15 minutes (well, seconds) of potential fame

[naomikritzer]

I went grocery shopping today, while Kiera was at preschool. After loading up my groceries, I noticed a very small crew (one camera, one interviewer) interviewing a woman in the parking lot. I was curious enough to hop out and edge over to investigate. My experience is that people who work in news are nosy enough themselves not to be offended by nosiness in others. But, while they had a "small news crew" look to them, they lacked the station ID on the side of the camera that I usually see on local news teams.

When they'd finished interviewing the elderly woman they were talking to, the reporter turned to me and said, "I see that you're curious! We're from CNN." They were doing a piece on the news story about Muslim cashiers who didn't want to ring up pork products.

I have no idea how much actual coverage this has gotten outside of Minneapolis, so I'll give a quick summary. Apparently at the Target across the street from this grocery store, some of the Somali cashiers were asking customers to scan their own pork purchases, because the cashiers didn't want to have to touch pork.

Like the taxi controversy, this has generated far more heat than seems warranted to me. And when the CNN reporter asked me what I thought of the situation, I said, "It's overblown." Yes, I said when they asked, I buy pork products. Yes, I've had Muslim cashiers, particularly at Target, which employs tons of them. No, I've never had a cashier refuse to scan a pork product. Admittedly, I rarely buy pork products at Target, because this Target is not a grocery store. And while the news coverage has made it sound like this is happening at Targets all over the metro area, it's overwhelmingly at one Target -- my Target -- because that's the Target near the big Somali area. The grocery store where I shop doesn't have nearly as many Somali employees as Target, or if they do, they're not as visible. This Target carries only a tiny selection of food products, a handful of which have pork in them. There is no way very many customers are being inconvenienced.

While I've never had a cashier ask me to scan my own pork products, I've certainly had cashiers (at Target, and other places) hand me the scanner gun to scan something large and awkward with the bar code facing away from the cashier. I've had cashiers ask me to flip 40 pound bags of cat litter, then hold them in position to be scanned. While in Wisconsin, I've had grocery store cashiers summon over older employees to ring up alcohol. I've had cashiers have to summon managers because some coupon code wasn't working right or the price rang up differently from what I said I saw on the rack or any number of other reasons, and it's just not that big a deal.

I actually think it's reasonable for an employer to refuse to accomodate cashiers who don't want to handle certain items. If you're Muslim and don't want to scan pork, or Hindu and don't want to scan beef, or Jain and don't want to scan any meat products at all. I think it's reasonable for an employer to say, "This is an essential job function; suck it up or find another job." Employers are supposed to offer reasonable accomodation to religious practices; they're not required to bend over backwards. But it's also reasonable for an employer to say, "Hey, you know, it doesn't come up all that often and these women are really good employees and if they want us to accomodate this quirk, it really doesn't affect customers all that much, especially seeing as this isn't a grocery store."

I also think it's hilarious that some of the same people bashing Muslims were, less than a year ago, defending pharmacists who refuse to dispense emergency contraception. (OK, by "some of the same people" I specifically mean Katherine Kersten, a local conservative columnist.) You know, even if the cashier were actually refusing to sell you pork, rather than just requesting that you scan it yourself, since pork does not require a prescription and can be purchased from a wide range of outlets from people who are not required to have any sort of special training or certification, alternatives actually are readily available. Also, it is a rare situation that someone absolutely needs to have pork in a 72 hour timeframe or their health will be seriously affected. And yet somehow denying someone medication is okay, but having them scan their own pork? CIVILIZATION IS AT STAKE.

In front of the CNN camera, I did my best to be brief and eloquent. I probably didn't succeed. Also, my hair kept blowing into my face. So, I bet they show other people. What will really be interesting to me, however, will be if they show solely people saying things like, "I am SO OFFENDED at the VERY IDEA of someone refusing to scan my pork! Outrageous! Un-American!" Etc. With no one taking the viewpoint that hey, you know, this isn't really that big a deal. Because, if that's what they show -- it's not because no one offered the unoffended viewpoint.

I don't get cable, so you cable-equipped people will have to let me know if I turn up on TV.

