And the employees have to go outside to smoke, right? So, if McCartney lets his employees go outside to eat meat, that would be about the same, right?
If they can’t leave, then yes, McCartney is being a a major prick. (I think he’s sort of being a prick anyway . . .) If they can leave, and it’s no more of an inconvenience to leave than it is for smokers to “smoke outside,” then it’s about the same as expecting smokers to smoke outside, wouldn’t you say?
There are a lot of vegetarians who don’t want to smell meat cooking, don’t want to see scraps of it in the trash, don’t want to smell it at all. If McCartney is one of those people, then asking people to eat their meat outside is, well, the equivalent to expecting smokers to smoke outside. As long as going outside is no more inconvenient.
If, however, the employee can be subtle about eating their baloney sandwich and leave no offensive smell or scraps, then I don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to eat inside. But the case could be made that it’s the smell and the sight of it that is offensive. After all, you’ve got plenty of people who don’t want meat cooked in their kitchen. They can deal with it outside of their own domain, but not in their domain. (Kind of like coping with smoking in public, but not allowing it in your own house.)
The thing is, in my 5+ years on the SDMB I can count on one hand the number of threads I’ve ever seen started by “militant vegetarians” trying to convert people. However, there have been dozens of anti-vegetarian threads, usually making a similarly daft (non-)point as the OP in this one.
Not offering veggie selections is alot different from banning you from bringing in your own veggie selection, wouldn’t you agree?
Who said anything about nutrition? Not only is he dictating what foods they can or cannot eat in his almighty presence, but he’s banning them from wearing leather equipment. I agree that an all-meat diet is not good for you. This has nothing to do with diet.
Right on. Saying that it is the vegetarians that try to force their dietary habits on the non-vegetarians is as ridiculous as saying that it is the homosexuals that try to force their sexuality on the heterosexuals. There may be a few militants but there are any number of day-to-day assumptions and angry straights that go the other side of that line.
Alright - I have to say it. This statement is moronic. Meat-eaters eat veggies. And fruit. And cheese. And bread. And eggs. And a whole host of non-meat products. These folks are not going to starve if they can’t have a deep-fat-fried-pork-hock for one flippin’ meal, are they? If I had brought a veggie selection to my office and was stopped at the door and forced to add a pig-snout to my meal before I could enter then your annology would be accurate. It would render my meal un-eatable to me. However, just removing a slice of ham from a ham-cheese-and tomato sandwich doesn’t make it uneatable for a carnivore - I just makes a cheese and tomato sandwich.
The fact of the matter is that it’s easy for a meat-eater to eat a vegetarian meal, particularly if it is provided for them. They will lose nothing. There are no 100% meat eaters in the world.
It’s not so easy for a veggie to eat if there’s no non-meat selection. If there is no veggie selection available then I will either eat off-site or I will starve.
Your comparison is absurd to the point of being meaningless.
Well, no, it’s not always so easy. I’m probably an anomaly, and it’s a good thing I don’t work for McCartney, because I’d probably starve. Why? I can’t eat soy, peanuts, root veggies, veggies like zucchini, squash, and pumpkin and have to carefully limit the amount of wheat products I eat. Anyone get a sample menu of what he serves? Any of those things on it?
I’d be more than happy to fix my own lunch to bring in, but I’d be pissed if I had to go sit alone in my car and eat all by myself. I’m more than tolerant of his vegan beliefs, but why couldn’t he understand my food allergies and allow me to bring a salad with cheese and an egg on it, and maybe chicken or tuna and a non-soy dressing, and eat with my friends?
(I’m not trying to stir up trouble, I’m just giving an example)
I’m not going to get into a vegetarian diet discussion with you. Stick whatever you want down your throat, I don’t really give a shit.
Paul McCartney banning people from eating meat within a stadium-wide radius of him is all I commented on. Not on a permanent ban on meat or vegetables, not on the rights and wrongs of vegetarianism or animal rights, so stop trying to turn it towards that.
I don’t fucking care what McCartney likes to eat. I don’t care what he buys in for the catering. I do think he’s absolutely wrong to ban workers from eating meat that they bring in themselves that Paul McCartney isn’t providing. I never said they couldn’t survive without meat on the job for a week. I’m talking about McCartney forcing his principals on other people IN THIS INSTANCE.
