Who Has The Right To Offend You, Cashier? (Free speech)

Great Debates
1

In a column in today’s Washington Post, Marc Fisher describes an incident at the Maryland Food Collective, sandwich shop in the student union on the University of Maryland’s College Park campus. Briefly, a student wearing a T-shirt that said, “Baltimore Zionist District” and “I Stand for Israel,” approached the cashier on duty seeking to pay for her purchases. The cashier announced, “Your shirt offends me. I won’t ring you up,” and told the student to go to the back of the store to find another clerk.

As it happens, another cashier was willing to take the student’s money, and she was delayed less than two minutes. The Maryland Food Collective is an independent, worker-owned co-operative that rents space from the University. The incident led some to call for a boycott of the establishment, and ultimately the university got involved, pointing out that as long as they were renting space from the university, they were obliged to abide by the university’s human rights code, which explicitly prohibits discrimination based on political beliefs, as well as age, sex, and race.

Fisher, the author of the column, expresses dismay at the solution worked out between the aggrived parties and the Collective:

Fisher believes that this still constitutes discrimination, and the university seems to agree, telling the collective that if they discriminate again, they’re out the door. The students, laments Fisher, don’t get it. “Amazingly, virtually everyone involved on both sides of this incident is perfectly pleased with the new policy,” he says in disbelief.

I don’t think the the new policy is nearly as absymal as Fisher thinks it is. It seems to me that the business (I hate to keep saying “The Collective” because I keep imagining the Borg back there serving up tuna melts) is well within their rights to tell workers, “Serve everyone or you’re fired…” but they are ALSO within their rights to permit their workers to bow out from serving a customer if they wish. Fisher evokes the “marketplace of ideas” and how it cannot truly work unless wholly and completely unfettered, but I believe he’s confusing the entire marketplace with one small sandwich shop.

Of course, the University has the right to insist on whatever policy they wish for occupation of their retail space. I have no gripe with their decision. But Fisher doesn’t base his indignation on the shop’s presence at U of M; he seems to feel that a sandwich shop ought to be required to serve all patrons, even those that support Israel. I don’t see it that way. I think that if the shop wishes to permit its employees to refuse service to those that support Israel, they should have every right to do so.

2

I agree with you that this isn’t that big a deal and that the compromise worked out by the store and the students is acceptable, and I think Mr. Fisher is overreacting.

3

I agree with you. I don’t think that renting space on University grounds necessarily obligates the business to operate under University policy. And I also think that the business has the right to determine what conduct they will tolerate from their employees. If managment determines that a cashier can pick & choose who to serve, then I guess management will just have to deal with the consequences of that policy, whether it be as insignificant as finding someone else to ring the person up, or as major as dealing with potential backlash, such as a boycott or other form of protest.

4

Intolerant assholery on a college campus? Colour me shocked.

I’d be inclined to go to the store, pick out $50 or so of assorted items and if the clerk won’t ring me up, drop them all on the counter and let her restock them. Repeat as necessary, or until the obvious futility becomes overwhelming.

5

Not serving someone who holds political beliefs you do not approve of is a way of voicing your opinion in the marketplace of ideas. Fisher just wants to silence this poor cashier’s dissent. :wink:

6

I agree that the solution is kind of stupid - it seems like the store said “we’re going to keep doing what the University told us not to do.” The difference, apparently, is “I’m going to leave the register” vs. “go find another clerk.”

The compromise isn’t intolerably bad – I mean, if a cashier just walked away from the register because of a shirt you were wearing, the odds are you would never know. But it sounds more like plausible deniability from the store, ultimately. If another customer complained about the treatment he got under the new policy, they could just say “our cashier didn’t refuse to serve you, he just went on break or had to handle another task.”

7

The “poor cashier” can dissent in other ways, including wearing her own shirt carrying a political message, or telling the customer that she disagrees with his message. Refusing to serve him is a very poor substitute for speech.

8

Why? I think it makes the point very effectively. ;p

9

The cashier is there to shut the fuck up and do their job. Go practice your free speech when you’re off the clock.