Comments

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

... Also, it is a rare situation that someone absolutely needs to have pork in a 72 hour timeframe or their health will be seriously affected. And yet somehow denying someone medication is okay, but having them scan their own pork? CIVILIZATION IS AT STAKE.

And why am I totally, totally not surprised by the existence of this particular irony?

It will be very interesting to see how they spin it ...

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Is it actually necessary to touch pork products to scan them? I thought meats were all pretty well packaged? Is the packaging a carrier somehow of whatever quality makes the meat itself offensive? (Not that I'd push the issue, just curious about it.)

[naomikritzer]

No, it isn't. Only people behind the meat counter at the Rainbow touch actual meat. Everyone else touches plastic that's covering meat. At Target, any pork products are going to be very well wrapped in layers of plastic and cardboard, because we're talking about things like sausage pizza. In my personal opinion, the Muslim cashiers are being silly.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Yeah; it really does sound like the same deal as the pharmacists who want to refuse to sell morning-after pills - more a case of communicating their moral objections than anything else.

[maevele.livejournal.com]

although, if they worked at a place that sold, say, chitlins, I'd sympathize, because when I was a grocery cashier, at least one out of every three packages of chitlins (or tripe) would leak skanky meat juice on the belt, scanner, and my hands.

I'm gagging just remembering it.

and now I'm gonna have to watch CfriggingNN

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

"I also think it's hilarious that some of the same people bashing Muslims were, less than a year ago, defending pharmacists who refuse to dispense emergency contraception."

But that's different because....!

Next you'll be saying that "conservative" and "fair and balanced" aren't exact synonyms.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

What I have heard is that strict Muslims refuse to actually sell any pork products. It's not whether they have to touch it, it's that in their religion's opinion, if they do, they are helping you to sin. Even though you aren't Muslim. I don't get it, myself. Why should someone else's religious laws apply to me? But it is kind of like a fundamentalist not being willing to sell condoms, because they are inherently *sinful*.

I didn't know it was the Minnehaha Target that was affected. I almost never buy food there so I didn't know they had anything that was pork. I figured the story refered to Super-Targets that sold a lot of food.

[swords-and-pens.livejournal.com]

Actually, based on what I've been reading about the story, the people taking this position are doing it based on their own interpretation of Islamic law. Even a number of religious leaders are saying, "No, really, it's okay to sell the pork to people. Really." So it's not even "strict Muslims" in a general sense, but a few Muslims deciding *on their own* how the prohibition against pork should be applied.

Ditto with the whole "I won't let you ride in my cab if you have alcohol or have been drinking" nonsense. You drive a cab - do you think you *might* have to give a drunk a ride home now and then? It's taking a stand on an arguably minor sin, when I don't see the same people running out to fix larger sins, or addressing other minor sins that they come across (or commit) every day.

Yay, hypocrisy.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I would MUCH rather someone ride in /my/ cab, if they'd been drinking, than drive their own damn car.

But, er, I do see that both you and the cabbie in question would be talking about a different part of that issue entirely, so anyway.

[naomikritzer]

My first choice would be to have them ride in someone else's cab, because cleaning up drunk-guy vomit would have to be the absolute worst part of being a cab driver.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Darn tootin'!!

This reminds me of something. When I was pregnant with DD, our prenatal-class instructor told us that should we happen to be phoning a cab to get to the hospital (this was midtown Toronto, where many people don't have cars, besides which she had just finished telling us that you probably shouldn't try to drive yourself to the hospital while in active labour), you shouldn't tell the dispatcher why you need to go to the hospital, because they might refuse to take you lest your unbridled fecundity make a mess in their cab. (OK, that's not exactly how she put it.) Her theory seemed to be that once the cab showed up, the driver couldn't very well refuse to take you, but the dispatcher might refuse to send the cab in the first place, or the driver might decline to turn up.

Fortunately I was never required to test said theory...