My point about “only meat” allowed was to try and illustrate to you how wrong it would be for someone to try and enforce that, just as McCartney is wrong with regard to THIS INSTANCE.
Well of course. He’s the boss. It’s his way or the highway, and anyone who doesn’t like it can find another gig. Because when you go to work you check your individuality and freedom of choice at the door. Seriously, in his bio Shout!, Philip Norman makes no bones about the Beatles’ capricious and heavy handed manner with their employees, all the way back to the beginning of their fame. This seems to be a continuation of that.
And yes, many vegans do tend to be in other peoples’ faces about that, much more than meat eaters are, with the possible exception of Texas cattlemen who have their hackles up. A good example of that was in the show 1901 House, in which a modern English middle class family spent time living the way they would have lived in 1901. The mother was a vegetarian. Apparently at that time when new occupants moved into a house, local merchants would call without prior arrangement, to introduce themselves and their wares. In accordance with the times, a man from the butcher’s showed up with an offering of various sausages and other meats, and the mother rolls her eyes and says, “Thanks for showing me your dead animals”. WTF?!? It’s a frigging TV show. This is how life was in 1901, she should have known what she was in for. There was no call to berate the delivery guy.
Good lord. This thread is really, really absurd. Frankly, the whole thing seems like much ado about nothing.
Paul McCartney is a rich, powerful guy who happens to be veg. He has decided that for his tour there will be no meat products consumed on the premises where he’s performing.
That’s it. Personally, I think he’s a rich powerful guy and that mean’s, in this instance he gets to do whatever the hell he wants. Employees that don’t like it don’t have to work there. The could take that week off. They could work somewhere else. They could suck it up and eat the healthful, vegetarian meals provided by their employer or go off-site and eat a deep-fat-fried-cheese burger. Them’s the breaks. One of the problems with working for someone else is that sometimes you have to do things you don’t like.
Abusrd discussions about whether my boss can force me to eat nothing but meat really have nothing to do with the situation. Nothing.
WTF indeed. What exactly does one isolated incident of a woman being a twit prove? Nothing. If you would like, I could start a poll, asking vegetarians to share their stories of encounters with asshole meat eaters. I frickin’ guarantee you, we’ve got plenty of them. And what would that prove? That all meat-eaters are assholes? Hardly.
And let’s back up a bit with this issue of banning meat: Would you all agree that an employer has the right to ban smoking on the premisis, as long as the employee is able to “step outside” to smoke, right? Right?
So, let’s say that McCartney doesn’t want to see or smell meat in his workplace. It’s his place, he’s the boss, I guess he has the right. So, if the employees are allowed to “step outside” to eat their meat (and we don’t know how difficult that is for them to do—don’t know either way), then how is that different than an employer asking the smokers to step outside? It’s the employer’s rules, the employer’s wish, the employer’s standards, and he doesn’t want to smell or look at the stuff.
I’ll agree once again that I personally think he’s pushing it too far by dictating what they can bring in their lunchboxes, but I do understand why he might not want to see slabs of meat in the dining area, smell the cooking meat, etc. etc.
alice_in_wonderland, forgive me for singling you out. I’m not picking on you. Rather, you and several other people seem ignorant of the general conditions under which roadies work. These guys* don’t leave the house at seven to be at London/Paris/Amsterdam/New York/BFE by nine, they’re running around the clock. Back in the Eighties, I did some work as local crew, and the general schedule was this:
8:00AM Load In-- If the trucks didn’t arrive already, then they damn well better be pulling into the parking lot. Also, all local crew has to be in the stadium, as per “the contract.”
A small act might get by with three eighteen-wheeler trucks. The bigger acts fill fourteen or more trucks (IIRC, Pink Floyd had two 24-30 truck setups leapfrogging across the US.) Back when I was doing this stuff, there was one act that did virtually all the shows in the US**, and their general order of work for load in was thus:[ul][li]unload lighting, stage and rigging by backing trucks down the ramp to the stage location;[/li][li]build the and stage assemble lighting trusses while hanging the rigging, then;[/li][li]move the stage to final position and lock it together and down; [/li][li]using the stage as a staging point, attach lighting and aerial sound to rigging (stadium crew sets out chairs and stuff);[/li][li]unload the rest of the sound, band equipment, flash pots, fiberglass Stonehenge, etc…[/ul][/li]If everything worked out right, all of this would be done by…
5:30PM Sound Check.
