Holier Than Thou

What’s the worst shift of the week? Unless you’ve never worked in customer service or are a lying liar who lies, you definitely said “Sunday afternoon”. The reason for this is simple: The after-church crowd. They’re rude, disagreeable, and self-righteous. They’re known to flock in as one large group, expect special treatment, tip poorly, and leave the place in shambles. But there is one eternal question that has plagued us for ages: Why are they like that?

For those who don’t know, Christian religions are based around the teachings of Jesus Christ, one of the protagonists of The Bible. He preached such lessons as helping the less fortunate, forgiveness, and humility. If your only experience with Christianity is from your Sunday shifts then that might seem a bit off to you.

It has always been a mystery to customer service workers how the people who follow such teachings can treat others so poorly. Some of us have received religious tracts in lieu of a tip. Others have had sharp, acrylic nails wagged in our faces for daring to refuse their demands. Countless others have been brushed off completely, left to feel insignificant or invisible.

But why? What makes them so keen to treat us like garbage?

To this end, I joined several religious groups on Facebook, including but were not limited to:

• Evangelical Christians

• Protestants

• Catholics

• Conservative Christians

• Liberal Christians

• Several individual congregations

The message I posted to each group was exactly the same:

I was wondering if anyone had any knowledge or opinion on why people are so rude to customer service workers after leaving church. I’m not saying it to cause trouble or troll your group, it’s just something most customer service workers will tell you is a fact of working Sunday afternoon and I’d like, for our community, to try to understand why that is. I would love to hear what this group thinks on the subject.

Thanks!

I received many answers ranging from sympathetic to downright nasty. I recorded any response I thought was pertinent and grouped them into five categories. Could a satisfactory conclusion truly be reached? Well, let’s take a look….

Thou Shalt Fuck Off

The first type of reply came quickly, nearly derailing the entire investigation. These were the people who met my inquiry with anger, insults, or mistrust. Some called me a troll, urged others not to engage with me, and insisted I be banned from the group entirely (some group admins not hesitating to comply). My intelligence was called into question more than a few times, thus dismissing me as an idiot outright.

This was honestly a predictable response. Not much information was gleaned from these responses except maybe in tandem with some responses I came across later.

Some actual replies I received:

“IMHO most atheists and a lot of ‘agnostics’ are childish and dishonest.”

“This post has no place in this group.”

“This guy’s a clown, doesn’t even realize we’re nondenominational group and not a religion.”

Others took a stance that it’s the customer service reps who are the jerks:

“I want to know why customer service workers are no longer trained to serve customers.”

“Rude how? When I go out to eat after services, the customer service takes longer which adds aggravation.”

“Customer service for what company?” (This person tried several times to get me to say what company I worked for.)

One person denied the premise outright:

“Worked in customer service both direct customer facing and indirect on Sundays for around 6 years. Never noticed a difference between Sunday or any other day of the week as far as shitty customers. If anything Sunday was easy because it tended to be pretty slow in the mornings, one big rush around noon, and absolutely dead after around 5.”

So if the premise itself is faulty then why do so many of us swear that Sunday customers are the worst of the week? Well….

Thou Art Biased

Unlike in the above category, these respondents actually made a valid point.

These respondents pointed out that customer service workers who claim after-churchers make Sunday afternoons worse are merely experiencing confirmation bias (the tendency to interpret new information as confirmation of an existing belief). In short; you believe Christians coming in after church are a pain in the ass and any customer who is a pain in the ass just reinforces that notion.

One replier summed it up quite nicely with a condescending question:

“I would question how a customer service rep would know that one had just left ‘church’ (probably you mean worship assembly). Most people aren’t Christians so I just wonder, does the customer service rep take a survey?”

These two said it a little more bluntly:

“I don’t think it’s true any more than people on any other day of the week. I think it’s a meme backed up by nothing more than confirmation bias.”

“Of course, there is a selection bias happening here. Christians who go to a restaurant and act properly, don’t get preachy, and tip appropriately blend into the non-problematic crowd.”

