Okay, that is unreasonable. I can understand inside, but not the parking lot.
Even as an atheist I am not willing to question the sanity of religious people or religious beliefs. It smaks of hypocrisy in light of the constant outcry from many fellow atheists that they are made to feel unconfortable by religious people.
There is a certain feeling of superiority that I sense from a few posters, I don’t know if against muslims or all religious people with similar restrictions (some Christians and Jewish people don’t eat pork for religious reasons, some other religious have bans on all things animal). That is a feeling I don’t like. Really, get down your pedestal, we are not generally smarter or saner than religious folks.
Cite?
I read the article three times and didn’t see that. Is there another source I don’t now of?
A person with OCD may be smarter than I am, but that doesn’t prevent me from finding his little ritual illogical.
They don’t seem to care about shitting on my feelings. They’re saying that something I enjoy eating is so dirty and unclean that they cannot bear to be in the same room as it is eaten. What do they think of someone who is willing to eat something so unclean? Oh boo hoo, my poor little feelings are hurt.
My refraining from pork isn’t vital to their survival or belief system. As for comfort, if they’re that uncomfortable around people who don’t subscribe to their religious beliefs maybe they ought to stick with like minded individuals.
I could bring something else in but maybe I just feel like a pulled pork sandwich one day. What other foods should I be restricted from eating as to not offend?
As I said it is a piss poor analogy.
There doesn’t have to be a rule. Maybe I just like to eat a pork sandwich once in a while.
Yeah, it isn’t terribly selfish of everyone else to prevent me from enjoying a meal during the work day. Since it’s a religious prohibition we should all respect it.
Marc
The woman was not being asked to observe anything for religious reasons, she was asked not to contaminate a halal kitchen. By doing so, she was preventing everyone else from being able to enjoy their meal without being forced to violate their own religious beliefs, as well as being physically repulsed.
Why does this seem to be so difficult for some people in this thread to understand? Her consumption of the pork was not even the point. The point is that she was spiritually contaminating their lunchroom.
Get it now?
Is there some reason that she had to eat pork? No? Then fuck her. She was asked nicely not to contaminate the lunchroom. She was warned the second time and then she was canned. Good. She should have been canned the second time.
BTW, all the nonsense about whether pork is really “unclean” or whether it really physically taints the kitchen is completely missing the point. We are talking about a spiritual cleanliness here, not a physical one.
Is there a difference between regular water and holy water? Would anybody get a little offended if I took a piss in some holy water?
This is the same kind of deal. You have to look past the physical and see how someone else views things on a spiritual level.
Maybe because it’s wrong?
I’ll repeat my question from above: is it legal for a company owned by a vegan, with a majority of its employees vegan, to require that all employees eat vegan food while on company premises?
What if the vegans think, for religious reasons, that non-vegan food contaminates their lunchroom, in a spiritual sense?
There are a LOT of things we don’t *have * to do. That doesn’t mean we should allow people to stop us from doing them. How free would we be if we could only do things we absolutely *have * to do?
Sez who? What if they think YOU are wrong. Somebody has to be wrong, eh?
IANAL, and won’t say anything as to its legality, but I think the employer has a right to do so. You don’t like it? Too bad, get another job.
You don’t seem to understand that she wasn’t in her home. Or out in the streets. She was in a private place that doesn’t belong to her. You come to my house, you abide by my rules. She has no right to THAT job.
Why accomodate her and piss off the rest of the employees and the owner? That doesn’t sound reasonable to me.
Eating has nothing to do with the issue. She was contaminating a halal kitchen. And veganism is not a religion.
Then they have a right to ask you not to contaminate it.
No such religious view actually exists, though.
You seem to be missing the part about how contaminating that kitchen prevented everyone else from being able to eat.
Can a racist employer say that they don’t want to hire any blacks? I know the law says no, but ethically speaking, based on your argument, an african american has no right to THAT job. They are free to find another job.
