Hollander Consultants - Diary | V. Emanuel

(This appeared on the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup in September 1998)

Some background---

In October 1997, my husband & I signed a contract to receive business mgt courses and assistance for our optical store in Orlando Florida from Hollander Consultants in Portland Oregon. We then found out they were a WISE company, read horror stories on the net, and rec'd a general education in the perils of Scientology. The whole mess scared me so badly that I came back to the Lord, which will likely only interest those of you who are Christians.

Any how, we spent the intervening year trying to get out of our contract and get our money back, which finally proved to be more trouble than it was worth. We decided, after prayer and attorney talk, to take the darn classes and glean whatever was worthwhile from them.

We got back from our seminar on Sept. 16th, and I'll be posting my travel diary here starting, uh--now.

9/9/98
Portland--glad to be off that plane! Been here before, for stuff unrelated to Scn, in 1994. Checked in, decided to find Hollander's.

Problem one--nobody puts their street # on the buildings around here! Finally deduce, thru non-Hubbard logic, where Hollander's is. I did good! Didn't flinch or puke upon seeing LRH books & pics. John (that's the husband, folks) said, "Ugly son of a gun, wasn't he?" Met Bill Hickey, our consultant, and another Bill--young guy with a bad case of the scieno stare. This younger guy has already met John, he was the first one to go in our store, and he recently moved from Clearwater.

Nice offices. Room off to one side with poster sized Tone scale chart on a partition, phones, etc. Must be where they do their telemarketing. Big org chart--with Larry Silver (Pres of the company) all over it. Also 'H.F.A.', have to ask what that means. (Did--asked the OSA rep we met the next day--'Held From Above.')

9/10/98 
(Awake at 4:30 am, obviously my body never heard of time zones.) Today we'll walk around and see whatever there is to see within walking distance of this hotel. So when John says, "Where did you want to go?" my natural response is "The Celebrity Centre, of course. Take my picture in front of it--it's the closest I'll ever get to Tom Cruise."

8:30 am or so--we get to the Celeb Centre. Weird to really see it. As John backs up with the camera, trying to get me & the sign in the shot, a woman comes out.

"Can I help you?" she asks. I imagine she thought I was going to lob a rock thru the window or something. John intro's himself with last name, she says her name is Gwen. I take her offered hand to shake it and say, I'm Valerie .... and she says "Valerie, I know you! I've read your postings on ars!"

It was a bit of a surprise. John complimented her on being so well informed. Big surprise--she knows Larry Silver, president of Hollander's, but 'they don't talk business'. She says she started reading my stuff on ars after my son went into the Orlando org with a 'Scientology Kills' tee shirt on. (Mental note:Kill the boy.) Gwen says to me, "You don't like Scientology." Duh.

She asked if we planned to picket. We said 3,000 miles was a little far to come to picket, especially with Clearwater so close to home, and we just came for the business courses.

The three of us talked for over an hour, standing there by the Centre. Gwen declined to give me a tour. While we talked, my husband told her in his opinion she was the member of a cult. She swallowed it. She kept her face straight and her tone even throughout. She pretended not to know what WISE and the Sea Org were, I pretended she really was that dim.

Then she gives me her phone number ("And this is my phone, it doesn't go thru the switchboard!") her asst.'s name, and says be sure and call me. And let's do lunch.

9/11/98  Friday
First day at Hollander's. Sure enough, Larry Silver comes up to shake our hands, say he hopes we'll enjoy the classes, and he wants to take us to dinner. This is two invitations to dine from Scientologists. We must be Couple of the Year. This guy is worried about his business, and about making two incredibly stubborn clients happy. Gwen is worried about....what?

(Yesterday, after leaving our new buddy Gwen, I cracked up. Said to my spouse, 'You NEVER believed me, did you? You thought I was paranoid!' He admitted being surprised that these people are worried about two putzes from Florida.)

Met with Bill, our consultant. Most of today was pure business consult, no Scn at all. They have an Optometric Org chart made up, with space for Ethics & assigning Conditions. Suzanne, head of training, came in to give us an outline of the courses we'll be starting tomorrow. Looks like no Comm Course or Tone Scale. What changed? Suzanne takes us up to the course room, intro's us to Rodney (who'll teach on Mon & Tues), then says, "And this is Tom Cruise!"

No, of course it wasn't. Young guy, he looked embarrassed. I guess she thinks he's cute.

These people all think we're very funny, I'm so happy to entertain!