8:00PM Doors open, opening act, show, encore… all that stuff.
11:00PM Load Out-- Local crew arrives during encore. Audience clears out/is cleared out. Trucks are backed down ramp to just behind backstage and, starting with band equipment, everything is loaded back in the correct order (if you’re lucky, then you don’t have to stop the loadout to find the one particular freaking box that the light/band/sound hand needs for his packing order.)
2:00AM to 4:00 AM the show is loaded up and everyone waves bye to the truck drivers.
8:00AM Lather, Rinse, Repeat…
For everyone who has read this far, thanks for bearing with me. Anyway, you probably noticed that there was no mention of lunch breaks or going home at the end of the day. Home, for the duration of the tour, is a bus (or maybe a hotel room if the road crew is flown from town to town), and the bus or hotel room is paid for by Mr. Paul McCartney and subject to the rules of his contract. A roadie might be able to sneak out for an hour or two between unloading his truck(s), soundcheck and showtime. Then again, he may not and very likely will not get any time off if the trucks miss a turn or get stuck in traffic somewhere or if the load in goes bad, and he might decide to get some sleep instead. In any case, my guess is that these guys will spend about twenty hours of each day at some place that was paid for by Paul, and most of their meals will be off of a catering table.
I seem to recall that the British Navy used to allow a rum ration for sailors. I assume that this was done because having a slightly drunk sailor aboard was preferable to having a mutinous sailor aboard, and I think that the same rationale might apply here. I really feel sorry for the personnel managers at the companies who subcontracted for this tour as they’re going to have a lot pissed off employees. Were I in their shoes, I’d do my best to pad the labor costs in the contract enough to give the roadies a nice bonus to smooth things out a bit. That, or quietly make the decision not to fire anybody when somebody in Paul McCartney’s organization ends up wearing falafel during a show halfway through the tour.
*I’m generalizing, but it was a male dominated profession back in the mid-Eighties and I assume that it still is.
**The only large act that I recall not using them was Kiss, and it was a real clusterfuck. Nothing was organized; they didn’t even know which truck had what, much less the packing order of each truck. Showtime was at 8:00PM, and they still didn’t have the stage put together when our stage manager cut us loose at 7:30, two hours after the (missed) sound check.
Oh, and the people complaining don’t work for Paul McCartney; their employer is a subcontractor to Paul. Their quitting this tour would be like any of us quitting our jobs over one customer. It would also mean the end of their career.
I’m sure that McCartney’s employees already know that the big boss doesn’t like meat.
Good Lord, indeed. It’s not like the only alternative to a vegan meal is to eat a “deep-fat fried cheeseburger.” What if one of the so-called “meat-eaters” wanted to bring a chicken caesar salad? Hey, it’s a salad, but it has chicken and parmesan cheese on it. What if it was a garden salad, but with a dairy-based dressing (rather than a vegan-friendly dressing), and a chopped hard-cooked egg? Still healthy, but potentially offensive to a vegan.
Some of you are acting like the only alternative to the vegan meals is Meat with a side of Meat with Meat for dessert.
Just because some of us eat meat doesn’t mean we eat a pound of MEAT with every meal.
I swear, I’m not trying to stir the pot any more, I just think if he wants respect for his beliefs, then he could show a little respect for his employees, too.
And I never said there was. I was responding to TwistofFate’s rediculous suggestion that having a no-meat environment was the same as having an all meat environment - it’s a rediculous suggestion, but it’s not mine. If someone is going to make an absurd arguement to try to make a point, I’m at least allowed to point out that it’s absurd, no?
Furthermore, the article says “vegetarian” not “vegan” so your salad with eggs and cheese would be fine by Paul. Need protein - you got it.