And another:

“Going by the percentage of churchgoers in our culture, using this subjective observation to judge the actions of the public at large is clearly a false premise. It would make more sense to assume the customers are rude because they’re mad at themselves for not making it to church… also a false premise or conclusion.

Of course, the first thing we have to prove is your evidence-free use of the words ‘most customer service workers will tell you’ …please prove this.”

Quite a few people mentioned my lack of citation on what “most customer service workers” would say on the issue. And they’re right! The statement is anecdotal and subjective at best and just because we accept it as fact does not make it so.

Okay, you might not like this next part.

Yes, I believe to some degree that customer service workers are biased on this subject. It doesn’t make us stupid or wrong, but there is clearly a level of confirmation bias that exists in our community when it comes to customers who have just left church. It’s part of our nature to have at least one opinion they believe as fact and can never be convinced otherwise.

This isn’t to say that we should stop saying after-church customers are the worst, just that maybe we should consider that sometimes someone is being an asshole because they’re an asshole and not because they just left church.

Yes, bias is a common reaction to information that conflicts with our beliefs, but perhaps not as common as the reaction of our next group: Denial.

Lo, That is Not Us

These respondents were an interesting set, since they appear to agree with the premise of the question but deny people of their faith are the problem. The Catholics said “those are the Protestants”, the Protestants said “you’re thinking of the Catholics”, and the evangelicals said “we’re not even a religion, you stupid ass”.

There isn’t much to say about this group, but it was notable how many of these replies I received and how perfectly they embodied the “holier than thou” spirit.

Here’s a few relevant quotes:

“This is absolutely true, speaking as a former server. I find it’s more the evangelical crowd though, and less Catholics. Catholics actually tend to tip well. It was frustrating when evangelicals would demean me and my coworkers for working on Sundays.”

“Evangelical Protestants tend to be more friendly cheery. The stuck-up Catholics are usually the issue in my experience.”

“Obviously, anything said here will have a bias, but as someone who was a cradle Catholic and then went on to dabble with just about every other religious form (or lack thereof) out there, I will 100% attest this is a Protestant and specifically evangelical thing.”

Amen!

Perhaps the most surprising turn was the amount of people who chimed in completely agree with premise and it was refreshing to gain some support and confirmation after being confronted with my undeniable bias.

Here’s some quotes from Christians who have been or known someone in customer service:

“Heard from a former waitress from a lake resort area. She had two simultaneous conventions – a well known church group and HELL’S ANGELS. She said the bikers were much more respectful and tipped much better.”

“As a Christian and a former food service worker, I’ve seen more than my fair share of these. The Christian Karen final boss, if you will, was always impeccably dressed, incredibly rude, and offered only a fake dollar bill ‘come to Jesus’ tract as their ‘tip’.”

“I’ve been working at a grocery store for 45 years. And it’s a fact of life that like clockwork every Sunday when mass let out they would come into the grocery store in their church clothes and would be awful to the employees.”

“Absolute fact! I worked in a convenience store for 25 years and Sunday church people were the rudest! Sometimes, they would ask me why I wasn’t at church this morning.”

Some didn’t identify themselves as customer service workers, but were still sympathetic:

“There is no call for rudeness. Sorry for the Christians who do this.”

“The rudeness starts long before they get to the restaurant. Leaving the parking lot after mass, you will see all sorts of bad behavior.”

“I could go on all day. I’ve heard this before too and it bothers me so much. I’m sorry, dear restaurant staff.”

“Cause most people can’t separate the worker from the entity.”

“At my church they used to complain if they weren’t the first ones to get to Country Kitchen before the other churches because our pastor was too long-winded.”

“Trust me they know who they are. Seen it many times. Trust me, they know who they are.”

Hopefully that was a nice palate cleanser. The next set of respondents was a little more intense.

Behold, An Insightful Answer has Arisen!

When I started this endeavor I was hopeful, but not overly so, that I would gain some kind of insight into the behavior of our Sunday customers (and to be honest, I was actually trolling a little). Luckily there was one group looking to get some stuff off their chest and teach me a few things.

