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Upstairs at the Org

Bost_Bobby

Patron with Honors
Maybe somebody here can clarify for me what occurred one day during my second stint as a public at a class V org. It was the summer of '85 and I had just quit a job I was in for 10 years. I had a few thousand dollars in profit sharing which I never told the org about.

My dear family friend, Charley, years before had paid for the HAS course for me and I felt it was time to go back and finally take it. I had read pretty much all of the basic books by this time.

I was told that they no longer offered the HAS but instead the equivalent would be the Ups and Downs in Life Course. Of course I took it. I have to admit it pissed me off as the course consisted of parts from one of the books I had read. It may have even been the Big Green volunteer ministers handbook which I still have by the way.

Now this is the part that I need understanding with. At some point I was called to one of the upstairs floors into an office. I sat down across the desk from a woman I did not know. She told me she was going to ask me some questions so I thought, "okay this won't be so bad." What happened next startled me.

She picked up the phone receiver that was on her desk, punched in 3 or 4 numbers, then put the receiver on the desk in front of me. I looked at it and I thought "what the f is this about?"

For the life of me I cannot recall even one question she asked but I do remember being embarrassed, angry, insulted, and shocked at most of the questions. They were very personal involving my girlfriend and my finances and things like that. I definitely did not volunteer any details. I just wish like hell I remembered the questions.

I would just like to know from those of you who may have had the same experience or maybe even had been the person on the other side of that desk who did the same types of things with others, what was going on? Was someone else somewhere in the building listening in and writing down what was being said? Was I being recorded? I almost asked her why she did that but something inside of me told me that her answer would be that she was just making sure that we were not being disturbed. This was not the only time I had a strange encounter with somebody in an office in that building.

So, anybody have knowledge of this or an opinion?
 

Helena Handbasket

Gold Meritorious Patron
I don't have any specifics for you, but it sounds like an Ethics Officer type thing. Perhaps you were being recorded, but I don't think they would make it that obvious.

I suggest that someone said something ABOUT you, and that prompted this action. They normally don't press newbies like that.

Helena
 

Bost_Bobby

Patron with Honors
I don't have any specifics for you, but it sounds like an Ethics Officer type thing. Perhaps you were being recorded, but I don't think they would make it that obvious.

I suggest that someone said something ABOUT you, and that prompted this action. They normally don't press newbies like that.

Helena

Thank you for the reply. I'm not sure she was with ethics because some months later I was sent to ethics mainly because I didn't have money to pay for another course, or at least I told them I did not.

They were telling me I was pts because I could not find work and they were really searching for someone in my life that was holding me back. They started zeroing in on my girlfriend who is just the most wonderful girl I have ever met in my life. There were no problems there but I could tell they were not going to give up on that so I told them I never really got along with my older brother who lived far far away from me and who I only talk to on the phone maybe 5 minutes once a year. I gave them that because I knew they needed some kind of bait to go after. That was with the ethics officer. That's jumping ahead of the story though.
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
The most likely choice is a reg interview, trying to scope out how much money they could get from you and how much trouble it would be to extract it from you.

Paul
 

Bost_Bobby

Patron with Honors
The most likely choice is a reg interview, trying to scope out how much money they could get from you and how much trouble it would be to extract it from you.

Paul
Thank you Paul but again I would have to say she was not a reg. The woman who did that was down on the first floor and actually exploded on me by banging a book on the desk in front of me and literally screaming at the top of her lungs with her eyes bulging out in front of about 15 people. Again that's a story for another day and one that I do want to tell eventually.
 

Enthetan

Master of Disaster
Now this is the part that I need understanding with. At some point I was called to one of the upstairs floors into an office. I sat down across the desk from a woman I did not know. She told me she was going to ask me some questions so I thought, "okay this won't be so bad." What happened next startled me.

She picked up the phone receiver that was on her desk, punched in 3 or 4 numbers, then put the receiver on the desk in front of me. I looked at it and I thought "what the f is this about?"

