Uhm...okay.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I find that works as well (I have a church I am happy with, thanks.). We used to get a lot of them coming in at Kinko's who wanted to try and preach to us. We can only humor them so much when we are busy.

I had this one customer I like to call the angel lady. She we very religious and very nuts. She came in with a pack of pictures (this is back before digital...my first stint at K) she wanted color copies of becaue they showed evidence that angels were all around.

These pics were of a barbeque picnic at a lake. She just had to share the miracle of what the film had picked up with me...these angels that were invisible to the eye, but the film had captured.

What she was pointing out to me was lens flare, dust flecks, and scratches on the film. Basically, she was a lousy photographer and she took her film to a sloppy lab. In one case, she was totally excited about an angel (large dust fleck) landing on a portly middle aged woman's nose as she shoveled a forkfull of barbeque into her mouth.

Did I say anything? Heck, no. Far be it from me to spit in anyone's cheerios. The woman was nuts, but happy. Oh, well.

[Dreamstalker]

Kinkoid, did she try to submit them to the Weekly World News or the Enquirer (or one of the other tabloids with stories like "Alien Weds Elvis Clone!")?

Are you in Texas? I swear, when I went down to visit my dad and a few friends in Texas, and we went driving around, there was a church on every street corner, at least.

A street in Jordan's neighborhood (also in TX; interesting place to visit, but I cannot relocate myself there as there are no jobs in my field), while zoned as residential, was turned into an actual parking lot by a church on the corner of said street (actually, two churches...yes there are two separated only by a parking lot). Which means that on Sundays, if he wants to go out somewhere he cannot (or needs to go way out of his way).

As to how the church managed to do that...I still do not know.

"Is that why he has all those dragon statues? I hope he knows those won't save his soul."

That sounds like what my grandmother said when she found out (don't ask how, as I sure as hell never told her) that I'm Wiccan. She thought wolves are "ugly" and the devil incarnate (don't even think of saying that to a werewolf) My mom didn't care what religion I wound up as as long as it didn't involve living sacrifices and I was happy with it.

[varmintjane]

On another note:

"over here in England (note i didn't say UK) various christian denominations get along very well and regularly share events and services."- Legal Eagle

Wow, once again if I could get a good job in England I'd be there. Isn't sad that in some parts of the US, people of different races still attend seperate services? Or that in some sects women aren't allowed to preach? Or that gay people are not allowed to worship because they're banned by the church?

It really is a shame, what do they think the higher power would have to say about that?

I'm originally from GA, and there were several Churches of Christ in my hometown. One was mostly white, one mostly black and one was more evenly mixed. It had a lot to do with the fact that the "black church" was closer to the east/south side of town which was predominantly a black/low income area and the "white church" was kind on the more affluent side of town. I think economic status/ location was more the reason in my situation than racial politics. They actually had services where one church would visit another for a Sunday to kind of "integrate".

[Dog Welder]

I live in the Bible belt, so I am very used to this. (My county holds record for # of churches per square mile in the world, supposedly.) .

Gadsden, Alabama by any chance?

Danggit, answered (need to read the thread more). Gadsden has the highest number of churches per people. Never mind.

[Dawnchaser]

"Is that why he has all those dragon statues? I hope he knows those won't save his soul."
When my mom told me about that I was livid. I literally wanted to go find this woman and have a nice (re: angry) educational talk about respect for differing religions.

Lameness...

I ran into a small group that calls themselves the Local Church. They are Christians, though definitely on the fringe in my opinion. Nice people for the most part. I found them interesting and so spent some time hanging with them. (I was Protestant at the time - Catholic now.)

At one point one of my friends decided to take me aside and explain to me that I was "opening demonic gateways" by wearing shirts with dragons and that I needed to get rid of anything with dragons because it's Satanic...same deal with my roleplaying stuff and pretty much all music that wasn't theirs, as far as I could tell. (That included any kind of Christian Contemporary, rock of course was totally banned.)

That was it for me. It's different from your situation as they were trying to save a fellow Christian from her wayward ways, I suppose. I might be unpleasantly surprised some day, but I really don't think dragon shirts are going to send me to Hell.

[Dragon_Dreamer]

My paternal grandmother once threw a fit on Christmas Eve, before we sat down for a service in this old adobe church near where she lives in Tuscon.

Why?

Because I was wearing a silver dragon pendant with a black onyx that my best friend had given me. She called it a symbol of the devil. She doesn't even KNOW I'm agnostic.

[Mixed Bag]

I've found that Druid produces the most negative reaction.

Maybe they think you must have had more reverence for their pamphlets when they were alive in the wood.

[Tria]

She thought wolves are "ugly" and the devil incarnate

Oh.... Um.... Maybe she should see an eye doctor. Wolves are beautiful creatures.....

[SongsOfDragons]

I once told a particularly irritating member of the GodSquad "If heaven's filled with people like you, I'd rather go to hell!!" (This was on the street, not when I was working.)

Otherwise my philosophy is basically I-can't-be-@rsed-with-religion, though I'm perfectly happy to listen to some religious guy present their take on things or tell a story. As long as they're not trying a conversion this works with most ppl I've been in contact with - a while back I was listening to a young Muslim man tell a story; he only asked me when he'd finished what religion I was, and I told him none but thanked him for telling a lovely story. Well, you should have seen the smile on his face.

[trunks2k]

Oh.... Um.... Maybe she should see an eye doctor. Wolves are beautiful creatures.....

Only the grey wolf. Other wolves are kinda ugly.

[Canarr]

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

The rest of the party lies in the stomach of the Beholder.

[dragonflygrrl]

Ok, so I live in Kansas. We have more than our fair share of sick, twisted religious zealots here, as anyone that watches CNN will likely know. Basically, if you see a picture of some idiot with a really hateful sign protesting a funeral or memorial service, odds are that idiot is from Kansas. I hate them with a passion, but some of them are my customers. While I'm at work, I try really, really hard to keep a gracious, transcendant attitude, but if I'm off the clock the gloves come off. One day I had a guy in my store trying to give me a pamphlet about how AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. I was as polite as was humanly possible, and told him that his pamphlet would be better used elsewhere. He finally left, and I went about my day. That evening, my fiance and I went walking down the "main drag" and there were some ***holes with signs about how "God hates [derogatory name for homosexual men that I refuse to use]." I walked up to the closest one and told him that he was a hateful, ignorant, inbred moron, and that I hoped the Goddess would have mercy on him because if he didn't shut the **** up, I sure as hell wouldn't. And so forth and so on. He stared at me in amazement, and then said, "You can't talk to me like that! I'm your customer!" Sure enough, he was the guy from that afternoon. He never came back to the store...not sure why. LOL

[Rapscallion]

Let's not get a religious debate going. There are many posters here with relgiious convictions, and there are many with none. Let's not start a fight.

Usual rules - if it happens at work, fine - if not then let's leave it off here, please.

Rapscallion

[dragonflygrrl]

If that's directed at me, sorry. I'm not trying to start a debate either, just recounting an episode with a customer. It just happened that the story started at work and ended elsewhere.

[Rapscallion]

It's aimed at everyone. The problem is that there are contentious issues around, and though I love a good debate as much as (if not more than) anyone, it does lead to ill feeling.

We're here to vent about sucky customers, not religious people/politicians/dancing cheese etc.

Rapscallion