It’s the difference between my boss handing me a sheet of paper and saying “You will pray between 11:00 and 11:15 every morning. Here’s the prayer sheet and list of prayer topics,” and my boss saying “I will be praying between 11:00 and 11:15 every morning. Don’t knock on my door, don’t call me, don’t bother me with anything, it can wait until 11:16.” The first case is clearly wrong. In the second case, I might have to make adjustments based on someone else’s religious practices (it’s 11:09 and I need a signature) - but I’m not forced to follow his religious beliefs, I’m not forced to break my own religious beliefs, I’m not forced to pretend that I believe as he does. Not eating pork in the cafeteria is very much in the same group as the second category.
Here’s what worries me. I’m culturally English and American (born in England, raised in the U.S.) and very picky about food. I grew up on pork products and they’re my country’s ethnic food. When I bring a sandwich to work (several times a week on my current budget, it’s almost invariably pork, and tonight I’ll be making up a batch of sausage rolls for a good friend’s birthday. I’ve also been known to bring leftover toad-in-the-hole to work (pork sausages cooked in Yorkshire pudding).
In other words, pork is a rather large part of my diet. If I went to work for a telecommunications company which was predominently Muslim, it wouldn’t occur to me not to bring pork products with me for lunch, even though I’m not completely ignorant about Islam and I am aware that pork is considered unclean. If I were told I wouldn’t be allowed to eat pork in the cafeteria, it would affect my decision to work for them, and not just because I get tired of chicken. If it were sprung on me out of the blue, like the woman in the lawsuit says it was, I’d be confused and hurt. I’d also wonder why someone hadn’t told me sooner. When you tell me what I can or cannot eat in your presence, in my book, you are imposing your beliefs on me, just as surely as some Christians who’d tell me who I can or cannot associate with. I’d also be uncomfortable working for such an employer because I know my beliefs and my attitudes don’t conform to aspects of some of the stricter forms of Islam, and I’m not just talking about my silly insistence on Christ being the Son of God. 
By the way, I have a couple of questions. I make chocolate truffles from time to time. I’m aware that Muslims are not allowed to drink alcohol. Would a Muslim also not be allowed to have a truffle? Would the employer in the lawsuit allow me to bring them to the cafeteria?
CJ
If you’re a Baptist, you don’t go to work in a brewery and expect them to stop giving free beer to the other employees. That’s not imposing the employer’s religious views about drinking on an employee who doesn’t share those views. All you can expect is that they don’t REQUIRE you to accept the free beer.
I think there’s a lot less here than meets the eye.
Employee, in a common area, engages in activity that many people in the company find distasteful.
Employer advises employee not to do it again.
Employer does NOT tell employee not to do it outside of work.
Employee does it again, in a slightly different form, gets warned again, then does it again, in a slightly different form. Employee then gets fired.
Now let’s replace “pork” with “tobacco.”
Employee sits in the lunchroom and smokes a cigaret. Employer says “don’t smoke cigarets in the lunchroom”
Employee then smokes a cigar, because that isn’t a cigaret. Employer says “don’t smoke ANYTHING in the lunchroom.”
Employee then chews tobacco in the lunchroom, quietly spitting the juice into a cup.
Assuming there are no local laws banning smoking, and there’s no written policy against smoking, what do you as the employer think?
A) Employee is incredibly clueless
B) Employee is deliberately pushing the envelope
C) Employee is just plain insensitive to you and co-workers
Well, Praise be to the Invisible Pink Unicorn! (Due to a change of e-mail addy, I feared I had been locked out of the board, but am happy to be back).
It now occurs to me to note that this woman seems not to have claimed anything discriminatory apart from the “more trouble than it is worth” lunch. I mean, she has not attempted any claim that the employers wanted her to pray facing Mecca 5 tiems per diem (or whatever number it is) or wear any particular clothing…and so on. (I’m assuming there would be a dress code of the kind thaht is fairly normal for office work, , but that seesm to be all - )
Yep, I do think there is some economy with the truth going on here.
Or something fishy.
Or someone is telling porkies.
Ok let me revise my anaolgy…
Ok the pork situation goes like this. Employees are banned from doing a certain behavior/activity/action on company property because it violates the employer’s religious tenets.
So to expand on the birth control situation above to follow the framework: Employee takes her birth control pill every day as she eats lunch. She is fired. (Incedentally, even if she didn’t take the pill at lunch, it could still apply, since the birth control hormones are running through her veins as she occupies the workplace.)
The headscarf analogy applies too. Employer’s religion prohibits women from exposing their hair and neck, and bare arms and legs. Therefore, if a woman comes to work uncovered by long pants, sleeves and headscarf, she is fired.
