all the shots, because they provided the capital and took the risks necessary to start the business. But this mindset ignores the concurrent reality that for all but the smallest business, the business owner could not continue as a business operator without employees. In the businesses that I have been in, those with specialized skills or education have, to a certain extent, been able to set the conditions of their employment, while those employees considered "unskilled" were viewed as expendable and easily replaceable. The reasons for this are related to the principle of supply and demand. A job seeker whose knowledge or ability is in short supply may find that the demand for her skill set exceeds the supply, so the salary is bid upwards and there is competition for her services. Owners and managers are forced to pay a decent wage and to allow flexibility and a sought-after work-life balance, as well as comfortable working conditions. In job classifications where the supply of job seekers exceeds the demand for them, the opposite takes place: the wage trends downward, working and conditions and work-life balance are as bad as management can legally get away with. There is no market-based incentive to do any better.

What we are seeing in many service sectors of the economy is that the low-wage workers have woken up to the reality well ahead of their managers and the owners of the businesses where they work. Suddenly, as the economy has opened up after the worst of the Covid pandemic, workers realize that they have choices, if they don't like it, they can "go find another job"...and they do it. Business owners are slower to make the connection. One thing that some businesses are figuring out is that in order to keep staffing levels up they need to increase wages to attract applicants. What they haven't figured out yet is that it's not just about the money. Employees don't want to live to work, they don't want to endure abuse from bosses or customers. They want to be able to stay home if they are sick or there is a family emergency. In short, they want to be treated with respect, not as a dispensable cog in the wheel.

Of course a business has to turn a profit in order to remain operational. There are many expenses involved in running a business. Unfortunately one of the first areas that gets cut when revenue goes down is payroll. In a retail store, labor cost budgets are usually tied to sales. If sales go down, then the money that can be spent on staffing goes down. What the corporate bean counters often fail to realize is that usually a certain minimum of work has to be done, no matter what the revenue looks like. So what happens is that hours get cut, positions get eliminated, and the remaining workers have to work harder to achieve the same tasks. Things don't get done, or don't get done right. Customers get angry, which causes resentment among the workers. Top management continues to cut labor while running sales and special events, which the reduced staff is ill-equipped to execute.

What used to happen was that employees would just complain, maybe fight back by stealing, or slowing down, or coming to work high, because they didn't want to risk having no job. Now, they know there are plenty of other jobs available, so they just quit.

At some point business owners will have to figure this out.

 

Why I Don't Pray

A few explanations and clarifications before I start:

1. I am defining "prayer" as asking "God" (or gods) to do something, provide something, or answer something, either for oneself or others
2. I am aware that there is a category of prayer that involves thanks or praise, that's not the type of prayer that I am discussing
3.  I am also aware that some people insist that #1 is not true prayer, but #2 is. My response to this is that millions of people engage in #2 - that's what I'm talking about. 
4. I have no problem with other people praying. Go for it, knock yourself out, but if you're going to attempt to convince me that it "works", provide evidence

I don't know when I started praying. I know that our family were traditional church-goers and that I was taught to pray. Formulaic, ritual prayers, like "grace" before meals, scripted prayers that were part of  Sunday mass and personal praying - between me and God. I don't remember if this was actually taught, or it was just something that was simply believed, but I remember believing that "sometimes the answer is 'no'" when asking God for something. I don't recall ever being told how we were supposed to know what we were allowed to ask for and what God's standards for answering prayer affirmatively were.

When I was 19 I joined a group that can easily be described as a cult (see my journey in the blog series "So, You Want to Join a Cult"). They taught that when you didn't get the answer you asked for when praying, it wasn't some ephemeral "Sometimes God says no", but that it was one of two main categories. This group pointed to two verses that talked about prayer, one said that God would answer our prayers that were "according to his will". How would we know what God's will was? It was in the Bible! The other verse said that God would provide "whatsoever we asked in prayer, believing...". So, before praying, we needed to know if what we were asking for was something that God said in the Bible we could pray for, and that we had to believe; believe that the promise in the Bible was true, and believe that God would answer our prayer. What it boiled down to was that when we didn't get an answer to prayer, it wasn't some "mysterious ways", it was our own lack of faith. I subscribed to this view for many years.

Over the years I started paying attention to the results that I was receiving (or not receiving) when I prayed. It seemed like the way things were turning out had nothing to do with whether I prayed about it or not. Prayer just didn't seem to be a factor. Now this lack of results could be chalked up to me being an "unbeliever" (I prefer "disbeliever"), or that I wasn't a "real" Christian, or any other number of excuses. But I started then to look at the people around me as they talked about the things that they were praying for and the results that they were receiving and saw a pattern. 