For the life of me I cannot recall even one question she asked but I do remember being embarrassed, angry, insulted, and shocked at most of the questions. They were very personal involving my girlfriend and my finances and things like that. I definitely did not volunteer any details. I just wish like hell I remembered the questions.

I was in for a number of years, both on Class IV org staff and in the Sea Org, and I do not recall ever witnessing anything like this.

Then again, I'm guessing that, over the years, there have been lots of weird and odd things that people have done. If this woman was not Ethics, and not a reg, then my guess is that she was OSA.
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
Thank you Paul but again I would have to say she was not a reg. The woman who did that was down on the first floor and actually exploded on me by banging a book on the desk in front of me and literally screaming at the top of her lungs with her eyes bulging out in front of about 15 people. Again that's a story for another day and one that I do want to tell eventually.

This thread is like playing twenty questions.

Maybe you could give a bit more data upfront.

Paul
 

Victoria

Patron Meritorious
Well, she may not have been a reg, but everybody's rigging all the time at the org.
My first thought was maybe she was doing some reg training, and dialed an internal number so a more experienced reg could listen in to see if she was doing it right.

You may never know actually, because $cientologists tell so many "acceptable truths" about every little thing when questioned.
 

renegade

Silver Meritorious Patron
This sounds like a Div 6 Reg which is quite different from a Div 2 Reg, (the one that was down stairs, yelling and screaming with the book slamming dramatics).

When you are a beginner, the regging is much milder and new public are handled with kid gloves. Most likely some of the questions were about finding your ruin and can get very personal.

The phone was probably dialed to let someone listen in. It is a technique from Big League Sales which isn't recorded. It will alert another person to come in and tag with the first reg if it's not going well. It also is used to perfect the registrars proficiency. The registrar keeps notes on their prospects, ruins, what BLS close works, the services etc.
 

Bost_Bobby

Patron with Honors
This thread is like playing twenty questions.

Maybe you could give a bit more data upfront.

Paul

I do agree that it's like playing 20 questions. I'm just as confused as everyone else about what was going on. I honestly can't tell you what happened beforehand that led to that interview. I only remember basically that the questions had to do with my life in general however asking personal things about my girlfriend, what she is like, how she reacts Etc. I just can't remember any one exact question.

Just prior to that or just after that. It must have been after daylight savings time because it was early evening but dark outside. I was called up to I think was the third floor to an office of a gentleman I had never seen before. I sat at his desk and the only thing I can remember from that is him reading I believe from the ethics book. He was quoting something about when people stats are up they can get away with murder. He then repeated emphasizing the word murder. He repeated it a few times more and then on the last time he said it very slowly and dramatically with a pause between the word "with" and the word "murder", the latter being spoken louder and a lot slower. It really creeped me out to be honest. I had the feeling he was telling me that his stats were up and he could get away with murder but that just may have been my frame of mind at the time.

Writing all this down I just now slightly remember one of the reasons I was in his office. I had told somebody earlier in the day that I found it disturbing how some men felt women should be subservient even to the point of walking behind them a little.

So he asked me about this and I reiterated my position on it. He then told me to think of a date when he snapped his fingers which I did. I told him I had too many dates flashing in front of me so he did it again and I remember saying 1620. He didn't told me to think of a nationality when he snapped his fingers and when he did I told him Japanese. He then told me how Japanese Samurai had to walk in front of the wife and family to protect them from other Samurai and that's where it comes from. At the time I thought it was kind of cool but now looking back on it I just shake my head and wonder how I did not burst out laughing at him. Again I have no idea what his position was and why all that came about. I guess this ads to a total of 21 Questions.

It was not long after this I was sent to ethics which I mentioned previously. He wanted me to write the clear roads and good weather or whatever it's called, letter to my brother and I knew inside that it would end up a disconnection thing. By then I knew what disconnection was.