That’s not the point. There are plenty of things that offend me every day at the office. But that’s life. You learn to deal with it. As long as one employee isn’t making another employee CONSUME pork (the religion requires its followers to refrain from EATING pork, right?). When you start telling people you can’t stand to be in the proximity of pork, you’re opening a new can of worms. How close is TOO close?
It’s this kind of petty bullshit that makes me wonder why anyone would want to join one of these clubs. Honestly.
Glow in the dark badges. And secret decoder rings.
Could a Jewish employer fire a Christian employee from eating lobster salad at lunch?
Let’s flip it around. Say a Muslim is hired by a non-Muslim employer. He does not eat pork. Can he dictate to his employer that no one else eat pork, since it violates his religious beliefs and could contaminate his eating area? Or does his employer have to make accomodations for him?
It seems this has turned into more of a Great Debate, but since it’s still in MPSIMS, I have two useless things to add:
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Has anyone considered the fact that a BLT must be eaten while the bacon is warm and crispy to be any good at all? Heck, I LOVE bacon, and I’d be grossed out by a cold, soggy BLT that someone brought for lunch!
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I thought a “toad in the hole” was a fried egg in the middle of a piece of bread.
Thank you.
I think the employee might have a case in your last example. I don’t think that he could demand that no one else eat pork, but he might be able to request some special accomodation, like being allowed to eat at his desk or elsewhere, rather than in the lunchroom
Then why can’t the non-Muslim employee ask the same accomodations from her Muslim employer?
Well, I have just a couple of thoughts:
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One of my good friends is moderate muslim. The ONLY reason she can ever eat at my house is because I don’t eat pork products of any kind. The assumption is that a non-muslim person would not clean cooking items to a sufficient degree if they were to come in contact with pork.
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Lets not forget the “plaintif” was warned.
Suppose I pick my nose in public. My employer and co-workers find it disgusting. It’s not illegal, and I’m not wiping my boogers on other people, but it’s grossing everyone out. It’s also not officially prohibited by my employment contract.
My employer tells me it’s against company policy to pick my nose at the office, please stop.
So a week later I do it again and my employer again asks me to cut it out.
I do it again.
How many times to I get to disobey a direct order from my employer before hes allowed to fire my ass?
FWIW, as opposed to halal objections, I think the major no-pork objection is a gross-out factor which I can totally relate to, because I also find pork disgusting - particularly the smell.
I just saw this - I’m sure she could of. But she didn’t - she just decided to ignore one of the rules of her employer and do her own damn thing.
Personally, I also smell a rat here (or a pig, as the case may be). I think this woman was looking for a reason to get fired.
Minor hijack. No, I cannot recall the name of the egg thingy you mentioned, but toad in the hole is certainly the sausage in Yorkshire pudding batter thing. I did not know there was any actual need for the sausages to be pork, but the charmingly named “Old Scrote’s English Foods” says so.
Old Scrote's English Food (approx halfway down the page)
(Celyn goes off to forcefeed some pork to Muslims and Jews, some meat to Roman Catholics on Friday (or is that one no longer valid?), some beef to Hindus and any dead animal at all to vegetarians. WHile safely eating lentils and rice, myself, of course) 
Yah? Well speaking as a veg, I’ll take your dead animal, and raise you a tofu-laden spork, which I will promtly stick in yer eye.
Let’s try a completely different analogy: Say you’re working for a Mormon owned, and mostly Mormon company. Can you now violate the No Smoking policy because they’re obviously indulging in forcing their religion down your throat?
People, why the FUCK are people with religion LESS protected than any other asshole in the world? Can someone please explain that to me? That’s what I don’t understand about this.
Oh ye gods* not tofu - iti always jsut seemed like too much hassle to me. And the only “spork” I can think of is those half fork and half spoon things that were aroudn briefly in, perhaps , late 1970s. Probably a great idea, really, since most of my cooking is un-named mixtures that need either fork or spoon purely depending on how they thicken.
Incidentally, I really wuld imagine that some clever entrepeneur somewhere DOES make a pepperoni - type sausage using no pork. I have noticed some hot dogs that are carefully labelled to explain ahbout having no pork.
ANY god, ok? Folks, just choose one at random:)
Possibly that might have been an option, as someone else stated. But she didn’t ask.
I don’t think it would be entirely the same, though, since she would be asking to bring in a contaminant rather than asking for a way to avoid one.
They should have put it in writing, though.
Better yet, you explain that assertion. After all, the other employees DID end up protected from this pork. And, lest you forget, I, and several others, have already opined that the fired employee was a pain in the posterior.
(btw - does the Loki part of your name refer to the mischievous Norse fella? - I had not noticed that bit till now)