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I was to the store the other day and had a Muslim check out clerk. I had to wait until a manager came along to check out my pork purchase as the clerk would not handle the pork. I am not against any person for their race or belief but when in our country working in a store I do not believe I should be inconvenienced for their religious belief.

Marine 8 Jan 23
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19 comments

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1

It’s your prerogative but you’ve spent more time with this thread than it likely took for someone else to walk over and sell it to you. Your feeling inconvenienced is bigotry. We’re all inconvenience 100 times a day by 100 different things and you’re picking on that one because he’s Muslim. I rather like living with diversity, I’m from NYC, every culture in the world was within 5 miles of me. I learned so much about different peoples and cultures in my own backyard. Staten Island has the largest population of Sri Lankans outside of Sri Lanka and thanks to that I’ve fallen in to love Sri Lankan food. I could give you examples all night long. I don’t agree with the Muslim religion or any other but in America people have the freedom to worship how they wish or not at all... I’ve chosen to be atheist but I’m one voice in a choir, diversity fucking rocks!

Thank you! I couldn't have said it better. And I agree... diversity does rock!

@BeeHappy Please see remark below.

Please see remark below.

1

I call bullshit on your post.

1

Oh you poor thing. Grocery store clerks under 21 can't sell beer here. You always have to wait. Big deal.

1

I have the same problem with this as I had with the woman that wouldn't issue mariage licenses to gay couples, If you can't do the job due to religious concerns, don't take the job. And that means the whole job.

3

Our country=their country

A lot of people were very angry with Enoch Powell for talking about the immigrants getting the 'whip-hand' over the British people when he made his 'rivers of blood' speech.. That term was very provocative because it described the old colonial days of slavery turned upside-down. I think extreme liberal politics has made his 'prophesy' come true.

3

It's egotism disguised as virtue.

1

I think there is a big mistake in play here. Try saying "my employment" instead of "my job". The "job" belongs to the person who created it. They may want assign it to you and and pay you to perform it. They have a right to set any and all standards. You have a right to walk away!

???????

3

Seems like the clerk could have used gloves or tongs or something...besides, it was packaged, right? It's annoying when people make a big show of their religiousness.

Carin Level 8 Jan 23, 2019
2

I do self checkout... problem solved.

2

I will still be respectful of people as to not make fun of them in public etc., but I AM against people for some of their beliefs lol

Some things are just fucking dumb.

What should stop a person from saying the same thing about anything else? Why, just because it's a religious belief? It's ridiculous. Like not eating meat on Good Friday, or touching or eating pork. Are you going to fucking disintegrate? People will follow these dumb fucking rules, but yet will be hypocrites with tons of other shit. These are all irrational beliefs based in fantasy.

Why can't I say I can't work on Sundays because of the NFL? It's a tangible thing and I actually love watching football. Why should I be inconvenienced? There are millions and millions of others who feel the same way. Why not? Because it's not in a book that says I can't work on Sundays to worship at the altar of the NFL? Thou shalt not miss NFL Sunday, and especially playoff games.

I have worked places where people conveniently got off work on Sundays AND Wednesdays because of church, and other people were inconvenienced and had to take that workers place for whatever shift time they had. Why should they get special treatment?

Here's an idea, if you don't want to touch pork, don't work at a food mart with pork in it. If you don't want to touch dirty clothes, don't work in a laundromat. If you don't want to be around alcohol, smokers, and smelly shit talking trouble makers, don't work at a bar or a club. It goes on and on and on.

3

Geez, people can be fucking ridiculous.............

3

This comes down to what beliefs or limitations can be reasonably accommodated and what constitutes "reasonably".

If I had some silly notion that I can't handle food that's been touched by theists, I think that would just take me out of the grocery clerk (or deli clerk, etc) job market. If I really would rather be right than happy, that's kind of MY problem.

Ignoring the employer / employee perspective and focusing on the customer perspective, there's a gray area between being courteous / deferential / accommodating / tolerant about these things, and being taken advantage of by arrogant asshats. In the situation you describe I would have a talk with the store manager and request that he find a way for his employee not to inconvenience me AND him. @genessa probably had the best idea, let him have his own "no pork" aisle and sort it out that way. Hopefully there would be enough people not happening to buy pork plus enough fellow Muslims and Jews that it would be rare for this Muslim's aisle to be idle when all others are full. Might be more problematic at a small grocer with few aisles.

If there's a large number of Jews / Muslims in the 'hood, it might even be a feature rather than a bug to have to do this, as those who are observant about not eating pork might like the notion of an aisle that has has no "pork cooties"! In fact more generically there could be an aisle for "Halal / Kosher items only" because it's not just about pork, and Halal and Kosher diets are quite similar. The problem there is that most people have little idea whether their cart includes forbidden items, and here again, your inconveniencing customers needlessly. This is my reservation about @genessa's solution. If it were truly a question of pork and pork alone, it would be far simpler.