What is wrong with that argument? Well, if all the jobs prevent you from working there, then there are no jobs left for you to find. Your “freedom” to find another job is a joke. Similarly, if all employers imposed some religious beliefs onto their employees, there wouldn’t be many jobs left for the non-religious to find.
Duiscrimination only applies to certain protected classes. “pork lover” is not a protected class. Asking her not to contaminate a kitchen and prevent everyone else from being able to eat in it is not discrimination but it has nothing to do with any status she may hold as to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or physical disability. The rule is the same for everyone. No discrimination.
[QUOTE=Polerius]
Can a racist employer say that they don’t want to hire any blacks? I know the law says no, but ethically speaking, based on your argument, an african american has no right to THAT job. They are free to find another job.
QUOTE]But this has nothing with the case at hand, she was in fact employed when her employer knew well that she was a Catholic. If he had refused to hire her for been a Catholic or been a woman, or been hispanic you might have a case. She was hired *despite * all that and wasn’t fired because of it.
Diogenes the Cynic rocks. He has some excellent points and clarifies them much better than I have.
I am reminded of an experience I had some years ago. It’s a tangent, but still applies.
Years ago my sister and I were able to go to a special event for the TV show “Quantum Leap.” The show had been renewed (thanks to viewer’s letters) and the studio wanted to thank us fans. So through word of mouth, a lot of us got to go to Universal Studios to see a screening of their next episode and see the stars, Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell. The stars and director, etc., were up on a stage and after the airing of the episode they answered questions from the audience.
It was a nice evening. Stockwell (whom I have always adored) at one point asked if he could smoke a cigar. The whole crowd of people said “No!” (This is California we’re talking about. ;)) But he lit up anyway, and we could all smell it.
Now, there are some significant difference between this scenario and the one being discussed in the OP. We were the guests of Universal, we were only there due to their extreme generosity, and Stockwell was far higher on the food chain. It was just for a few minutes. The smoke didn’t really get that stinky; it was a rather big room.
And I still adore Stockwell. He was a cool guy. But there was something that just stuck in my craw about him lighting up, even after a whole crowd of people were yelling, “NO!” at him. He just shrugged his shoulders, and lit up. He could have waited a half hour or so until the event was over, but he didn’t. Had to light up right then.
And that’s what this woman was doing. Didn’t care, she wanted what she wanted, even though a whole bunch of people were essentially yelling “NO!” at her. It just isn’t polite. But is it her right? Well, possibly. But does it make her look like a selfish cow? Oh yeah.
It’s still a ridiculous rule. As I said earlier I’d follow it simply because it isn’t a battle worth fighting. On the other hand I might still bring in pork products and just tell them it’s beef. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.
Marc
I wasn’t trying to equate racial discrimination with the pork issue. I was merely trying to point out the absurdity of the claim “if you don’t like it, you’re free to find another job”.
Forgetting the pork issue for a moment, as a general rule, we don’t want companies with policies that force their employees to do things we wouldn’t like forced on us. The reason is that if we allow companies to do that using the “they’re free to find another job” argument, then pretty soon all companies will become horrible places to work for, and the “freedom” to find another job will be moot.
Let me summarize where we stand on this issue:
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Group A thinks a certain behavior is vile and contaminates the workplace.
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Group B thinks Group A’s belief is irrational and sees no reason to alter their behavior to accomodate an irrational belief.
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Group C thinks Group A’s belief (whether rational or not) is a religious one and therefore should be respected and accomodated.
Personally, (and this is a general issue I have, not restricted to this case) I don’t see why if a belief is a religious one it deserves a better treatment than if it was just the opinion of that person.
If someone said, “you know, I’m not Muslim or Jewish, but I think that pork contaminates the workplace”, why is that less valid than if it came from a Jewish person or a Muslim?
Or, someone goes to their boss and says “I can’t work on Mondays because my religion forbids it” vs someone who said “I can’t work on Mondays because it is my personal philosophy that people shouldn’t work on Mondays”. Why treat/accomodate the former better than the latter?