10

The mildness of the sentiments that the cashier in this case objected to may be contributing to the confusion about it. To take a more extreme example, suppose an Aryan Nation supporter walked in with a shirt that said “Kill the Jews” or “Niggers Suck” or something like that. Would it be unethical for an employee to refuse to serve that customer?

Personally, I think it would. I think that the best and most professional policy for service industry employees is to undertake to serve all customers efficiently and politely, as long as the customers aren’t actually misbehaving. Ideological statements expressed by a customer’s clothing or accessories should simply be ignored, no matter how loathsome you may find them.

Otherwise, we’ve got a customer-service clusterfuck in the making, as some cashiers refuse to serve a client wearing a Confederate-flag baseball cap and others refuse to serve a client wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and so on and so forth. ISTM that the best solution is just to ignore all the logos and slogans and symbols and just do your job.

However, I have a hard time coming up with a reason why we should mandate that all employers must implement a STFU-and-do-your-job policy. Political T-shirts are not a protected category when it comes to legal discrimination.

And it could be argued that if people deliberately choose to go out in public proclaiming their positions on controversial issues via their clothing, they should be prepared to accept the consequences in their interactions with other people who disagree with them (as long as the consequences don’t involve any illegal behavior.)

11

What if you work for a lefty pinko ‘collective’. Come on, we all know what ‘collective’ means.

Nudge nudge, wink wink…comrade.

12

As would a t-shirt reading ASSHOLE with an upward-pointing arrow. More effectively, actually, because it would notify everyone and not just her Zionist offender.

13

“We reserve the right to refuse business to any patron for any reason.”

…I see this everywhere and agree with it. If the business wants to refuse to deal with all persons with red hair (for example), well, that’s their choice; it’s their merchandise and they don’t have to sell it to anyone they don’t want to. And deal with any resulting backlash, of course, but that’s their choice.

Now, if the cashier had been acting in defiance with a stated business policy, that would be something else. But he wasn’t. So I don’t see a problem with his actions.

14

It’s not context specific though.

I think this is much ado about nothing. The University reacted prudently, basically waving their hand and acting like they were doing something when really they were doing nothing, which I think is the appropriate response.

Student on campus who works in local food collective has stick up ass about (probably misinformed) political views news at 11.

15

Or if they refuse to deal with all Black people? Or women? Or Jews?

It’s not so clear-cut, in theory. But I agree with many others–this is a tempest in a teapot, and the only person who seems really incensed about the whole thing is the WaPo’s Marc Fisher.

16

I think the emphasized phrase above moots some of the comments in the thread. When the worker who’s being rude is also an owner, mssmith’s sentiment is unlikely to be operative, for instance.

17

Yep. They don’t have to sell their crap to anybody they don’t want to. Similarly, you don’t have to buy from anyone you find offensive.

(This does not apply so much if they were a government agency, which they’re not.)

18

The person did refuse to serve someone who believed in the right of Jews to live in Israel.

19

Well, that’s really up to their employer, isn’t it? I agree with begbert…if a privately owned store wants to have such a policy, it is their right. Just as individuals have the right (and, I would say, the responsibility) to refrain from shopping there.

20

Sarahfeena People do not have the ‘responsibility’ to share your political opinions. Shopping at the place has a lot more involved than taking into account one anal retentive clerk’s political opinions. Particularly when it’s a food coop. Food coops by their very nature are political entities built upon a specific political ethic, usually one based around buying your food locally from people who practice fair trade values and all that sort of thing. If that is the only collective you can make it to, and you believe in those ethics. Every single corporate chain grocery store supports far more egregious policies than simply allowing your cashier to be a douchebag. If you used to shop at a food collective and then suddenly you start shopping at Safeway because some clerk hates Zionism then you’ve got a pretty thin political veneer anyway. With a corporate store you have to deal with genetically modified food, poor worker wages in terms of their vendors, low standards for the food that’s provided and a panopoly of other issues that just don’t make a corporations radar due to its impact on the bottom line. Essentially you have to ignore all of the political issues that spawned the existance of these kind of collectives.

I for one do not feel it is my ‘responsibility’ to stop getting produce from local farmers because some dipshit college student told a Zionist to kiss off.

This sort of locally driven cooperative effort is far more important to local political concerns than Zionism.

http://www.studentorg.umd.edu/ffc/