Some of them were all about that classic classism:

“I think it’s from classism. People who are rude to customer service people think they are better than people who work those kinds of jobs. ‘If you wanted respect, you would get a better job’ types.”

“You’re talking a privileged class that looks down on people that work on Sunday. You’re also talking big families that let kids run around like monkeys.”

“I think it may have to do with the idea that they are a member of the gated community in the sky with streets paved with gold while these pagans who work on Sundays are beneath them.”

Other believe that some Christians are not taking The Message to heart:

“I think it has long been a problem in our nation that we are largely unwilling to ‘practice what we preach’. The fact that we feel better about ourselves going to church on Sunday but then we’re already ‘in one ear and out the other’ by the time we go out the door is a symptom of a much larger problem. And it’s a problem that we seem largely unwilling to face.”

“It got to the point where I just said to them you just came from church and you must not have been listening to the message.”

“I believe they likely don’t take the message of Christ to heart. In short, they’re the kind that goes to church to look good.”

“Because a lot of Christians are only Christians in word and not deed. They SAY Jesus is their savior, but when you ask them to be nice or help people etc, they look at you like you’re an idiot.”

“Sitting in church doesn’t make you a Christian just like sitting in a garage doesn’t make you a car.”

Most interesting though were the people who put the reasoning squarely on the shoulders of a changing religious ideology, particularly churches whose primary focus is to make money. These churches, according to some respondents, are not focused on teaching their parishioners how to be more Christ-like, but instead tell them what they want to hear and lets them self-justify their behaviors, no matter how abhorrent.

Be warned, these people had a lot to say:

“Too much of American Christianity is not focused on behaving correctly but rather on believing correctly. They go to a weekly hype event that makes them feel very self-justified about specific abstract ideas they embrace. Often, there is a belief that they are above material concerns such as money (that’s why they feel justified leaving pamphlets that look like $20 bills, they’re offering the correct ideas which are more priceless). There is often a correlation with affluence, which is its own toxic influence.”

“Too many of those who attend a church go to one that makes them feel good about themselves, and a lot of American religion is self-help or nostalgia with a Jesus veneer. Big churches can even employ consultants to tailor the sermon and songs to the preference of the attendees. So if you spend 1-2 hours in an environment customized to your taste, then you go out into the world with short staff and underpaid employees, that cozy vibe kinda falls away and rather than wake up and realize how hard the staff is working, the church folks are mad about the buzzkill.”

“I came up with a theory a couple weeks back. Much of American Christianity focuses on believing rightly over and against behaving rightly. Indeed, a prevailing attitude is that since they believe the right ideas, this puts them above petty material concerns like money. And while Sunday worship is supposed to imbue the faithful with a renewed, collective Christ-consciousness, it is often also a vehicle for reinforced self-justification (especially with the indulgent, over-idealist doctrine that is taught– particularly the one that teaches you good Christians in the pews are at war with the unbelievers outside the walls). This coalesces into a perfect storm of entitlement and cluelessness.”

In researching, I was able to find a great opinion piece in Religion News Service titled Why Religion Makes People Worse (which I will link at the end) written by David P. Gushee in 2016. In it he says this:

“Now I see that religion can sometimes do a very poor job helping believers discern right from wrong. Religion can do a very poor job helping believers relate kindly and justly to others. And religion can easily persuade people that the rejection they are receiving for their hurtful or ill-considered convictions is martyrdom for God’s Truth, leaving them even more entrenched in their destructive beliefs.”

So maybe that’s the answer, but I’m no theological sociologist and I can only speak to the times I live in. We should also remember to keep the source of this information in mind and take everything with a pillar of salt. Like everything, there probably isn’t one end-all and be-all answer and the truth is some amalgamation of many possible answers.

In the end, I only hope this investigation helps us all understand our weekly tormentors a little better, the jerks.

Good luck out there this Sunday.

You can read the referenced article here: https://religionnews.com/2016/04/05/religion-makes-people-worse/