Also, one question I raised earlier has not been addressed. If we accomodate the ‘contamination’ belief, even with 1 Muslim co-worker, we should not bring pork into the lunchroom, out of courtesy. If most companies have at least 1 Muslim, should we all stop eating pork at work throughout the U.S?
If only one person in the theatre had yelled "No!’ when Dean Stockwell asked if he could light up, then I don’t think I would have had the skeevy feeling about him lighting up anyway. But when the whole crowd yelled “No!” it had more impact.
That’s sort of what happened here. We can’t expect to always accomodate every single individual with a special preference. But when a whole crowd of them is concentrated in one place and they’re yelling “No!” and you’re pretty much the only person who wants to do the thing, then, hey, maybe it would be more polite for you to consider not doing the thing. Especially when it’s not a life-sustaining, terribly vital thing. It’s just a freakin’ meat sandwich. Pick another type of meat and stop being such a pain in the ass about it.
BTW, I agree that it was not polite of her to purposely do what she did. I just think it was wrong that she was fired for it.
There was this religious group a few years ago (in California, I think) that believed that a space ship with aliens would come and pick them up, if only they committed suicide at the right moment. (And as I recall, a group of them did)
If you found yourself in a room with these people, it would be impolite to listen to Cher on your walkman if they believed that that would contaminate them and reduce their chances of being picked up by the aliens when the time comes.
But impolite is all it is. Nothing more.
And if a company had a rule that “you can listen to any artist except Cher”, and the reason were the religious beliefs of the employer, this rule should be disallowed because it would be imposing these Cher-fearing peoples’ religious beliefs onto you.
MG: * On the other hand I might still bring in pork products and just tell them it’s beef. What they don’t know won’t hurt them. *
Except that many people who follow kosher or halal rules can quite easily tell the difference between pork and other meat products (pork has a fairly distinctive smell, for one thing). So if one of your coworkers happened to notice that your sandwich was ham although you’d assured them it was beef, you’d come across as being inconsiderate, a cheat, and a liar, which might not be so great for your career prospects there.
Polerius: Forgetting the pork issue for a moment, as a general rule, we don’t want companies with policies that force their employees to do things we wouldn’t like forced on us.
But that cuts both ways: the Muslim employees doubtless don’t want company policies that force their employees to do things like they wouldn’t like forced on them, like eating in a non-halal kitchen where they’re not able to use the microwave. Saying “they should drop their silly superstition” is no more logical than saying “she should drop her silly insistence on eating pork in the company lunchroom”.
That said, I think issues like this make very valuable debates, because they’ll get us to think about what workplace rights really ought to be. Too often, in my experience, people just automatically espouse the standard “right to work” position that the employer gets to set the rules for workplace behavior, and gets to fire any employee who objects to any of the rules, period.
Many people who seem to have no problem with this approach when it involves employers firing teenagers for wearing nose rings become less comfortable with it when it involves Muslim employers firing non-Muslim employees for eating pork in the cafeteria. IMO this will produce more thoughtful consideration of these issues on all sides and we’ll get better conflict resolution for them.
There is no federal legal restriction against discriminatory practices regarding sexual orientation, you know. (Outside of some federal jobs.) So you will now happily remain quiet when/if said discrimination occurs, I suppose?
Well, it seems to me that they fired an extremely rude, selfish person who obviously didn’t give a damn about her coworkers, and obviously didn’t give a damn that they wouldn’t be able to use the microwave, would be grossed out, would have to be terribly inconvenienced because she wanted to eat pork. Not because pork is the only thing she can eat, not because she is unable to eat pork at any other time, not because the lack of pork as a lunch meat means that she will become ill, but because she can eat pork, so by damn, she’s gonna do it, no matter what. And the hell with how messed up it makes the kitchen for everyone else.
What employer would want such a selfish cow working for them? The employers should have been far smarter about making sure the rule was in writing, or firing her for some other offense. It also sounds like the employers were going overboard by not wanting it in the parking lot (for crying out loud), but the fact remains, she was a selfish cow and if I worked there, I’d be glad to get rid of her too, even though I’m not Muslim. Because she sounds like a selfish, inconsiderate cow.