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You sir (Or lady) are just about perfect,that is, if you were in China or Russia etc.

Things seem to have changed! In my 78+ years all of a sudden public places have become private! Now they use selective enforcement to all and reject that which pleases them.

If they are private property, then let us be selective and not do our business with their elite private business!

I think you are missing the point. Sure, it sounds like the manager was acting like a jerk (I’m not sure I get the “liability” thing) but Wal-Mart is a business and it is BTW a privately owned/held business and they and their managers have a right, or at least should have the right in a free country to make decisions on what sort of organized activities by outside groups take place in their stores. The teacher claims to have had prior permission from “Frank” but we will never know as it seems that “Frank” had been fired sometime prior to the event, presumably for some other reason – perhaps his lousy communication and managerial skills. But regardless, she still should have asked to talk to the manger on duty at the time, let him or her know that her group was there, what was going to happen and why, where in the store they should perform and confirm that their invitation or permission was still good (unless she as another posted mentioned, had something in writing but even then she still should have let the manager on duty know they were there and when they were told they couldn’t perform, should not have taken their act to the parking lot – this is perhaps where the “liability” thing came from – yea a bunch of kids in a crowded parking lot – if one of them got hit by a car, who do you think they would have sued? The driver or the very deep pockets of Wal-Mart?)

Or try looking at it another way. Let’s say you own Letmarch75-Mart. One day a group from a school comes and asks permission to sing in one of your stores. Your manager Billy-Bob at that store says “yea sure fine whatever” but when the singing group shows up and instead of asking for Billy-Bob or the manager on duty, they just start signing in the middle of the crowded Letmarch75-Mart. But then let’s also suppose that instead of “God Bless America” to honor the victims of 9-11, they are a group from a Muslim school and start singing “There Is No God But Allah” to honor the victims of 9-11 (and I bet you’d not be so supportive of their rights to perform in what you consider a public place). And then the next week a yoga school decides to show up unannounced at Letmarch75-Mart to do some “flash mob yoga” demonstration and the following week another group of kids show up to sing the latest Justin Beeber song and so and so on. Or put it another way, Wal-Mart is a retail store, not a public access concert stage, it’s not an America’s Got Talent audition venue, unless of course the Wal-Mart or Letmarch75-Mart decides that they want it to be.

And as others have pointed out, is a Wal-Mart really the most appropriate venue for a 9-11 tribute anyway? And what aisle would be the most appropriate for a 9-11 memorial tribute: automotive, grocery, electronics, women’s wear or perhaps in front of the check out aisle; as if getting checked out quickly at a Wal-Mart isn’t already hard enough. But I’m pretty sure that if I had been there I would have appreciated “God Bless America” sung by school children – how refreshing and I would have smiled and loudly and enthusiastically applauded them. BOTOH, if I were at the Wal-Mart to pick something up in a hurry, as nice as it would have been, I might not have liked wading through a large crowd gathered around an impromptu signing performance or being stuck in the parking lot by a “flash mob”.

And I am thinking there would have been any number of more appropriate venues; that a lot of veterans’ homes, retirement homes, VFW’s, churches, civic groups etc. that would have loved to have this group of school kids come sing for them but then it would not have made for a controversy and a big hit on You Tube (sarasm). They could have also gotten permission to sing in a public park perhaps in front of a war memorial or in front of a local public building.

I asked the teller I she enjoyed the Christian tracts and literature I had been giving. Usually, to a different person and a different bank each time, many asked if I give more.

She was very surley, and said; “You give those out every time you come in here.” Then I said “others seem to enjoy and were blessed by my sharing.” (they were probably just trying to nice to you)

Then she said; “This is a place of business!” I answered, I know, and I have been doing business with that bank, before you was born;” and asked, “Do you know who really owns this business, and even made and owns the air that is in this bank.”

She was right BTW; the bank is a place of business, a place to do banking business and she was hired and is paid by the bank to service the bank’s customers to the best of her ability in that regard, nothing less and nothing more and not to be a captive audience for whatever opinion or literature that any customer wished to foist on her while she was working. You seem to imply that because you were a customer of the bank that she worked for you personally. You also seem to imply that because of your religious beliefs, that the bank was really owed by God and not by the bank and that she was not only working for you, but working for God – is that correct? What if some Muslim customer came in this bank teller’s line and told her that because he had been doing business with this bank since before she was born, that he had the right to tell her to wear a Hijab when waiting on him? That Allah really “owned” the bank.

While you have the right to free speech, she has the very same right to tell you that you are being annoying, which she evidently did. See how that works? Two way street and all that. And that’s why I live in America and not China or Russia.

When I used to work in retail as a as cashier and later as manager I’d occasionally have customers like you. I used to get handed religious tracts of all sorts including the “Watch Tower” and once by a customer who belonged to some sort of UFO, End of the World, Rastifarian, New Age, Hindu-Jewish-Christian hybrid, some sort of weird cult that had recently moved into the area (I’m not kidding) and I was sometimes witnessed to, lectured by all sorts of people on all sorts of topics, none of them at all related to my job or their reason and business for being in my store. Most of the time, I’d be polite as they were customers after all but if they were really aggressive and pushy about it and it held me up from waiting on other paying customers who just wanted to be waited on, I had no problem telling them to move along.

One of my regular paying customers, who BTW as an affable and friendly guy, was also a well known political glad fly who used to run in every local election under the Communist Workers Party. He used to try to leave Communist literature in my store which as soon as I found, would put in the “round file” along with the Jack Chick tracts and copies of the Watch Tower. If I wasn’t busy, didn’t have any customers in line, I used to debate with the commie for a bit but as soon as another customer came up, I’d politely but very firmly tell him, “Our capitalist transaction is done and you need to move along now because I have more capitalist transactions to do”. And he actually respected that, would smile and say “see you next week” to which I’d say “yea, I’ll be here and still happy to take your money” He must have liked the abuse because he kept coming back ; ),