Bro.

Aw you got me, there is no way I could have been a member of the poker community for very long if I’ve never opened a 2+2 account. I find that to be one of the funniest attack points on any forum as it really has no bearing on anything. At least you have your priorities straight though.

Its a bit out of the realm of normal discussion, but it's still kind of interesting (and it's not like OOT is overrun with kind of interesting topics these days). Mostly, I want to hear the other side and why they really shut him down. As he says, it doesn't look like a liability issue as they regularly advertise that they allow people with disabilities to participate.

So you're a member of the poker community? As in... you've played poker before?

Yea I played once. I’m sure you’re much better than me though as your post count is much higher

HU4DISEASECURINGROLLZ

I mean, surely you have to have heard some kind of whisper here and there about specific issues or concerns they had about you or your program?

A lot of your story doesn't add up. You have no intention of damaging this companies name, but use it every other sentence throughout your OP.

Others employees weren't supportive of your program, but from your perspective, only because they didn't want to give their spare time away - which from what I can gather, they were under no obligation to do so.

This then culminates in you being officially banned from taking part in any company branded programs. So much so, that this head honcho dude went out of his way to over rule another manager, at another location, who seemingly wanted you to be involved with them. Out of what volition? Pure spite against someone he's never had any dealings with?

Seems pretty unbelievable.

The solution to this problem seems to be, umm, up in the air.

OP,

How did they try to silence you?

If you go back through the thread you’ll see I never actually said that. That was a generalized statement incorrectly put into quotations by another member. Look, I understand the story may not seem “believable” especially to all of you outside of the skydiving and tunnel flying world. But no I don’t have the answers, I was just told I could no longer host my own events for special needs flyers. Also I am not “banned” from iFLY lol, I still fly there regularly and from time to time coach my skydiving friends. As far as using the company name in my OP, I don’t see how I could have omitted that. But again my goal is not to hurt the company in anyway, there are a ton of good people who work there and many are my close friends. The only thing I could have done is just never spoken about it again and shut it all down. I guess I don’t mind sticking my neck out or being ridiculed for trying to help people.

First line in OP:
"This thread is to spread the word about an issue I had with IFLY and why they have tried to silence me. "

Thoughts?

LOLOL. So just some added lies to gain readers, sick.

Gabe, how did iFly try to silence you tho?

He can't talk about that because they silenced him.

My mistake, I did use that word in my OP, I’ve posted a couple of different edits of the story on different forums. I guess what I meant by “silence me” was just simply the act of reaching out to some of their locations to stop me from hosting events. Apologies if that statement was somehow misleading but that was not my intention.

I think your posts would go over better if it didn't sound like you had some kind of ulterior motive.

You don't need IFLY to help kids with special needs. You can volunteer at a children's hospital or knit wool hats for the NICU or just volunteer to babysit an ASD child so his/her parents can have a night out. All super admirable.

And your charity work at IFLY, while super admirable, wasn't an integral part of your life - for that matter neither was IFLY. It would be easier for people to believe if you'd been a longtime IFLY instructor who grew this program with the blessing of your fellow employees and managers and somehow corporate found out and shut it down. Then it seems like oh, okay, your antipathy towards corporate makes sense.

But it sounds like basically you moved to a new town and on your first day at a new job you started pestering your coworkers to donate a bunch of their time for something you hadn't been passionate about the day before. I'm not minimizing the effect of those eureka moments, but I'm saying that you really can't be surprised when nobody cares about your passions as much as you do.

If your goal is to help special needs children, awesome. If IFLY doesn't want to join, shrug and move on. If you can't find a good way to help skydiving, leverage your construction expertise - find a children's hospital or school that's floundering in construction and offer to help at below market rates.

Or, seriously, knit some wool hats for premies and donate them to the NICU - most clothing manufacturers will not make clothing that small, and premies have problems regulating their body temperature so they need good clothing.

This thread has potential

This has come up a few times. How many/what other forums did you post on? And for what purpose?

OP,

What would you like to happen? What can we do to help you out here?

You said you’re not banned and still go there. Are you saying that they won’t let you pay to bring a special needs group in?

I appreciate you trying to at least give constructive feedback. Some of what you said is true. You are right, ifly was not an integral part of my life in the sense that it was not my career path. Also, I understand there are many other things I can do to help the special needs population. I have been involved in other projects over the years and I will continue to do so. But no I didn’t just get there and on my first day start pestering anyone lol. On the contrary I did most of the work myself and many of my friends would ask me how they could help and would come in on there off days to help with the event. I was mainly referring to a few bad apples. Everything I was doing was heavily encouraged while I was with the company, it was only after I quit that things went south. The reason for bringing the issue back up is simply that I have had numerous requests to do more events but unfortunately I can’t and of course that has been frustrating.

Jab,

When you say you can’t do an event, what does that mean? You’ve tried to book a group outing there and they’ve refused your business?

Correct I can’t host events for special needs groups. But what I was doing wasn’t just bringing people in and flying them for a minute. I was taking things a step further and trying to explore how flying in the tunnel might be beneficial in different ways for different people. For example, my wheelchair bound students. Being in a wheelchair for years obviously has an effect on the body, now placing that person in the wind and stretching them out in a way that is difficult to do outside of the wind may have some physical benefits and definitely mental benefits. As far as how you guys can help, I don’t think there is anything a particular person can do but despite any negative reactions, maybe just talking about the issue will change something over time. What I would like to happen is of course to be able to start raising money again and hosting events, that may never happen, but at least I gave it a shot. I appreciate your response

Can you PM me, I was trying to message you but I have limited service where I am write now and was having trouble finding where to do so. I added you to my contacts. Thanks!

Jab,

New users can’t PM. No need for that, though, you can just write whatever you were going to say here in this thread.

Starting to go down this path of beliefs whether stated or otherwise implied through your service/activities would be reason enough for a company to no longer permit your activities on their premises. It could be implied that they are supporting this 'snake oil', rather than just providing a cool activity for disabled individuals.