Do not shame your spiritual leaders!

Only God deserves to be paid for his time and energy.

I presume that you have heard about the pastor who decided that she did not need to tip an Applebee's waitress...because God deserves his ten percent and waitresses do not deserve any money at all (zero percent). And I presume that you have heard about the waitress being fired from her job because the waitress had the guts to post a picture of the receipt on the internet.

Now, as a former restaurant worker and manager, I have strong feelings about the whole issue.

One, waitresses and waiters are often working for minimum wage. And they get a special type of minimum wage--the kitchen stuff washing dishes are actually making more money an hour than the wait staff because the law presumes that the wait staff is going to be getting tips. If they don't get tips, they are merely getting a couple dollars an hour in wages.

(I once saw a restaurant owner make everyone "wait staff" just so they could pay everyone this super-low rate of pay. So the kitchen staff would wait on tables for a couple of hours a month, just because the owner was super-cheap. Needless to say, none of the employees were happy about the situation...it did not end well for the restaurant--one wonders why no one cared about the condition of the food being served.)

Two, this whole incident just proves that one is not allowed to shame our so-called spiritual leaders in this country. Oh, we shamed a pastor--her followers might not do business with us any more, therefore we better fire the person who shamed her to appease the angry Christian horde.

Forget about the fact that spiritual leaders should be held to a higher standard. It is now wrong to shame them. Or at least, it is wrong to shame them if they are Christian and cry about being shamed. It is probably still all right to shame all the pagans because after all, their followers do not represent a significant number of potential customers. Yes, it is all about the money, and not about spiritality or ethics.

And yes, I have seen this same type of nonsense in the occult communities. As long as you have an angry horde of people willing to defend your bad behavior by not spending their money on certain products, you can force the entire community to accept your unethical behavior. Shameful, ain't it?