Additionally, I’m basing my “Eat before or after the show” comments on the man quoted in the article who says he works from 8 AM until 8 PM. There is no mention of a 24hour cluster-fuck - perhaps if there had been, I would be more sympathetic.
Regarding lunch breaks - I’m responding to Maureen’s comments that “What is done on my own time is my own business, including breaks.” Fine - if that’s the case, then the employees can leave on their break and eat a meat rich lunch. There is nothing in the article to suggest this is not allowed.
Finally, the man in the article said all they were provided was “salads and vegetarian selections.” Now, had the crew only been provided salad, I would totally understand and support their complaints. However, “vegetarian selections” can mean a lot of things. A lot of filling, healthy, protein rich things that would fill a person up and provide sufficient energy to work a long day. Why do I know this? Because I’m veg and on more than one occasion I’ve had to put in 14-16 hour days, involving heavy lifting, running around and generally exerting a shwack of energy. Ditto for my SO, who’s a big strapping man and can still manage to function on a big helping of vegetarian lasagna or chili, salad, cheese and nuts, and a dinner roll.
I’m sorry - Paul is the boss, he say’s no meat. He’s had food catered for the crew. Frankly, the whole thing seems like a bunch of big strong men acting like sissys. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, I want my meaaaaaaaaaaaaat.
Uh, no. Actually, the laws of California dictate to me that smoking is not allowed in a place of business, not on my belief that smoking is an awful habit. OTH, there are no laws dictating to me about eating meat in a place of business during a lunch break. I do allow my staff to step outside to smoke to comply with the law, but I do not tell them that they have to be off my property entirely or “just suck it up and get through the day without it.”
We all agree that he’s a prick because he is making his own laws based on his beliefs (no meat on premises), not just following existing laws (smoking outside). Big difference. Again, it’s a big star banking that his beliefs become temporary law in his presence, even if it means an independent contractor (that Cornflakes is suggesting) cannot direct it’s own staff 100% without McCarrotney’s egotistical oversight.
Not sure about country/prov./state’s smoking laws at the place of venue…but I’m pretty sure there’s already policies made about smoking in a building…but I sincerely doubt there are no policies regarding meat eating. Second hand meat smell does has not been linked to cancer as of yet.
There’s alot of “offensive” smells besides meat…should we ban all of them too for one who’s “high and mighty”?
Paint?
Burnt hair?
Intestinal gas?
Bad breath?
Burnt brussel sprouts? (my personal pet peeve)
yadda, yadda, yadda…
I think that just one person should be “sucking it up” so others can do something that is still legal, rather than one person expecting others to “suck it up” for himself only.
Two weeks too long, mon cherie. Again, your approval of what’s being served and what PM forcefully advocates has nothing to do with any legal right a worker can shove down his gullet.
I have a brother-in-law that is 7th Day Adventist and sticks to his vegetarian diet faithfully and I respect him for that, just like he does for me and my omnivore diet. Even at his house, we can bring meat dishes if we so chose to compliment his vegetarian dishes and nobody bitches about anyone’s eating habits. It’s all about tolerance, and we get it.
Paul is the real sissy here, because “tolerance” his not in his vocabulary. And based on Cornflakes description of stage crews, I think that Paul isn’t really the boss, he’s the client in a contract with an idependent contractor.
I have my success, but I am not popular like he is, and I’m glad that I’m not…even if I was, I would not be petty enough to enforce a “No Brussel Sprout” rule in the workplace…I would learn to deal with it, just like I deal with the burnt popcorn smell that happens here on a weekly basis here at the office.
I never said I approved of what PM was feeding them. I said that it was nutritionally complete. Additionally, I said that as Paul is the boss, he can dictate what is and isn’t served on his job-site.
Frankly, I think the man should throw the poor workers a bone, so to speak, and at least allow them to bring in a tuna-fish sandwhich if that’s what they like, but I’m not Paul, I’m not paying the bills, and I’m not allowed to decide. He is.
This particular situation is occuring in Oslo, Norway. I’m not familiar with Norweigian work standards. Are you? If so, please cite the relevant portions that dictate that food choices are a protected area.
If it turns out that PM is breaking the law or violating a Norwigian labor code, well, then the appropriate authorities should be contacted.
