What in Christ's Name are you doing here?

The BBQ Pit
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There are very few jobs in this town that would have allowed me to take the day off. I got into this business out of desparation. If I’d had a choice, I would not have worked in the casinos. Fortunately, once I got into the business, I found that I enjoy it, so it worked out. I have turned down jobs that would not permit a schedule that would allow me to meet my religious obligations.I met the obligation, but wasn’t able to make it to Christmas Eve Vespers, so I missed a major family bonding experience with the other members of my church.

I’ve made financial sacrifices in order to get the schedule I need, so don’t accuse me of being hypocritical on the materialism issue. At a previous job, I requested Sundays off as soon as I had the seniority to do so, even though Sunday is a major tip-earning day and I could have made more money by having my days off mid-week.

Every job I have applied for, I let the prospective employer know I have religious obligations, and they have had the option of not hiring me if they were not willing to provide the schedule I needed to meet those obligations. Needless to say, there are a lot of jobs I didn’t get, some of which would have paid more than I’m making now.Fortunately, I got hooked up with a shift manager who has a preference for working with people who are involved with church. And helped me get onto a different shift so I could get to church.

I’ve had to work every Christmas for three years and don’t mind doing it as long as I can make it to Church on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I’m tired of having to put that in every post for the benefit of those of you who refuse to read before you post. I didn’t make the service I would have preferred to be at, but such is life. I wasn’t happy about it.
I find it depressing that huge numbers of people would ditch the family in favor of a craps game or a slot machine on the one day of the year that it is traditional in this country to spend with your loved ones. I find it apalling that increasing numbers of employers are not willing to make a few adjustments so that those workers who would want to be with their families can do so (and we are still in the majority, as far as I can tell, though that majority is getting slim). Having most of your workers working both Christmas Eve *and * Christmas Day? One or the other, I can see, if you really need to be open on the holidays, but both? I doubt that there are very many businesses that would go under if they ran with half the usual staff, or even with a skeleton crew, two days out of the year, so that the employees could have one or the other of the days off.

Get another job? At the rate we’re going, in a few years, there will be no such thing as a job that doesn’t require people to work Christmas.

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Oh, and I’m also getting sick of the attitude that “if something isn’t important to me, it’s not important.”

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You mean like enjoying Christmas Eve at a casino?
Look, as has been said many, many times in this threead, not everybody has an ideal family situation. A lot of people, myself included, have justifiable reasons for not spending time with their families. Many more don’t need Christmas as an excuse to do so, and attach no special importance to it as a “family time” holiday. Still others simply can’t afford the plane ticket/train ticket/whatever to get home to see their loved ones. Give some of us a break; we don’t view these things in the same light as you do, and don’t need to be insulted and blamed for society’s ills because of our OWN (admittedly different from your) beliefs. Your quote above could be amended to add,“Just because something is important to me doesn’t mean it’s important to everybody else.” But then, I somehow recall having said all this before.

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Can I add that some people have both family and friends, and choose to spend the day with both? This is especially true for people who move away from their parent’s town- when they travel home they want to see old friends as well as their relatives, and these old friends want to see them. In my family, the members with young children are retiring at 8 pm or so, the older generation is ready to pack it in at 9 or 10, and I’m off to the bar. It is a 24 hour day; there is enough room in it for all the loved ones.

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Please provide evidence that this is the case. Not your opinion–evidence.

Boy, it really gets under your skin that atheists even exist, doesn’t it?

If you’re going to continue to work in an industry that feeds that attitude, it’s apparently OK with you as well.

OK, Chicken Little. People have only been hearing this same diatribe since, oh, forever, and it’s yet to happen.

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Just like it chaps YOUR ass that religious people exist, eh pl?

:stuck_out_tongue:

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Yes, yes, a thousand times yes - you said it, Guin!
By the way, did anyone figure out that pldennison doesn’t think much of religion? Maybe he’d been too subtle when he brought it up for the umpteenth time on this thread! :smiley:

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Um, I believe that’s suttle, Yosemite.

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Spellcheck - my laptop is too slow.

No…my spellcheck does not like “suttle”. I does like subtle. I am almost it’s the word I want - you just spell it with that odd “b”.

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[QUOTE]
Originally posted by yo semite babe
**

It burns mine.

Pl has made valid points that await adequate response, I can understand his frusration with Thea, who fails to see the point of his extremely well put posts.

There does seem, IMHO, that there is a conflict between

  1. Working for a casino which is house of worship of Mammon.

and

  1. Critisising the worshippers in that house for exercising their beliefs.
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Huh? I am not really sure that I grasp what your point is.

However, I think manhattan already cleared up that gambling is not against the Catholic faith.

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OK, I’ll try again more slowly.

Can you imagine Jesus or any of his immediate followers working in or endorsing a Casino?

I think not.