I had done a few courses, did some TR0and TR1 with a student who was on the HQS course. For that same person I volunteer to be a PC on the book an ashtray objective which I must admit had an interesting and intriguing end to it. Also I did a block of Dianetics for $50. I think 5 hours of book one auditing. So I was around the org for close to a year off and on. Maybe my sense of humor put them off. I'm not very discreet in that area.
 

Bost_Bobby

Patron with Honors
This sounds like a Div 6 Reg which is quite different from a Div 2 Reg, (the one that was down stairs, yelling and screaming with the book slamming dramatics).

When you are a beginner, the regging is much milder and new public are handled with kid gloves. Most likely some of the questions were about finding your ruin and can get very personal.

The phone was probably dialed to let someone listen in. It is a technique from Big League Sales which isn't recorded. It will alert another person to come in and tag with the first reg if it's not going well. It also is used to perfect the registrars proficiency. The registrar keeps notes on their prospects, ruins, what BLS close works, the services etc.

If you're right then she did a really good job record-keeping. I still get letters from that same org all these years later saying things like, Hey! I noticed you were online with us a while back. Call me and let's talk about your progress up the bridge. I even got one recently that said records indicate I did the purif last which I never did do but hey, one little mistake.

However your explanation does make sense. It's just that all these years I've always wondered what that damn thing with the phone was all about. It was pretty blatant so she was not trying to hide it. Just confusing.
 

renegade

Silver Meritorious Patron
If you're right then she did a really good job record-keeping. I still get letters from that same org all these years later saying things like, Hey! I noticed you were online with us a while back. Call me and let's talk about your progress up the bridge. I even got one recently that said records indicate I did the purif last which I never did do but hey, one little mistake.

However your explanation does make sense. It's just that all these years I've always wondered what that damn thing with the phone was all about. It was pretty blatant so she was not trying to hide it. Just confusing.

Everything is kept on record!

When you buy anything, a Central Files folder is made. What you bought, how much you paid, and any pertinent info.
Every letter that gets written to you is supposed to have a carbon copy placed in this folder.
Every phone call made to you is supposed to have a CF phone note which from a policy letter "Phones are Psychotic."
Every course you've done, every penny you spend is supposed to be in this folder.
The person writing or phoning you is supposed to have this info to hand when dealing with you.

You also have a Treasury, Student, PC, Ethics, FSM, folders within the org. Plus a Personnel one if you ever joined staff with test scores and a Life History.
 

Boojuum

Silver Meritorious Patron
Weird. And it makes no sense except it was a Big League Sales technique.

I've seen a lot of weird org stuff but not that.

On the other hand, it sounds like a reg interview from a new reg who was under duress.

I wouldn't read a great deal into it. There's some oddball folks that occasionally get on staff who do weird things. It's not like the org is picky about who works there.

They may have been running a "murder routine" on you. Where you're encouraged to speak up about a minor offense when someone asks something like, "What's the big crime, did you murder someone?" whereupon you're supposed to cough up a minor crime as in, "Oh no, I just stole Joe's apple right before lunch."

Perhaps the mistake was/is in assuming that there was anything intelligent going on in the interview.
 

TheOriginalBigBlue

Gold Meritorious Patron
They have always vetted newbies if only casually. Things seemed to be getting progressively weird from 1977 and they had the Mission Holders Conference debacle in 82 which heralded the little big man into prominence, so by 1985 I expect you would have been in the middle of a whole new round of SP detection pogroms. If you look at the list of Exes that have spoken out this does seem to be the period where a lot of vets started bailing.

Maybe this was an outside Mission that had been fired into the org to conduct a search for the SP(s) that were "keeping the stats down or caused stats to crash". Whenever a Data Evaluator can't settle on a solid "Why" the default why seems to often be an SP, especially if the alternative why points to a fault in the organization or tech itself, (which self preservationist lower level evaluators would be wise to avoid).

If I were a Mission Ops writing orders for a witch hunt then I would absolutely want to avoid disturbing the field and scaring people. By 1985 experienced staff and public knew how these played out. I can see how orders would be written to use a relatively less alarming person or local staff member to conduct interviews while the mission heavies observed and investigated unseen in the background.

