I don't care! Enough!

[Boozy]

Yet another potentially funny SC thread at CS.com is being ruined by people jumping all over the fact that religion was mentioned peripherally in the original post.

Everyone seems to take this as an opening to share the fact that they are atheist, or used to be Catholic/Baptist/whatever but now aren't, and by the way, here's their entire philosophical world view.

I don't care.

If I cared, I'd visit a forum about spirituality and religion. Instead, I prefer to visit a forum about awful customers and what big idiots they are. That's what I find interesting.

For the record, I don't find these kinds of statements offensive...just BORING.

Honestly, I know more about the inner spiritual lives of some CS members than I do about my own family.

I hope I haven't offended anyone. I certainly don't begrudge anyone the right to speak up about what they believe in. But there is a time and a place!

[Rapscallion]

Funnily enough, I can't seem to do right whatever I do in this regards over there. I regard all religion as a delusion, but if people believe then that's their choice. I'll debate it if people want to, but if not then as long as it doesn't involve inconveniencing others then I'll let that sleeping dog lie.

However, of late I've heard of someone complaining that we only seem to defend christianity. Feh, it's the only one under attack, as far as I can see, and if someone was attacking another then I'd deal with it. I've had a few comments that I'm not defending wiccans, since they claim the word witch and aren't keen on it being used to describe a SC.

The religions involved are supposed to preach tolerance for the most part, but the amount of petty sniping I see in passing, even from atheists, baffles and saddens me.

Wierd.

Rapscallion

[Pedersen]

Good luck on that count Raps. For every word that someone uses to describe a sucky customer, I can find a way to connect that word to religion, vocation, or personal beliefs in such a way that somebody can be offended.

Some examples:

• Witch: Offensive to wiccans.
• Bitch: Offensive to dog breeders, especially the ones who are proud of their even tempered female dogs.
• Asshole (this covers a whole slew of words that don't need repeating): General swearing. Offensive to any group that doesn't like swearing (typically arch-Christians in this group).
• Douchenozzle: Obviously used by people who have problems with female reproductive organs, and a slur against women who try to maintain cleanliness to boot.
• Unpleasant person: Clearly a case of the poster having a bad day, and not empathizing properly with the customer/co-worker/manager.

And that's without trying hard. If you'd like, you can send me a list of "offensive" words, and I'll connect them for you (like above), and you can post the list somewhere for people to realize how ridiculous the whole mess is.

I wish I could say/offer more, but that's all I've got for ideas.

[ArenaBoy]

People will always take offense to anything and a lot of people have too thin a skin. And those who are offended because of a certain word (Witch for example) need to pick up a dictionary and learn that most words have various meanings to them. That and to grow some thick skin.

[rahmota]

Sorry about that Boozy. I think some people self-identify with their chosen belief system to such a degree they have a little trouble seperating things out.

I know the terms trailer trash and redneck give me a bit of a cringe or whatever when I see people using them and have spoken up about it before in the thread or to the person but when somethign becomes so entrenched in a person's psyche then it just dosent matter how much you speak to them about it they will still wind up using it. And like you said Arena sometimes its better to just ignore it and go on than get involved in a word war.

I don't quite know what to tell you about defending the faith. Personally if a person's faith needs someone else to come and defend it for them they must not have much of it in the first place but thats just my opinion.

[DesignFox]

I've noticed that happening a lot too, boozy. Sadly, not just from newer members. I've learned a lot in etiquette in my time posting, and IF I post a response in those types of threads, I leave my personal beliefs out of it and just comment on the customer. That's what we're all there for.

More of our fellows need to remember that. I thank the Mods because they do tend to shut that down when it starts happening. I just feel badly for the person whose thread got derailed. Unfortunately, we can't do much about it except try to remind people what the discussion was really about.