Thea works for a Casino actively endorsing what it does, receives pay for doing so. Does the Casino ensure that its patrons are not caused harm by being there?
Does it do anything to ensure that it breaks none of the rules of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that manhatten cited? Does Thea?
It is surely then absurd to expect them to respect Xmas.

However, it was the customers Thea attacked in the OP, she, as an employee of a casino, was wrong to do so.
They have as much right to do their thing, as Thea has do do hers. She is quite happy to take their money, give them some respect.

I also wonder what Thea’s employers would think of the OP.
Going to show it to them Thea?

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and pldennison wants me to do an extensive research project to prove to him what is painfully obvious to those of us who actually live in the real world.

Look around.

Read the news. The increasing number of people who don’t want to spend Christmas with the family, or of employers who aren’t willing to bend a little so workers who do want to spend Christmas with the family can do so are just two symptoms, and relatively minor ones at that.

(the following items are listed in the order that they occurred to me, not in order of importance)

Like the rapidly increasing divorce rate
Increasing teen pregnancy rates, and rates of out of wedlock births in general, (and yes I admit to being a sanctimonious asshole for thinking that a child is best off if raised by both parents)
The high school or junior high mass shooting of the month
Road rage/aggressive driving
Companies making millions or billions in profits laying off thousands of employees because profits were down a couple of percentage points this quarter
Bhopal

or do you think that all of these are good things?

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Are we talking about religious people like Polycarp, C.K. Dexter Haven, zev_steinhardt, and Crunchy Frog; or are we talking about religious people like you, Wildest Bill and Thea? I have no problem with reasonable, intelligent believers like the former; I have a big problem with sanctimonious, unreasonable moralists like the latter.

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If it’s so painfully obvious, then this post should be chock full of accurate facts. Let’s see if it is!

This is a symptom of absolutely nothing. You’re extrapolating from “They don’t spend my super-special holiday with their families” to “They never spend any time with their families,” whic is, not to put too fine a point on it, stupid. There is no basis for making such an extrapoliation.

Actually, from 1979 to 197, the divorce rate fell between 10-25%. Furthermore, the statistic that I’ll bet you think you’re in possession of is at best misleading and at worst outright false. Some marriages should never take place in the first place; they are hasty decisions made by young people from conservative households eager to have sex. (Yes, sad as it may seem, the highest divorce rates exist in the Bible Belt, where people are raised not to have sex before marriage, so they rush into marriages for which they aren’t prepared.) Also, much of the marrying and divorcing is being done by the same small pool of people who constantly remarry and divorce. THe figure counts second, third and more marriages, not just first marriages.

So, no fact there. For more, see:

http://patriot.net/~crouch/adr/50percent.html

Between 1991-1997, the CDC recorded a decline in the teen birth rate of 16%. All 50 states recorded a decline in the birth rate for women aged 15-19. (Of course, this measures the birth rate and not the pregnancy rate. The obvious reason is that abortion is more readily available to pregnant teens. I’ll leave it to the moralists to decide whether more abortions for teens or more live births to teens is the lesser evil.)

So, no fact there, either. FOr more, see:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

Ouch. This is really going to hurt your batting average, I’m afraid. As of Sept. 1999, the CDC noted that the out-of-wedlock birth rate as of 1997 fell for the third year in a row. It had declined 2% since 1996 and 6% since 1994. For women aged 15-44, 44 out of every 1,000 births was to an unwed mother. For those of you who suffer from dyscalcula, that’s 4.4%. Not really that large, is it?

For more, see:
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/1999pres/990429b.html

Because a child is born to an unmarried mother does not mean it is being raised by a single parent, does it? Of course not. More stupid extrapolations.

Really? When was the last one? Do you know how infrequently these actually occur? While each death that occurs at these shootings is without doubt a tragedy, the fact is that they occur at a rate which is statistically insignificant. Your child is many orders of magnitude more likely to be killed or injured because of an accident in the home than he or she is to be killed or injured by a school shooter. They’re so infrequent, I think Columbine is actually the most recent, and it was a year and a half ago. No, scratch that–there was a shooting a month later in Georgia where one person was killed.

Fact: Between January 1993 and May 1999, 39 people (students and teachers) have been killed in 12 incidents. That’s 3.25 per incident; 6.5 per year. Tragic? Yes. An epidemic? No.

Sorry, no facts there.

Can you be more specific? That it exists at all? Is it increasing? Decreasing? More violence per incident? What?

I agree this is crap. It also doesn’t happen as often as we thing. Most layoffs this days are due to the results of large mergers, it seems. I don’t think it’s destroying society, though.

Good heavens, that was 15 years ago! And industrial accidents of that magnitude are even rarer than school shootings! Furthermore, there is significant evidence that the accident was caused by the actions of a disgruntled employee trying to ruin a batch of methyl isocyanate. See http://www.bhopal.com/JBrowning.html .

So, while the word “Bhopal” itself can be counted as a fact, the probable implication behind it cannot.

