Saturday, April 26, 2008

I "love" Craigslist!!!

Hello all, today I have decided to grace the internet with my presence to give you all a little bit of advice and tell a kind of funny story that may have already happened to some of you but I am sure you will all get a laugh out of another great Craigslist story. So let me begin by disclaimering this post by saying that if you are reading this you understand and probably know a lot about how Amanda and I think and our opinions on different things, if this offends anyone we are not really sorry because you don't have to read it nor agree with the way we think. Now on with the story; So it all happened April 1st 2008, this day will always be one for the memory books for us because it was the last day we spent living in an apartment and paying someone else rent for a dwelling, it will also always be remembered as the first time we used the internet site Craigslist to find a cleaning lady to clean the apartment we were vacating. The night before we had finished moving all of our things into Amanda's parents garage because we couldn't move into our house as scheduled, that’s a whole other story, anyway, we had to be out by the 1st so I hired a cleaning lady to come clean the apartment after we had moved everything out, the place was basically clean, it just needed a good scrub down before the final walkthrough with our landlord. I called a few companies in the yellow pages but they all charged more than we wanted to pay and they all needed 3 days notice, so I resorted to the internet and Craigslist of all places, it seemed a good idea at the time. I found an add for a college girl that was willing to do the job for cheap because she was just looking for some extra cash because she was getting married and needed money for the ring, anyways, I called her up and set it up the night before, I thought everything would be fine and stopped worrying, the next morning came and she had texted me and said she was sorry but her baby was sick and wouldn't be able to do the job that day. I was stuck in a bind and so again resorted to Craigslist. This time I needed someone fast, I found a lady in Lehi, UT that was willing to come and do it that morning, her rates were reasonable but she was an elderly lady and didn't usually leave Lehi for any jobs, I told her I was willing to pay her more and she agreed to come, the only other thing she asked about on the phone was if my wife was going to be there, I told her no, and that she was taking care of our baby and that was the reason we even were hiring someone to come clean. She agreed to come anyway, and I didn't know why having Amanda be there was so important to her until she showed up, and the first thing she asked was if my wife was there. I said no but I wasn't going to be there much if she felt uncomfortable cleaning an empty apartment without someone there. That was the farthest thing from her mind why she asked where Amanda was. She then proceeded to give me her business card, or I should say small strip of paper with scriptures written on it in a badly scrawled handwriting of a 74 year old woman. At the top it read, Brides of Christ LLC. At that point I just put it in my pocket; she looked disgusted and said that I was very foolish to cast the words of God aside so lightly. I was taken aback at this and said, excuse me! She then proceeded to tell me that her company is a charity and all the work she does is in the service of God, but not any church. I said well that’s great that you are so devoted. She then started to quote/misquote scriptures to me about how Christ should be the most important thing in our lives, and that doing anything that is not about his work is the devil's work. At this point I felt uncomfortable being in the apartment with the woman so I told her I needed to run some errands but would be back about 12 because I needed the apartment cleaned by then because the landlord was coming for the walkthrough, she acted as though she didn't hear me and just kept talking about how serving Christ was all that we should be doing. So I left for about 2 hours and came back at 11:30 just to finish up any last minute details before the walkthrough, well when I arrived back at the apartment I found that she had cleaned a few areas but apparently she has pretty bad eyesight due to age I am sure, because most of the apartment was still unclean, the one thing that was clean was all of the areas that Amanda had taped pictures of Christ and small scriptures on doors of cabinets around the house. The woman had taken them all down and piled them in a neat pile next to the trash bag she had, When I arrived she continued to tell me how graven images are of the devil and that any church that worships images is of the devil, and I told her I didn't worship these images but simply had them up as reminders and beautiful artwork of my savior in my home. She then told me how all churches are the devils churches and that the only true form of worship was to read the Lord's words in the Bible, and didn't hesitate to mention that the Bible is the only true book of God's words and that everything else is an abomination, and that all the priesthood that people claim to have is of the devil, very typical anti-Mormon rhetoric. Anyway, after hearing her ranting and being so personally offended by it also watching her not clean the apartment, I tried to tell her I didn't think I needed her to clean anything else, mostly in an effort to get her to leave, I also had Emma with me and she was crying because of all the craziness the lady was saying, the woman kept following Emma around saying how pretty she was and that she was going to have it the hardest because of all the devils influence she was going to be subjected to, I agreed to this and then she said that it was going to come mostly from her family, At this point I noticed the woman began to talk very quickly saying more anti-Mormon stuff and insulting me and the priesthood. As she spoke her tongue darted in out much like a serpent and her eyes were more gray and sunken into her head, and she began to smile as though she thought I was beginning to believe what she was saying, at this point politeness went out the window, a dirty window she still hadn't cleaned I might add. I began to feel cold, the kind of cold I hadn't felt since my mission when I was in a home of a crazy JW minister who just kept telling me and my comp. how we were so wrong for believing the way we believed, she also spoke in the same manner with her facial expressions and serpent like tongue, and smile. I finally stopped trying to be polite to this old lady and began asking her very direct questions about why she thought this way, I was tired of being attacked and had a surge of energy come to me when I started telling her exactly what I believed and began using the Bible bashing techniques I learned on the mission with this woman, it was apparent she was very anti-Mormon and was very blunt in her attack on not only Mormons but all religions. I asked her what religion was right then and how did she know she was doing the right thing. As they all don't, she didn't have a real answer for this, she just said according to the books she had read and the people she had talked to and the testimonies of some other anti-Mormon preaching pastor she had listened to she was doing what God wanted. I then asked her how she came to find all of this supposed truth. and she started to misquote scripture and started to say she couldn't remember who said it or in what book she read it but that all these things she heard were true about how bad the Mormons were and all the witchcraft that they do in the temple, some of the more graphic stuff she was saying I won't write here but, if you look for anti-Mormon stuff anywhere, you will find what she was talking about. I then asked here what her family thought about what she believed, she said that her whole family including the polygamist portion of which she was a part for 12 years :-), all have cut off all communication with her and she has lost all of her friends but she is sure that it is because they just don't want to accept the true way of believing like her but rather follow Satan. I couldn't believe how strong of a hold Satan's grasp was on this woman and I couldn't do anything besides stand there and feel sorry for her, but at the same time want to completely rebuke her because I was certain she had brought something evil into my soon to be vacated apartment. I finally told her thank you for coming on such short notice but that I really couldn't pay her more than what I thought she had earned, which if you go by her hourly rate I only paid her for 2.5 hours and she was there more than 3. I felt like she did a horrible job and wasted most of the time trying to tell me how I was following Satan. Well to make this even longer story short, mainly because I get a bad feeling even repeating the events of what happened, let me just say you'll definitely find some interesting people online, Thanks again to Craigslist for helping me find one really lost cleaning lady.
p.s. to those of you who are Craigslist devotees, to each their own, but I personally will not be seeking out any services from this website again.

2 comments:

Tracie said...

I couldn't believe the audacity of this person. It's one thing to have free speech, it's another thing to harass someone you're supposed to be having a working relationship with. I'm saddened by people like that. To be that far gone.

Anyway, I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with craigslist. There are no guarantees, but isn't all bad. I got my current job because of craigslist. It was the only place that I have found editing jobs actually so it really has been a big help to me. But I agree that craigslist does have its risks.

Sophia Crane said...

Wow, I don't think that I would have let her stay, even if I did really need the apartment cleaned. Some people are just so far gone, then again I guess people say that about us too. I hope that the apartments lack of claenliness didn't cause you too much of a loss. Anyway, the internet is hit and miss no matter what site you go to. I do like craigslist, but you have to be careful.