It's been bothering me, too.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

I know how you feel, Boozy, I have the same problem with posts about people ranting over accents. I get a lot of customers who express intolerant views about having to deal with foreigners on the phone, and I finally had to just start leaving those stories out of my posts, even though I get some rather funny ones, because 1) the thread always degenerates and then we end up with the inevitable MOD warnings, and 2) I get angry, long-winded PM diatribes from other posters about how wrong I am for poking fun at these people and how terrible my company is for hirinig people with accents. This happens no matter how impartial I try to be, no matter how much I try to focus specifically on the fact that they rant at a lowly phone rep as though I can do something about it. I finally just gave up and now I refuse to post about those calls. It's frustrating, as I deal with them constantly.

[Boozy]

I get a lot of customers who express intolerant views about having to deal with foreigners on the phone, and I finally had to just start leaving those stories out of my posts...

I do the same thing with certain stories, and I think its a terrible shame.

Just last week I had an absolutely fantastic sighting. I mean, when I told my husband about it, he laughed until he cried. It was that good.

I was about to post on CS when the thought occurred to me that there was no way it was going to end well. (Hint: It involved one elderly man acting like a dick and using his age to justify his behaviour.) Now, if everyone would just treat the story for what it was (ONE person of a certain age group acting rudely) then it would be fine. But I just couldn't see it going that route. Sweeping generalizations would abound.

So the forum is short one hilarious post from Boozy, which as we all know, just about breaks your hearts.

[Rapscallion]

We did try to make it clear we were going a touch easier on mentions of race. The site news says for descriptive purposes - setting the scene etc.

Problem is, we tend to sway back and forth on this. We have to crack down when some less-than-liberal comments become prominent, and they have a nasty habit of spilling out. When we crack down we get complaints, we ease up and things start all over again. Trying to find that happy medium. We don't want to wade into every thread that has a mention of race in a correct context and give out reminders - that gets old fast.

Feel free to post it here.

Rapscallion

[rahmota]

Thing is you might need to make a whole new section on Fratchign if you open it up for more contentious sightins or work stories.

[Rapscallion]

Cheap and easy enough to do...

Rapscallion

[ThePhoneGoddess]

Actually Raps, the thing that annoys me much more than the MOD warnings in the threads are the PM's I get whenever I post those kinds of stories. I get PM's all about how I should not be making fun of these people because they are RIGHT and I am WRONG and it is a God Given Right for them to be able to speak to someone over the phone who is a natural born American with no accent whatsoever.

There are a lot of people who simply cannot seem to wrap their heads around the fact that I am a white person who grew up surrounded by Hispanic culture and therefore identify strongly with it. There are entire sections of the US that have been overwhelmingly Hispanic for 400 years, and I have lived in several of these regions for most of my life. Of course people rant about other cultural identities too, but this one seems to hit the most nerves.

[ArenaBoy]

What's hilarious about those threads is that when a age, religion, race, or anything is used to describe something or it has a factor people instantly fly off the handle. I'm tempted to post this when it gets like that. I'd fly off the handle saying that people need to get past the description and focus on what was making a customer a stupid customer. Generalizing a group is one thing but mentioning it as a description and it has to do with the story is another.

[CancelMyService]

You know, I've never seen any contentious religion debates on CS. Now granted, they may all be deleted before I see them, but I'm a night owl which means I usually see stuff before the mods wake up


IMO, what irks me sometimes is now every post over there seems to have 15,000 disclaimers stating what you are about to read is not intended to offend. After a while it starts out looking like the opening credits to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.




(The person responsible for this post has been sacked)








(the person responsible for sacking the person responsible has also been sacked,. we apologize)

[Rapscallion]

Actually Raps, the thing that annoys me much more than the MOD warnings in the threads are the PM's I get whenever I post those kinds of stories. I get PM's all about how I should not be making fun of these people because they are RIGHT and I am WRONG and it is a God Given Right for them to be able to speak to someone over the phone who is a natural born American with no accent whatsoever.

Really? Interesting. Feel free to forward some to me. The moderating team will happily take other peoples' feelings into account, but we are the moderating team and nobody else. We keep telling people to use the report buttons so we know that someone thinks there's a problem.

Rapscallion