9/12/98 Saturday
LRH tech time! Learned extremely watered down Scn. ARC was simple enough--then the course supv. (Dan aka Tom Cruise) wants me to do a demo of Affinity with these little colored blocks. I tell him I'm too old to play with blocks, and I feel silly. He handles the blocks--I explain Affinity. I still feel silly. Then we do the same with Reality & Communication. I really could grasp the concept. Can't wait to see John playing with the blocks.

Learned about hats and a little MEST. These are all plain and simple concepts expressed in L. Ron gobbledy-gook. Fortunately I'm acquainted with it thru ars & the net. John isn't. Entheta, ARC, et al are starting to irritate him.

Had to do a Practical Assignment, and go out in the street to observe people in conversation and see if they were raising each other's ARC. Well, it gives me a chance to walk to the org (only a few blocks from Hollander's), take some pics and observe. I've the distinct feeling that if I actually go in, the poor guy on the desk is going to get in trouble. They wouldn't let me in the Celeb Centre--would they want me in the org? (Tried to get John to go with me & see the Orientation film the day before, told him it was short and it had John Travolta in it. He was not amused.)

Get a chance to talk with Dan during a break--he's a PC with about 10 years (off & on he says) in Scn. Nice guy--as in they all seemed nice, but this one appeared genuine. Maybe I'm being too critical. We talked about the Mgt books, which contained nothing but HCOB's and were all at least 600 pages. I asked him when he thought L. Ron had time to go to the bathroom, or did he write them in the potty? He thought that was funny. Finally I made some remark which had the word 'clear' used in it's Webster's sense, and I giggled. He thought THAT was funny. Maybe Scieno's don't tell jokes? Didn't tell the poor guy all of my net experiences (did tell him we weren't Scn, but surely he knew that.)

Back in the courseroom, John looks at me about 4 pm and snarls, "This is all BULLSHIT!" Oops. I start to get my purse--maybe we're going home today? Wondered how long it would take L. Ron to get under his skin.

Fortunately (for John and for Hollander's window, out of which he wanted to throw the coursebook) Dan came in and helped him with the thing he couldn't understand, something about Conditions. John felt better--well, he felt less like an idiot for having come to Portland. They decide I'm in a Condition of Non-Existence. Thanks.

9/13/98 Sunday
I'm a little concerned that some of this crap is starting to make sense, but I have no urge to put pics of LRH up all over the house, so I figure I'm still me. Here's some paranoia at work---I think they may have altered the decor in the courseroom at Hollanders. There are NO pics of L. Ron! And the pictures that are up are like flea market basic yucko, don't go with everything else except in color. Probably just me. While I'm looking for Dan the TC lookalike at one point I go into an office I hadn't entered before. They have a mousepad with Dianetics and Church graphics on it! Ooooohhhh, I want one! (CoS should have a gift shop. I would've bought STUFF!)

Ethics--page 110 of the 'Basic Hat for Employees' coursebook. "An Employee can get away with murder so long as his statistic is up." If someone's doing his/her job it doesn't matter what else they're doing, have I got that right? Wow, what a moral code.

Still no Tone Scale or Comm Course. John suggests I NOT read the HCOB/Mgt books while on break, says I'm getting enough BS in the course. Some of those HCOB's are really funny.

Wrote my 'Success' paragraph, should thrill Larry Silver to death. John writes on his, "Ask me in 6 months." He doesn't see why they'd expect a 'success' story now, we haven't done anything with the stuff. He's not amused when I tell him it's a scieno thing.

This Ethics stuff gives me the creeps, keep seeing Nazi Sea Org cadets turning their superiors in for 'Job Endangerment'. I feel the Scn in every part of the course, John catches it in the strange verbiage. Where something is easy to read & understand, someone else wrote it. L. Ron's stuff is weird, oddly syntaxed and archaic.

Basic problem in Scn--LRH stuff CANNOT be altered, squirreled. Where no change is allowed, how can they grow? They'll stagnate eventually.

9/14/98  Monday
We have a couple from Utah taking this part with us, they're Mormon. Are we getting the special 'other religions' course?

Gwen canceled our lunch date, her son is sick. Ah well.

Turned my coffee cup around--it has the WISE symbol etched on one side. I repeat what I said previously about a CoS Gift Shop. John says he would prefer if I didn't ask for a mug. Actually, he was a bit more forceful than that.

