B, Sect and Fun

In the movie "Pédale douce" (sweet queer), there is a scene where Patrick Timsit comes out of a restaurant. He goes left passing by a white porch and stops in front of high barred windows. Behind the porch and the windows was a company where I worked in. Even the crew had diner there during the shooting.

Should the meal be earlier in the day, technicians and actors would have witnessed a strange ceremony. Several people would have arrived one by one. They would have gone downstairs in a fit out basement. Some minutes later, they would have heard a liturgical chant raising. With more attention, they would have heard a song for an illustrious unknown female person.

The ritual was held every evening (or as Sheldon from Big Bang Theory would say prevening) around 6PM. I was still at work doing administrative tasks. The first I heard this strange chant, I told myself: "Hey. There is also a choir in this company. Choir always needs bass voice. If the repertoire suits me I will join it". Finally, the repertoire didn't suit me and I didn't join.

You have to know that in France there is a governmental agency whom lists all the sects. In the 1996's list, there was an association whose members gathered at the headquater of my company. A retrospective fear would have taken me if the following didn't happen.

The association's members were rather high level people (lawyers, programmers, businessmen, …). At the head of it a Canadian woman whom tried to prove her sanity by telling that she had cured her husband from multiple sclerosis by drinking her urine in reclusion in an apartment at Nice. I know that the quantum intrication states that two particles can interact at great distances. The intercontinental urino-therapy let me puzzled.
The association's activities were rather classic : books, conferences and psycho-therapeutical seminars. Usually, it is well known that what caracterize a sect are two points : psychological constraints and money. In short, we prevent the members to quit the sect and we try to get the most money possible.

During my stay beside the association, I saw a lot of members leaving one by one the association without any trouble at my knowledge. Concerning the money, the association met some troubles. One of the member was a singer. She asked the association to help her to produce her first record. She had certainly some talent as she had been invited to a musical radio show. But the production cost dried out all the association's founds and so the association disappeared. The remaining three members were thrown at the four cardinal points. What would be a sect reveals to a ill managed association.

I have to confess that there was no proselytism in my company even if my boss was an important member of the association. The company had an activity with no connections with the association. On the contrary, the situation gave me a lot of stuff to use and perform my second degree humor. By the way, it was there that I started what would become my second career : IT programming. If somebody would have tried to entrap me in this association, I would have said as Alexandre Hagutte (one of the character of the movie) : "You have to stop to piss me off. You have to stop to piss me off".