A common logical fallacy is what's called confirmation bias. This is when events that back up, or confirm our pre-existing beliefs or opinions are remembered, or even magnified or exaggerated, while those that contradict those pre-existing positions are forgotten, ignored or explained away. This was something that I observed among people whom I knew believed in the power of prayer. When things went well, when that surgery was successful, when that job came through, well, that was a "praise God" moment, but when the surgery didn't go well, or the person died, or someone else got the job, that's when the excuses and rationalizations came out. The ever-popular "Sometimes God says no" or "God knows what's best for us" or "God doesn't necessarily give us what we want, but what we need". Or sometimes, just silence. 

Some of this just doesn't make sense. If God is just going to override or ignore your prayer in order to give you something better, why pray at all? If praying doesn't get you the desired result all the time, then it doesn't really work, does it? If there's a good chance that your prayer will go unanswered, it's kind of like playing the lottery. 

I look at the evidence, and I see none that there is any efficacy in prayer. It doesn't work. 

To expand upon a previous point, if you want to pray, I'm not trying to talk you out of it. I'm not trying to convince you that it's a bad idea, or even that it's stupid. But if you want to try to rebut or refute what I'm saying, be prepared to offer evidence. What evidence would I accept that might change my mind that praying is effective - that it's perhaps my own stubbornness that is preventing me from seeing the light? How about a prayer log, containing every single thing that is prayed for over a year's time? Log the results, in detail. No excuses. If done honestly it would be quite illuminating....one way or another.

So that's why I don't pray. 

 

I Rise on Invisible Wings

I rise

On invisible wings

The air of the night

lifting me above

the gravity of sin

I float

on an invisible sea

waves of dawn

horizon-ward

I see

the darkness

summoned

inside

 

Offended at Being Offended

 I don't always understand why something offends. A lot of the time I hear some group raising hell about a phrase or a media depiction where I scratch my head and think "What's the big deal?". But the reason I don't understand is that I am not part of the group that feels hurt or disrespected. There's no way that I can truly put myself into someone else's head and heart and feel what they feel. Just because I can imagine that if something similar happened to me I would react differently doesn't negate the very real and valid reaction that someone else might have. 

An example is the continuing battle over the use of Native American imagery and team names in sports. Many (not all) Native American individuals, groups, tribes, and nations have expressed how insulting it is to use Indians, chiefs, redskins, warriors etc. as their team mascots. A common "rebuttal" to these images being offensive is that American descendants of Irish immigrants (I count myself as one of that group) don't take offense at depictions of leprechauns, like on the box of Lucky Charms. One meme that I saw recently suggested that the reason was that we weren't "over sensitive whiny little bitches". I suggest that a more accurate reason is that although we once were a persecuted minority, we didn't have our culture, including our language and religion, taken away from us, and we were never considered non-persons. We were within a generation or two accepted as White, an integral part of "real" America. Ask yourself whether Native Americans were treated the same way. 

A rhetorical question that often is asked is "Why, all of a sudden is this offensive?". The answer is that it's probably not all that sudden. Persecution and discrimination have been around for a long time, but speaking out against it has often resulted in lethal consequences in past generations. It's finally relatively safe to demand respect and equality. 

Any other persecuted or marginalized group is going to be sensitive to slights and insults that the dominant majority is going to think are not worthy of getting upset about. The dominant majority isn't going to get upset about these slights because they don't apply to them. Attempting to imagine how they would react to the same slights is meaningless because the majority doesn't have the same context in which to interpret these same words and images. And it shouldn't matter; what someone who doesn't understand why something would be offensive should be doing instead of mocking another for being offended is attempting to understand why it's offensive, or at least accepting the validity of the other's being offended. 

Customer Service

I spent much of my adult life working in retail: gas stations, newspaper circulation, grocery stores. For a few years I taught a customer service class for the company I worked for. And as someone who is now out of retail, I am sensitive to the level of service that I receive when interacting with customer service personnel. I was going to write a pair of blog posts, one addressing bad customer service employees, and the other addressing bad customers, but decided to combine the two.