Stuff today pretty straightforward. I see the Optometric Org chart again--I AM impressed! The three spelling errors I pointed out to Bill are already corrected. (Found out later these were older charts, the new ones had the errors. Still, if CoS had this rapid response time, we'd have some serious fun. Right now it takes them months to even respond to e-mail.)

Having dinner with Larry Silver & his wife tonight. This should be fun.

Dinner at a nice restaurant where you can draw on a large sheet of paper on the table--Brasserie Montmarte? Think that was the name. Great food.

Larry Silver is an OT VIII. Well, the few--the proud--the 1200. He's been in 20+ years, got in when he was in Hippie time. Has kind of a Kirstie Alley story, where's Gwen's was more like mine would've been w/o Mr. Emanuel.

(And a word on my adorable spouse--after rolling his eyes and saying 'Yes, Honey  Yes, Dear' for a year whenever I told him of Scn & ars, now he's shooting the breeze with scieno's and throwing that lingo around like he was really paying attention! Guess after 23 years with a motormouth he's learned how to have his brain in two places at once!)

Larry & Vickie have been married for 5 years, he has grown kids from a first marriage. She's bright & bouncy, he's dryer & more cerebral. He's also got all his defenses up, sitting at a table with two clients who've got to be on the top ten list at Hollander's for trouble making. But, let's raise that ARC, baby!

Finally, after 2 mentions of the Internet, he says, "Speaking of the Internet, can we talk about this letter you have on it about my company?"

(It's back on the Net, Larry!)

He says, "Every month I check out Hollander's webpage, and if I use Altavista to look it up, that letter is right there with it! And I've lost 5 or 6 clients because of it!"

So, as I DIDN'T say at the dinner table, you've had your blood pressure raised and lost more money than you would have lost had you just given me mine back like I wanted at the start? Hmmm, guess that letter served a purpose after all! (Thanx, Tilman--thanx, Arnie!) So I said I'd ask Mr. Lerma to take the letter off the net.

He offered to give me his e-mail address, said I had it. Told him I knew he'd e-mailed Tilman, said if he'd e-mailed me directly we could've talked. Letter still would've been up till AFTER the mgt courses, but he would've possibly gotten e-mail that was less rude. He said he thought my lawyer had handled the letter matter. And I didn't write him, because I thought it better to talk face-to-face, since at that point I was plenty pissed off at his end run.

John offered to take Larry to the nearest church and help him pray through to salvation. Larry declined. Larry still thinks he's a Jew, even tho he's a scieno. We discussed 'Blue Sky' by Jon Atack.

We were all quite silly by the end of dinner. At one point I reached out a tentative finger and said, "Oooo, I touched an OT VIII!" And he responded by saying in the best evil scientist tradition, "Now we take you in the basement and BRAINWASH you!" And a fine time was had by all.

Yeah, don't say it.

And all these people now think the only reason I didn't join their happy throng is because my SP husband prevented me. And <sigh> they're not too far off the mark.

(When we talked about the net we talked about META tags, watermarks & HTML. Larry looked at John and said, "Now I know how you felt when you couldn't understand the Hubbard writing the other day!")

9/15/98
Silver, at dinner on 9/14, was asked by us if he'd altered the class curriculum for us. He denied this. I asked what had happened to the Success thru Communication course, and the Tone Scale. He said the Tone Scale was covered at their symposium in Clearwater (or Hellmouth, as its known around my house) in Feb, and he hadn't given the Comm course more than about 20 times in as many years. Funny how it's the first one listed on their course outlines. He also kept mentioning how Lerma really should agree to take that letter down, since we'd be the ones in the line of fire if sued. (No, my knees were not shaking, if he'd felt like suing he'd kind of screwed himself--what the heck were we doing taking the courses? And besides, he'd had a year.)

Course in the morning--now we're dealing with how to hire, do job reviews, things like that. The Mormons are VERY quiet, very conservative, but nice. They seem to be warming up to us a little.

Lunch with Gwen at a place called 'Good Dog, Bad Dog', a sausage place. At the CC on Thursday she wore a navy pinstripe suit, and no makeup. Today she's wearing a blouse and long skirt, makeup and nail polish. I think she's trying too hard. She spends most of the hour doing the 'we're just like any other church' routine. Says CoS and some other churches banded together to fight the assisted suicide bill, and she got pissed off when another group, called the Freedom from Religion Something-or-other, ran some ads in local papers for the bill. She called it slanted advertising.