This phone thing, however, sounds extremely suspicious to me and I would think that it would set off all kinds of little alarm bells - but then this is exactly the kind of disconnect that I would expect from someone writing mission orders.

As others have mentioned, there is a long list of various files kept on people but missions are like a parallel organization within the organization and things that happen on missions may not necessarily find their way into the standard file system. If this was an OSA mission then I suspect any information gathered stayed in OSA files.
 

renegade

Silver Meritorious Patron
I've never seen anyone do a reg interview like the one you had on the third floor.

Talking about murder and snapping fingers to get a date was never done as a reg technique.
 

uncover

Gold Meritorious Patron
I've never seen anyone do a reg interview like the one you had on the third floor.

Talking about murder and snapping fingers to get a date was never done as a reg technique.

This was so called "hardcore-squirrel-regging" :coolwink:..... mixing "Big League Sales Techniques" with part of "Dianetics" and whatever else.
 

Knows

Gold Meritorious Patron
I think all sorts of strange stuff occurs in those buildings. The pressure to get money is great.

I saw fist fights and people beating each other up - just caaarrrraaaa-zy!

The staff struggle each week with that stat push by Thursday.

I believe you encountered some "PTSness" from the Staff member trying NOT to be reasonable. Upper management was screaming behind the scenes.

I bet - the regges Senior was on the other line listening in.

They were "impinging" to get the data on how much money you had cuz they wanted it! :coolwink:
 

Hypatia

Pagan
Maybe somebody here can clarify for me what occurred one day during my second stint as a public at a class V org. It was the summer of '85 and I had just quit a job I was in for 10 years. I had a few thousand dollars in profit sharing which I never told the org about.

My dear family friend, Charley, years before had paid for the HAS course for me and I felt it was time to go back and finally take it. I had read pretty much all of the basic books by this time.

I was told that they no longer offered the HAS but instead the equivalent would be the Ups and Downs in Life Course. Of course I took it. I have to admit it pissed me off as the course consisted of parts from one of the books I had read. It may have even been the Big Green volunteer ministers handbook which I still have by the way.

Now this is the part that I need understanding with. At some point I was called to one of the upstairs floors into an office. I sat down across the desk from a woman I did not know. She told me she was going to ask me some questions so I thought, "okay this won't be so bad." What happened next startled me.

She picked up the phone receiver that was on her desk, punched in 3 or 4 numbers, then put the receiver on the desk in front of me. I looked at it and I thought "what the f is this about?"

For the life of me I cannot recall even one question she asked but I do remember being embarrassed, angry, insulted, and shocked at most of the questions. They were very personal involving my girlfriend and my finances and things like that. I definitely did not volunteer any details. I just wish like hell I remembered the questions.

I would just like to know from those of you who may have had the same experience or maybe even had been the person on the other side of that desk who did the same types of things with others, what was going on? Was someone else somewhere in the building listening in and writing down what was being said? Was I being recorded? I almost asked her why she did that but something inside of me told me that her answer would be that she was just making sure that we were not being disturbed. This was not the only time I had a strange encounter with somebody in an office in that building.

So, anybody have knowledge of this or an opinion?

A D of P interview as part of a c/sing type thing, perhaps.
 
A D of P interview as part of a c/sing type thing, perhaps.
I was wondering if it was a qual interview, but those questions make me think it may have been the Dir I&R doing an impromptu PTS check, and the C/S or EO or Qual sec was listening in. If it were qual, they would have been Q's more orientated towards how the course went, but if you were "nattering" the Dir I&R is a more likely suspect.

The Dir I&R (director of inspection and reports) is the EO's senior, and may have been doing a handle from above, or perhaps doing a demonstration of how to do an investigation or PTS check for her junior, the EO ( ethics officer) who may have been new on post.

Mimsey.
 
It was something nonstandard and all these quesses are making it seem weirder by the minute. Even as weird as SCN practices may be, the people delivering them in the 80's were usually happy, even eager to tell you what they were doing and why.
 
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