I'm old enough to remember when the phrase "the customer is always right" was not as ubiquitous as it is now. When it was enough for a business to give the customer what it said it was going to give with a minimum of friction. When the goal wasn't to "delight the customer", but to simply to provide the customer what they were paying for. Egregious rudeness was not tolerated, neither from the business nor from the customer. A business transaction was just that, a transaction where both sides treated each other with respect, or at least without disrespect or overt rudeness. When I was a young man I had a weekend job in a full service gas station. The station manager was a surly ex-Marine by the name of Al Kramer. He was in many ways very difficult to work for, but when push came to shove, he didn't allow customers to abuse his employees. One afternoon a customer complained that I had short changed him. In those days gas purchases were not rung up on a register. Everybody who worked the gas pumps was given a "bank" to start his shift and the cash from each transaction was held by the worker until the end of his shift. Each pump had a little counter that kept track of dollars and gallons - these numbers were written down at the beginning and end of every shift and compared with the money that was turned in. If there was question of a customer being shortchanged, that particular pump would be shut down, a reading taken, and the money counted and compared to the difference between beginning and ending readings. In this case, I had the exact amount of money that I should have, therefore, I had not shortchanged the customer. The customer, however, was not satisfied with this answer and accused me of stealing the money, and not including it in what I turned in, and asked Al what he was going to do about it. His response to "what are you going to do about it?" was to tell him that he was going to give him a kick in the ass and threw him out of the station. How common do you think it would be today for a manager to not only stick up for his employee, but to do so in such an emphatic manner? Al Kramer may have been an extreme example, but I can't imagine any retail manager back in those days allowing a customer to verbally abuse an employee. What changed?

As I stated earlier, it used to be that a business person's only goal was to provide their customers with their product at the advertised price. Of course I'm aware that there was a time, before the rise of unions, when employees where viewed as little better than slaves. Low wages, horrible working conditions, no job security. But the interaction between the business and the customer was one of caveat emptor, i.e. "let the buyer beware". Somewhere along the way, "customer service" became as much of a commodity as the product itself. I ask again, what changed? I'm going to blame Walmart as one instigator of the change to "the customer is always right", although there are certainly other causes. Walmart, or giant companies like Walmart, can be viewed as instigators, not because they emphasized customer service, but because of their strategy of driving competitors out of business by offering prices so low that it was almost impossible to compete on the basis of price. If you couldn't compete on price, you had several competitive options open to you: one was quality, the other was service. 

In the scramble to stay in business in the face of the steamroller that is Walmart, retailers tried (and are still trying) numerous ways to keep their customers. The one path that has led to the present-day culture of customers abusing workers with impunity was to give the customer what he or she wanted, usually without question, and to reward the rudest customers for their rudeness. It's no secret that the "Karen" (or her male counterpart) who yells the loudest and is the most insistent usually is given what she wants. When in decades past a customer who yelled at or insulted the teenager ringing up groceries would be escorted out of the store, today the same customer is apologized to and given a gift card for their trouble. Unlike the Al Kramers of days gone by, an abusive customer isn't offered a kick in the ass, with the employee being given the benefit of the doubt, but today's employee is assumed by management to be in the wrong and the customer is courted and begged to forgive. As I used to say when I was a retail manager: we've trained customers to be assholes. 

Some people just want to control other people. They fall into several categories:

The Truly Powerful Person
People who have real power, whether it is in the political realm, the business world, sports, social status or even being physically intimidating are used to getting their own way. Sometimes it comes from being surrounded by sycophants who cater to their every whim. Sometimes it comes from being used to employing the fear of being beat up or shot to get their way. This type of person, in his or her daily life, sees no benefit to treating others with respect or kindness. That doesn't mean that people in power can't treat others with respect or kindness or that they won't, just that there is no social pressure to do so. In everyday interactions, the Truly Powerful Person (TPP) is habituated to giving orders and having them obeyed without question. So what happens when the TPP is in a situation where no one knows that they are powerful or where there power is irrelevant? When confronted by this indifference to their exalted status, the TPP often responds by saying things like "Do you know who I am?" or "I'll have you fired". They are so flabbergasted by the absence of the deference that they are usually accorded that they lash out. The TPP often knows people. Perhaps they play golf with the company president, or have connections at the mayor's office. There's a good chance that they will get what they want and more, just by suggesting that they're going to talk to their other powerful friends. When encountering retail employees their natural inclination is to see them as just another person to provide them without question, with everything that they ask for.

The Conventionally Powerless
Many people have little to no power in their everyday lives. They are far down the ladder of power and authority in their jobs, socially, politically and economically. They may be a persecuted minority, they may be a low skill worker, they may be poor. They spend most of their time being disregarded and treated badly. So what happens when they encounter someone over whom they may have some small measure of power, even if it's only temporary? The smallest slight becomes cause for retaliation. They act in a manner similar to those who have actual power. In fact, I have seen this type of person become  more abusive and eager to throw their weight around than those who have real power. At one of my previous positions we had a guy that we called "hand basket guy". We called him that because he would enter through the exit door and, not seeing any hand baskets (they were usually by the entrance door), would curtly say "hand basket" to whoever walked by. Not, "where are the hand baskets?" or "can you get me a hand basket?", but simply "hand basket". He was a dick. This man, not only raised hell whenever he had a legitimate complaint, but he seemed to come in looking for something to complain about. He would berate checkers when they didn't respond to him in the way that he thought was "correct", but we noticed that when he was shopping with his wife, he was as meek as a lamb. Possibly she had the real power at home and he came to the store to exercise a little control. People in this category are wont to threaten to sue you if you do not comply with their wishes. However, they generally are the kind of people who can't afford a lawyer and haven't the slightest idea of what is legally actionable.

The Person Who Has Authority in a Teeny, Tiny Area
You sometimes see this with people who have been given a small measure of authority: small town police and government officials come to mind, the clerk at the DMV or the guy checking IDs at a popular night spot. Somebody gave them some power and dammit!, they're going to enjoy it! They may not have a lot of power in the grand scheme of things, but they're going to exercise it in their own narrow sphere. Fortunately, these people usually practice their power grabbing assholeyness in their own circle of authority, and rarely take it out on retail clerks. Watch out if you're speeding in their town though.

The Hybrid
A combination of the truly powerful  and the conventionally powerless, this is a person who comes from a typically powerless group, like a racial minority, or is uneducated, or comes from the "wrong side of the tracks". When this person gains power and prestige, either by education, success in sports, music or business, or maybe even in the realm of criminal activity, "respect" becomes very important. Respect is demanded in all situations. When the fantasized level of respect is not accorded to the hybrid, not only will this type of person lash out, like the first category of person, but accusations of bigotry are thrown around as well. This person probably won't sue you. They probably think that they know powerful people, but actually just routinely annoy powerful people. They'll write letters to the editor and flood social media with their view that you are an idiot.

Whatever category of control-seeker a customer may be in, the knowledge that their behavior will be encouraged emboldens them. 

So, if the culture has shifted so much that abusive behavior by customers is accepted and mainstreamed, why does it seem like bad customer service is as widespread as it is? Before I answer that, let me tell you what I think good customer service consists of (and what it doesn't):

* It's not acting like you're my best friend. I don't care if you like me. I don't care if you are uninterested in my personal life. If you're a cashier, ring my order up accurately and quickly; if you're a waiter, take my order and bring me what I ordered. I have told several checkers over the years that they were "my favorite" because they didn't pretend to like me

* It's not spouting out clearly insincere phrases like "Welcome to Ralph's Hardware"

* It's not asking me if I found everything that I came in for unless you plan to do something about it

* It's not having every employee run up to me to "greet" me ((I'm looking at you, B&R Five Feet & Greet)

* It is answering any questions I may have about availability or location of products, but not rolling your eyes and sighing if you think I asked a "stupid" question; or correcting my pronunciation of a product

* It's having advertised products on the shelf throughout the life of an ad or giving me a raincheck or making a substitution if the product is not available

* It's focusing on my order and not holding personal conversations with other employees

On occasion I have encountered over-the-top rudeness by retail employees. I have also witnessed numerous examples of just plain poor customer service skills. A few months ago a purchased several dozen folders from a local store. There were two different varieties with a small variance in price between each. I double checked the UPC codes to make sure I was getting the right product. When the cashier was canning them I saw that about half of them were ringing up at a wrong, higher, price. When I pointed this out to the cashier, she replied "Oh you probably got the wrong ones". When I assured her that I had not, she countered with "Sometimes things are different prices". Yes, sometimes customers grab the wrong items and sometimes things are different prices, but leading with a suggestion that the customer is wrong is...wrong. She could have asked someone to do a price check, or asked a manager for input, but she continued arguing with me. Eventually a manger came over. When I attempted to explain the situation, he ignored me. He, seeing the amount of money was relatively small, gave in. In this scenario, no one was overtly rude to me, but neither the cashier, nor the manager, was engaging in basic customer service with a polite customer who had a legitimate complaint. How does this happen.

Poor training. 

How often does a new employee get thrown into her job with insufficient training? How many managers got thrown into their jobs with insufficient training? And now, because they have no idea how to handle customer questions or complaints, or for that matter even the basics of customer interactions, they have participated in a vicious cycle that gives the customer a pretext for escalating into rudeness.

Speaking of vicious cycles, how many rude retail employees are acting that way because they have had enough customer abuse, have had enough of a lack of support from management, are sick of being in a system where you are expected to bow and scrape to people who treat you like dirt? To not only accept abuse, but often be forced to apologize to the abuser for objecting to the abuse? Just because someone is young, is in their first job or is uneducated, doesn't mean that they're stupid. They know that calling them an "associate" or a "teammate" doesn't make them any any better than when they were called simply an "employee". They see that the retail culture devalues them, and it's not going to get better. So they act as if they don't care. 

Because they don't, they know there's some other low-wage job that they can get tomorrow if you fire them today.