That's the only time I lost my temper the whole week, and I merely snapped that the Church of Scientology knew everything there is to know about 'slanted advertising.'

My husband got up to get the food, and she remarked that she knew I'd said I hadn't been on the newsgroup much lately, but did I see that stuff Garry Scarff wrote about Vaughn Young? I said Garry was an easy target on ars. She seemed severely disappointed in me. (Why can't these people just come out and ask a question? Why beat around & around the same bush?) We dropped Garry in favor of briefly (because Mrs. Emanuel was tired of being 'handled' and wouldn't play) discussing how the critics beat up on each other on ars. No defense there, I expected to be smacked around when I got home.

When John got back he asked about being Clear, and weren't there some kind of health benefits in the State of Clear. She got out a tablet and drew little pen and ink drawings to illustrate the reactive mind, engrams and Clear. Explained that being Clear just meant you could access the memories you couldn't before, and people still got engrams from trauma. Those were handled in 'rundowns.' Guess they've lost all those illusions about knowing the Laws of Physics automatically.

Then we're back to the 'we're like any other church' deal. She tells John (she's decided he's more fun--I've agreed with that summation since 1976) that she warned the other area churches back 2 years ago, when CoS was sued for fraud that they should all stick together, and sure enough--soon after there was a landslide of suits against churches in Portland. Then she talks about ecumenical meetings she attends on behalf of CoS, their Sunday services, their 'naming' ceremonies (which are like christenings, except presumably w/o God), how they gathered 1000 lbs. of food last Nov for a charity drive, yadda yadda yadda.

He pipes up, "Do you sing hymns?"

I stifle a laugh. Gwen looks at her watch.

John says, "It's been nice meeting you, Gwen, and we'll keep in touch. By the way, we're coming back next week to picket."

Gwen says, "WHA--AA--T?"

FLUNK!!!!

We part on good terms, agree to write. I assume she reads ars still. I'll write later, dear, when I get a break from the 'tech' at the store.

My opinion of the Scientology religion has not changed, Gwen. I'm happy to have met you, and the other scienos, but have it in my home? In my private life? Never. What you teach (and said was Gnostic) is blasphemy, from reincarnation to the idea that I can accomplish all within my own strength and will. Happily, a Christian has Jesus to rely upon--you have yourself and ten billion words by LRH. Happy trails.

After lunch we talked with our Mormon counterparts. Discovered they shared our reservations, and had 2nd thoughts because Hollander is scieno related. The doctor (dentist) said his family had been ripped apart by a Scn clone called "Rising Star". (Anybody hear of this? Write me.) I asked John, "Still think it's a coincidence they put us 4 together?"

We got ethics tips, and more on hiring. I think Rod our teacher was a tad irritated, tho his smile never wavered, when he walked in on our anti-CoS conversation. When class resumed we had a gush of pure scieno-lingo, which only he & I followed. First time I'd seen the Mormons flustered. He was talking about the Tone Scale w/o anyone having learned it, in relation to hiring. He finally had to go over it briefly.

I turned to John, after yet ANOTHER job duty for the Office Mgr, and said;

"If I'm doing all this work, I want my own desk."

He said, "If your stats are good enough."

I said then he'd better have a properly worded & routed memo whenever he wanted special services, if he knew what I meant. He threatened to write an Ethics report on me. I said, "I got your Ethics, baby." All this to the hoots of the Mormons and Rod.

(I'd like to thank L. Ron Hubbard for this addition to the Emanuel's comedy routine.)  

One note: While talking on the Tone Scale, Rod says we all get into the lower Tones, but the idea is not to stay in them. "My sister died 2 years ago, and I was in grief for a week. Bounced right out, and that was it."

I looked across at the dentist and his wife, then at John. This illustrates Scn perfectly for me. It's not the people, it's that horrible deadly cold center that you can sense but not see. Its the destruction of minds and emotions in the service of a juggernaut. IMHO.

Met with Bill, our consultant, got our final plan stuff. I point out the LRH books in Bill's office and remark on the amount of words Hubbard wrote. John remarks, "Yeah, he had a BUSY demon, didn't he?"

That's it, pretty much.

Observations--Portland's a nice town. I think it has too many Starbuck's. The restaurants are great. The weather's fine. I passed out lots of copies of 'Nice town, sorry about the cult.' (Thanx, Xenubat!) It has a great mall (3 stories w/an ice skating rink) in which we saw 'Blade', a good movie tho quite bloody.

It could do w/o CoS. And so could I.