You should’ve pointed out that she took the Lord’s name in vain when she said “Oh dear Lord.”
I feel sorry for Grasshopper–to have such a tool for a mother.
BWAHAHAHAHA!
Oh C’mon!
She was just using you!
She “showed” her kids that only chinee heatens practice the black stanic arts of Force meeting itself. Obvously she ushered them off to a church approved holy water shower where the exposure to your black sin could be scrubbed off.
I once was Curator (and chief cook and bottle washer) of a small town Alberta (Canada) Museum where we worked very hard to achieve “real” museum status.
Home educators visited us often, and were amzed by the quality of the exhibits we offered on our shoe string biudget. We had hands on activities (make rope on a 1910 vintage rope making machine and take it home with you!, spin wool into yarn, use a crank telephone, etc)
Some home educators were secular, deciding that the local education system wasw inadequate… Those kids were GOLDEN… smart questions, eagar interactors, and enthusiastic about the idea of history as a origin.
Religious Home educators were another story! Our native history exhibit was “all wrong” as it did not show how exposure to European Christianity freed them of pgan/satanic beliafs. Our small collection of dinosaur bones was “wrongly dated”, and the kids were haunted eyed little wretches who would ask their parents the questions, so that they could be rephrased by their parents “Little Jimmy wants to know why you have an exhibit showing fossilized shells 145 million yrs old, when we ALL know that no such thing could exist?”
That woman brought those kids to you with NO intention of signing them up. She brought them to you to PROOVE that you teach a “Godless, Satanic form of Heathen devil worship”…
Regards
FML
So…all I need to do is smuggle some Holy Water out of the church, pour it on my vehicle, and I’ll have my very own Christine?
There’s a van parked in a strip mall we pass every day that says “Christian Karate.” Tell the lady to look for one of those. (Do they pray for the board to be broken when you smite it or what?)
Their motto is “when they turn the other cheek, kick them in the face”.
Jesus doesn’t like fighting, he likes winning.
I love how the uber Christian woman was looking to enroll her kids in a school that trains people to fight. WWJD? Oh yeah, he would kick his rivals in the face. Also lots of punching, thy will be done.
I would never defend this woman’s horrid behavior, and your attitude in general about not mixing business with religion is to be commended. However, you do reveal your antireligious bias when you describe prayer as someone’s “religious problem” rather than the positive force most of us understand it to be.
Had you used a neutral word rather than one with a negative connotation, there are very few people who would have anything bad to say about your message at all.
A nitpick, I know. But you as a businessman have to deal with all sorts of people, so I thought you might want to be aware of that.
She had the “problem” because of the lack of prayer. He never said that her belief in prayer was a problem.
Who is “us” and how do you define most? You can define the “force” if you’d like as well.
Well, technically, couldn’t that have been prayer? Shorthand for “Oh, dear Lord, please come save us from these Satanists”?
Then again, I never got the prescribed boundaries of that particular Commandment…
“Ma’am, people’s religious problems are their own.” Why state right off the bat that it is a problem when it isn’t? It just isn’t a matter that is being dealt with in that venue.
By stating that it is a problem, you are strongly stating your preferences in the matter - when you as a business person ought to be more fair minded. The vast majority of customers in this country are Christians, and while they do not want the businesses they frequent to proselytize for the most part, neither do they want them to be hostile to faith of any kind.
The overwhelming majority of the country is some variety of Christian, and the majority of the rest belong to faith traditions that also value prayer. So I think I’m on solid ground to say that it is important to most people.
There is no chin under Jesus’ beard, only another fist.
It’s his right as a free human being to believe it’s a problem, and even express that opinion to others if he’s in the mood to do so.
Business persons ‘ought’ to be fair minded about a lot of things. But aside from what restrictions are written into law, the only reasonable expectation is that businesses will be operated in some mixture of trying to maximize profit, and in a manner that suits their proprieters’ whims.
Feel free to wag your finger if it suits you; it’s a free country. But if you’re honest, you will stop dressing it up in moral pseudo-imperatives, and admit that it’s really just about your personal likes and dislikes.
He said, "Luke, stay away from the darker side
and if you start to go astray, let the Force be your guide
Oh my Yoda
-Weird Al
The master of the local TKD studio here leads everyone in a prayer before belt tests. Not before practice, though. Practice is for getting your ass kicked.
Anybody who thinks it’s a travesty that a freakin’ karate school doesn’t start every ceremony with a pie-eyed Christian prayer has some massive religious problems by definition.
Agreed, and nobody will defend her. But again, the OP answered her by talking about prayer in general, and that answer to someone who was religious but not a nutcase could be misunsderstood in a business environment.
And while it is the right of the OP to believe as he wishes, I think we all know that certain opinions ought not be expressed in a business environment, where we truly all have to get along. This is written into certain nondiscrimination laws, and also forms a big part of certain ethical practices and professional courtesies that we generally respect.
Since I think the OP generally wants to respect the religious traditions of his clientele, just keep it separate from his work, this kind of sensitivity can be important. So with that in mind, a little thought to the connotations of the words you use is generally a good idea.
Oh, noes!
Seriously, if it gets misunderstood, how is this anybody’s business but Clothahump’s?
Mr. Moto, have you ever heard of a thing called a ‘hostile takeover’? (Italics mine, natch.)
Why, did he violate any?
And then there are times where such respect isn’t called for. The OP was in such a situation.
Will you be similarly upset when big corporations, rather than small businesses, exhibit insensitivity to their customers, or other people negatively affected by their doings?
Yeh, riiiiiight.
How odd that Clothahump is taken to task for not acting in the widely believed “Christian” manner, when the self-professed “Christian” woman did not. How twisted can you make this, Mr Moto?
This has nothing to do with business ethics or semantics. The woman clearly had a problem–just what that problem is, I leave for others to determine. IMO, he responded more civilly than was required.