Slippery slope alert: I know that very conservative Jews go so far as to not prepare certain categories of food on the same counter-space at home or prepare them with the same kitchen pots / utensils, so presumably they wouldn't want them bagged together or touching on the conveyor. I think those people will just have to run their own grocers, as that's a bridge too far. At some point even if you think your strictures are right, you have to recognize that you can't legitimately impose them on people who don't give a fig.

i think another slippery slope is thinking that people should stop wanting special accommodation to the point that we're not willing to do simple things to accommodate them just out of human kindness and the need for us all to get along. maybe that was the only job that clerk could find. maybe that was the only clerk that store could find. it won't kill us to try to find solutions.

g

@genessa Slippery slope concerns often borrow trouble. You are correct that focusing on the situation at hand and being creative and compassionate and empathetic should be our first choice.

Fortunately for me, I don't run a business that deals with the general shopping public, though, or I'd have the niggling fear in the back of my mind that, on the principle that no good deed goes unpunished, me trying to be a nice guy would eventually take my business to an existence-ending lawsuit of some kind because I made a special pork-only aisle and then drew the line at some other accommodation. In other words, I don't think business owners are really allowed to take things on a case by case basis and not unwittingly set precedents about things they couldn't possibly anticipate. I don't think they're allowed true freedom of choice; they are expected to bend over backwards. Given their history of exploiting workers because they can, I'm not entirely sympathetic ... but still. This is a very subjective topic with lots of grey areas. I can understand some employers just avoiding it altogether.

1

flipside.....you can enjoy the delights of bacon.

3

i think that it is not because of their religious belief that you were inconvenienced. i think it was poor planning on the parts of all employees concerned. let me give you an example:

many years ago, a woman walked into a cvs pharmacy and tried to fill a legitimate prescription for birth control pills, and the pharmacist refused to fill it, claiming that to do so would violate his religious beliefs. it didn't matter to him whether the pill was in fact for contraception, dysmenorrhea or some other purpose; he would not fill the prescription.

now, there could have been several outcomes/solutions here. one would be that cvs fired him since his religious beliefs disqualified him from handling all aspects of the job. that didn't happen. another would be that cvs could've had more than one pharmacist there so that when this sort of thing came up, the customer could still be served. failing that, they could've corrected the situation even though they hadn't thought of it before (maybe the pharmacist never told them his limitation). that didn't happen either. another would be that the pharmacist could've found work in a religious institution where his limitation would be expected and supported. that obviously hadn't happened, nor had the next solution: he could've realized that his religious beliefs made pharmacy an unsuitable profession for him. no. what happened was that cvs stood behind him.

i will never EVER shop at cvs.

now imagine a religious jewish butcher. he has some options too. he can go work in a kosher butcher shop (analagous to the pharmacist's working for a religious institution). he can go apply for a job at a secular butcher shop and not mention his limitation to anyone and wait for it to come up and then refuse to serve the person who ordered pork. bad move, right? or he can go apply for that same job and ask the boss if he can call upon another employee to handle the pork requests. if the boss says no, i only need to have one butcher on duty at one time, or i only want one butcher period, then sorry, that butcher can't have that particular job and it's not discrimination. if the boss says no, you stupid jew, i don't deal with your type, then it IS discrimination. so far so simple, right?

now ALL the supermarket you visited had to do was put up a sign for that checkout clerk saying "no pork in this aisle" and you'd have gone to another aisle and that would've been that! i bet other muslims and jews would've been pretty happy to have an aisle just for them too lol it's no worse than having a "fewer than 10 items" aisle, after all.

i don't think you were inconvenienced HORRIBLY by things as they worked out, but they really should have planned better. if the clerk never mentioned it to her boss, it's on her. if she did and the boss said "i'll come out if you need me," that's not so bad but he might have figured that sometimes he wouldn't be available right away. they should've made a plan. that way, she can have a job and support her family, the store can operate efficiently and customers have maximum convenience.

g

@mzbehavin everything is an inconvenience; why can't we stay in bed and have the grocers guess what we want and deliver it? so we have to weigh the inconvenience of waiting a moment for the manager against the inconvenience of having a hard time finding a job. and she probably does the rest of her job just fine.

g

@mzbehavin can you tell me what i am assuming?

g

@mzbehavin i said it all had to be weighed. everything is relative. those are not assumptions. they're examples. but whatever.

g

@Closeted it really should indeed!

g

6

if you can't do your job you shouldnt have it

3

Anyone can have their beliefs but they need to find another job . Either do your damn job or find another end of story.

3

I'm vegetarian. Should I live up to the same standard? Lol. I honestly think religion is hilarious

Yeah I am too but when I work in places that serve food, I give people what they order. I wouldn't want to work in a place that boils crustaceans to death or serves live mollusks at all, so I wouldn't put in a job ap there. Now I don't know if this is comparable, but when I work as a housekeeper (my usual gig) I won't kill spiders when people ask me to. But I try to catch them & put them back outside.

1

Taken to its logical end

1

I am not buying this. We have some lads (muslim) who have an offie (off licence...place to buy booze) down the road
[snopes.com]

@maturin1919 Muslims are not supposed to drink alcohol?

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