Now, before you send me nasty e-mails, please know I am not comparing a whining church member to a criminal, but I think the same strategies just might work.

Suppose you see old Cranky Clarence across the way and he looks upset.  (And you think you know what it may be about…it has been the same thing for years!)  What do you do?  Ask him how he is?  See if anything is wrong?  Avoid him?

Check out what one bank is doing to deal with robbers and see if it might apply. 

SEATTLE – What’s the best way to make a bank robber turn around and walk out the door empty-handed? Try a handshake and a smile.

Excessive
friendliness is the key to the “Safecatch” system created by FBI
Special Agent Larry Carr. The premise is that an overdose of courtesy
will unnerve would-be robbers and get them to rethink the crime.

“If
you’re a legitimate customer, you think, ’This is the friendliest
person I’ve met in my life.’ If you’re a bad guy, it scares the lights
out of you,” said Drew Ness, a vice president of Bellevue-based First
Mutual Bank, who advocates the approach.

continued…

When a man walked into a First Mutual branch
last year wearing garden gloves and sunglasses, manager Scott Taffera
greeted him heartily, invited him to remove the glasses, and guided him
to an equally friendly teller. The man eventually asked for a roll of
quarters and left.

Carr said he suspects the man was the “Garden Glove Bandit,” who robbed area banks between March 2004 and November 2006.

Take that Cranky Clarence!

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18075473/