Care to try again?

176

ROTFLMAO…good GOD…Phil-haven’t you read ANY of my posts in the religious debates in GD? Good HEAVENS, man, I am no where NEAR Wildest Bill! That’s a good one! Tehee!

Generally, my beliefs are my own, and I don’t expect anyone to agree with them. I do ask that they respect the fact that I have my own beliefs. That’s it.

I never once said anyone had to be a Christian or whatever.

Oh good LORD! This is just so fucking funny!
GIVE ME SOME QUOTES, Phil darling. Not just from this thread, but from some others too. I want proof of what you say. Does anyone else agree?

And let me tell you something-Kmart, the big, the wonderful, just had an order from corporate to fire almost everyone who hasn’t been there for more than four months. We had to FIRE well over thirty new, MUCH NEEDED employees because corporate is cutting back.

And it’s not because sales are down. No, they could well afford the salaries. It’s fucking greed. They LOST money being open 24 hours the couple days before Xmas, because there weren’t enough people shopping to JUSTIFY being open like that. And now so many people are out of a job. And the sucky thing is-we don’t have enough help now.
And we didn’t have enough people today. THREE registers, and lines were wrapping around the displays, that’s how long they were. People were bitching we didn’t have enough people. And I had to tell them WHY-because corporate decided to fire all those decent, hard working people.
Please. They could’ve cut back on other stupid expenses, like being stricter about returns and all of those fucking freebies they give to customers who bitch and try to scam us. But they’re so afraid to lose CUSTOMERS…that they take it out on the employees.

THAT, is what is wrong with retail. It’s the customers want slaves. They want low prices, fast service, and quality. You can’t have it all.

Back to original rant:

I could care LESS what other people believe as far as religion. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you believe in a god or not. BUT, would it KILL you to show some TOLERANCE to people who do?
(for the record, I don’t even go to church anymore, and I have a lot of beef with the Catholic church. I don’t even know if I could call myself a Christian anymore…I’m going through some very serious questioning of my own faith. BUT…I really don’t feel it’s any of YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS, all right?) YOU are the one who keeps bringing up my religion into this, not me. I never once said that you should believe this, that, or anything.

I have no problem with people being atheist. THAT is their belief-their life, and I totally respect that. All I ask is that YOU respect that some people DO believe in a god, and that you show some consideration. To many people, their religious faith is the very essence of their being. It’s very very important to them, and for you to throw it in their faces is very arrogant and down right bigoted. I don’t complain about people who don’t go to church. I don’t even discuss my beliefs, because I feel they are private. As are your’s.

So, put your money where your keyboard is, and give me PROOF. Show me exactly where I was like Wildest Bill.
In fact, anyone else think I acted like Wildest Bill?

:wink:

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And I CERTAINLY don’t agree that people not going to Church is what is “wrong with society.” If there is something wrong, that is. I think it’s much more simple-impatience. People are too impatient. I also think that media sensationalizes any difference. Violence, pregnancy out of wedlock, sex, drugs, etc etc has ALWAYS been around.
It’s just that nowadays, it’s more sensationlized, due to rapid communication technology.

I think society just needs to chill-everyone’s too fucking hyper and nervous.

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Yeah, Guin, I’d like to see Phil dredge up some cites that prove you are a knee-jerk fundie. That’ll be interesting.

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Uh, yosemitebabe, someone does not have to be a “knee-jerk fundie” to be a religious hypocrite. The category would include all those who cliam to be believers in a religious faith but act in a manner contradictory to its tenets. Do you people get together and practice making preposterous extrapolations?

In any case, Guinastasia, one thing you have to remember here is that people can only work with the information they’re given. If you pound into me for four pages how all-fired important it is for you to be in a Christian church on Christian holidays, it is certainly not an unreasonable assumption to make that you agree with the basic tenets of Christianity. In fact, it’s the most obvious and simple conclusion to be drawn. If you’re now going to say that you don’t agree with them, well, then, I’m wrong and I apologize.

You are wrong about one thing, though–if one is going to claim to be an adherent of a particular faith (coughwildestbillcough), there is absolutely nothing wrong with an unbeliever pointing out to them that they are acting in a manner contradictory to that faith. This is particularly true in the case of people who take that adherence and derive moral principles from it, and try to convince others of those moral principles. Especially in the case of Christians, their own Scripture points out that it can be wielded as a sword against the faithful and unfaithful alike. Quite useful, that.

Actually, you’re wrong about two things. I do not treat all religious people that way, or even all religious Dopers. A cursory reading of my posts over time will demonstrate that. Hell, quite recently I was in the position of defending contemporary Christian music in two different threads, and of explaining the medical practices of Jehovah’s Witnesses in another an correcting someone who severely misrepresented them.

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What? I said I enjoy attending church on religious holidays. This makes me a religious hypocrite how?

:rolleyes: