We’re putting the finishing touches on our Best Of lists for the year. You’ll see them in this space over the next two weeks. Tomorrow: Books!

Piggy-backing on yesterday’s post, here’s a group of Christians who get it. (Despite the fact they picked an unfortunate name for their movement.) From Time magazine:

A movement like the Advent Conspiracy is countercultural on two fronts – not just fighting the secular idea that Christmas is a month-long shopping and decorating ritual, but the powerful conservative notion that the holiday requires acknowledgement from the nation’s retailers to be truly meaningful. It’s not easy, says one youth pastor whose church is part of the Advent Conspiracy. “When you start jacking with people’s idea of what Christmas is and you start to go against this $450 billion machine of materialism and consumerism, it really messes with people,” he explains. “It takes a lot of patience to say there’s a different way – Christmas doesn’t have to be like this.”

More here. (We especially like the phrase “restoring the scandal of Christmas by substituting compassion for consumption.”)

Come up with ideas like this:

It’s called a CHRIST-mas tree.

The manufacturer, Boss Creations, is based out of Nashville. The “About Us” page from its web site states, “It is our mission to help you bring the Word of God into your home during the Christian holiday seasons.” It continues,

In recent years, our Christmas holiday has been made to become a generic holiday for all religions with many being forced to call it a “Holiday” season instead of Christmas season. We, as Christians, must take a stand and rescue our religious holiday. We at Boss Creations believe that one way to do this is to decorate with more Christian-themed holiday decorations including The CHRIST-mas Tree.

Several other commentators have already covered much of the terrain here. Matthew Paul Turner, representing Christians who are embarrassed by this kind of stuff, plays it for yuks ( “How do you put Christ back into Merry CHRISTmas? By crucifying your Christmas tree, that’s how!”); Bill Berkowitz offers a slightly more reportorial take on the Religion Dispatches blog; and Hendrik Hertzberg makes a thoughtful, pro-Christmas case on behalf of those who aren’t Christians. We’ll add only this:

The idea that spending more money will put Christ back into Christmas is, simply, stupid. It’s also cynical, manipulative and — at least in the case of the CHRIST-mas tree — aesthetically hideous. If anyone truly believed that purchasing Boss Creations’ products would further benefit the Kingdom of God, may we make one simple suggestion: If you’re going to spend $299.99, spend it on people who won’t be giving you gifts back.

Thank you, Joseph & Mary Tufts, for the very generous gift of The Nicolas Cage Adventure Set! This peel-and-post set (which unexpectedly arrived in our mailbox yesterday) allows you to place Mr. Cage in various states of thespian poise against a dungeon or beach backdrop. Check out just a few of our creations!

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

Buy your own Nicolas Cage Adventure Set (and other cool stuff) at BrandonBird.com.

What are we thankful for this year? David Porterfield cooking us breakfast. Not having to wake up at 1 a.m to work tomorrow. Google maps to help us translate Donna Vore’s directions. Bulls-Jazz on TNT tonight. Friends & family. And you reading this blog.

Enjoy your tryptophan coma.

x

For the fourth year running we are spending the day before Thanksgiving in Columbus, partaking in the finest that German Village has to offer: specifically, The Book Loft and its neighbor, Cup O Joe and the MoJoe Lounge. It has become a little pre-Thanksgiving tradition for us, perusing the labyrinthine offerings next door before camping out at the coffee shop with a hot beverage, newspapers and a stack of books (Eating Animals, Let The Great World Spin and The Poisonwood Bible). In certain religious traditions, while this may not qualify as heaven, it might be the bookstore and coffee shop you visit just outside heaven.

Should you find yourself in the greater Columbus area in the not-too-distant future, you owe it to yourself to stop at both.

x

At my job I (Ben) often get to handle customer complaints. Whether I’m any good at it may best be answered by those doing the complaining. As with all things, you get better with practice. So this little Saturday morning homily is not a seminar from an expert, just observations from someone on the learning curve.

First, it’s important to distinguish exactly which kind of complaint you’re dealing with here. I think there are two main categories: Justified and Unjustified.

Justified scenario: You have provided poor service. You or someone you manage has slighted the customer through rudeness, oversight or incompetence. Examples: You overcharge someone or leave an item out of their bag. You screw up their food order. You insult their personal appearance, their taste in literature or their appalling lack of fashion sense. You serve them undercooked wings and give them food poisoning and hire Jeremy Piven as a spokesperson. Etc.

Unjustified scenario: You have provided reasonable, maybe even exemplary, service but it is unequal to the customer’s desires (however unreasonable those may be). You moved mountains but didn’t walk on water. You did not have the book or CD or piece of clothing she wanted. You did not make a plane arrive on time. You did not not cook a meal that was as tasty as the one he had years before and has committed to memory with incomparable nostalgia. You did not prevent a hundred other people from rearranging their schedules so as to not impede the pre-made plans of your disgruntled customer’s Saturday. You did not murder in cold blood the person in the Toyota Camry who stole your customer’s spot even when he clearly saw it first and had his turn signal on to indicate this fact. You are incapable of making someone’s spouse finally forgive her or father love him more. You cannot personally bestow unto him or her the peace that passeth all understanding. Etc.

Both scenarios require the same basics in the tool kit: The ability to listen, empathize, apologize, make restitution. Every customer, regardless of scenario, wants to be heard. But from henceforth, I will address only the second category of complaint, the Unjustified.

The Unjustified Complaint always results from the customer not getting what she wanted. The sooner you acknowledge this and apologize for this fact ( “I realize you wanted x, and I’m sorry we couldn’t deliver x for you”), the sooner you arrive at the fork in the road. The customer will either be disarmed by you cutting to the chase (and may even come to her senses and say, “You’re right, my complaining is pointless”), or — more likely — she will redouble her efforts because you are trying, sincerely, to be direct, kind and understanding. Most angry customers hate this.

“If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,” say the Proverbs. “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” That last part sounds a bit like retribution, but Eugene Peterson translates it a little differently: “Your generosity will surprise him with goodness.”

This is really the only way I know how to deal with an Unjustified Customer Complaint. The customer has pain to dispense, and you give him back kindness.

This is of course the hardest path to take. You (I) want an eye for an eye. It doesn’t take long in retail to wonder if you have a bull’s-eye pinned to your chest. Even if you manage to avoid repaying an unkind customer with unkindness, you still have the problem of inheriting it. The Unjustified customers will win this battle nine times out of ten. They will resort to name-calling. They will spit bile and condescension. They will say, to use one example from my week, “I will do everything possible to take my business away from a store run by a bunch of flippin’ morons.” (Use your creativity to substitute other words for “flippin’.”)

What next? If you give into temptation, you will unload this venom on someone else. Maybe someone you manage, maybe someone you love. Then everyone’s miserable.

To borrow a spiritual analogy, it’s part of what Christians believe about Jesus dying on the cross. When handed injustice and persecution, Jesus took it but didn’t give it back. You don’t even have to believe that the symbolic weight of that injustice is “sin” or subscribe to the idea of atonement to agree with the basic transaction there. Something stopped at Jesus and went no further.

An Unjustified Customer Complaint isn’t persecution (or, obviously, crucifixion), but it’s the meager spiritual offering I could make this week, and I tried to receive it without passing it on. I resisted saying to that customer, “Well, your mom is a flippin’ moron. Sha-blam!” But just barely. You start where you are.

Enough preposterous spiritual/retail analogies for a Saturday. Especially a day off.

See their take (and actual pictures of Erin and Emily at the Jazz/Cavs game) here.

x

Andrew Cashmere recently pleaded for something, anything, to help him pass the time at work. (Disclaimer: He works at a slaughterhouse.) He then offered the following four topics for consideration:

• Favorite bad movies
• Famous actor that would play you in the movie of your life
• Why Pittsburgh Steelers fans are awful
• Would you rather: Lorelai or Rory? (and why)

So as to make this equal opportunity for the sexes, we will add the fifth topic to counterbalance #4:

• Would you rather: Bob Wallace or Phil Davis?

(We saw White Christmas last night at the Aronoff.)

Take your pick! Answer any of the above five! (And keep it tasteful!)

Comment now!

We take accuracy very seriously here at Voreblog, and when a correction is required we want to set the record straight as soon as possible.

In a recent post Ben wrote about his somewhat traumatic experience during a semen analysis appointment, and in that post he referenced a porno entitled Whispering Horses. You may have perhaps Googled Whispering Horses to verify the authenticity of this film. Had you done so, you would not have had any luck finding it.

This is because the title of the film was not, we regret to report, Whispering Horses. A return visit to this office confirmed that the title is actually Whispering Hearts (starring Star E. Knight). In his flustered state, Ben misread the second word in the title. (The words were in cursive lasso.) Coupled with the fact that the film opens with extended shots of men and women on horseback (it is set on a dude ranch), and we hope you can understand — if not forgive — the error.

The original post has been amended.

And Ben was able to give the thumbs up after visit #2.

———————-

Question for discussion: How exactly do hearts whisper?