[swords-and-pens.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was hitting the "You are in possession of, or have consumed, alcohol - therefore I will not take you as a fare because it is against my religious beliefs" angle. I just lumped two examples together in an unclear manner, it seems. :)

I've seen planty of cabbies make their own calls on whether or not to handle drunks, and religion had nothing to do with it. I've won and lost those arguments before, and Andrew Jackson usually had a lot more to do with it than God. :)

[naomikritzer]

I've read the same thing, that Muslim leaders are saying that this shouldn't be an issue. However, from what I have observed, any two randomly chosen Somalis will have at least five opinions between them on any given issue. And they pay about as much attention to their spiritual leaders as, I dunno, Unitarians.

Overall, I actually think that this is a good thing to be seeing in an immigrant population, even though the net result is that some members of the group are going to insist on being stupid about certain issues and there's no magical invocation of authority that will fix the situation.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

However, from what I have observed, any two randomly chosen Somalis will have at least five opinions between them on any given issue. And they pay about as much attention to their spiritual leaders as, I dunno, Unitarians.

So ... a lot like your average North American Jewish community, then :P. (I currently sing, for reasons to complex to explain here, in an Orthodox Jewish women's choir. Apart from the four or five weirdos like me who belong to other flavours of Judaism, everyone is frum, but within that broad designation there's surprising variety: they all keep kosher, of course, but some might eat a salad in a non-kosher restaurant, while others would faint in horror at the mere thought; some cover their hair completely, some just wear a hat, some don't cover their hair at all; some wear long skirts only, some wear skirts but of varying lengths, some occasionally even wear pants; some have six or seven kids, some have two and no plans for more; etc., etc., etc.)

You're aboslutely right, I think, that such diversity of opinion is a good thing, despite the occasional stupidities. For one thing, the solution to monolithic conservative Christian groups trying to take over the country is presumably not monolithic fundamentalist Muslim groups trying to take over the country. For another, seems to me it's good for the rest of us to be reminded that Muslims aren't necessarily any more monolithic a belief-group than any other, since most of the time we're encouraged to believe the opposite :P.

[naomikritzer]

So ... a lot like your average North American Jewish community, then

Watching Somali men arguing in a coffee shop is eerily familiar. They sound exactly like a bunch of old Jewish guys, except they're speaking Somali, not English with a New York accent (or Yiddish), and they're drinking better coffee. Like Jews, Somalis seem to be perfectly happy to argue just for the sheer recreation of it.

I think they may be one of the Lost Tribes of Israel based on the fondness for argument alone.

So are the Irish. At least the Bostonian kind.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I think they may be one of the Lost Tribes of Israel based on the fondness for argument alone.

Hahaha! :D

[jiawen]

The issue that really bugs me is that some of the cab drivers have reportedly refused to take GLBT people. The local news media seem to have almost entirely ignored this issue in favor of the "cabs not carrying people with alcohol" issue. (Strangely, the only mention I could find of the one TG-specific story was in conservative media: Kersten or Fox, which half makes me doubt it.) It disturbs me that this issue has fallen off the radar, just like the refusal of the Metro Transit bus driver to drive buses with ads for Lavender on them. Suddenly it's okay to discriminate against GLBT people if you use religion as an excuse.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a slippery slope -- if that bus driver refuses to drive a bus with ads for Lavender but doesn't cause any trouble for GLBT passengers, it's not that big a problem (although Lavender should probably get a discount or something). And needing to scan your own pork chops once in a while isn't that big a deal. But if people are refused access to cabs, then we're already falling down the slope. People are being made unable to get home because of someone else's prejudices, and that is simply intolerable.

[naomikritzer]

I agree that this is a bigger deal than the alcohol thing.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

Didn't you say, Naomi, that it was cabs at the airport going to the back of the cab rank to avoid alcohol-carrying fares, rather than alcohol-using passengers going without rides? (My memory may be foggy...) IOW, if there are other cabs ready and willing to take said fares, that's one thing, and if not, well, a whole other thing.

[naomikritzer]

Yeah, if you're at the airport, there are so many cabs relative to the number of passengers that religious extremism only hurts the driver. The snubbed passenger just hops in the next cab, and the driver who turned down a fare goes to the back of the line.

However, if you've called for a cab, to a location other than the airport, it can take a long time for the cab to show up. If they then refuse to transport you because you're drunk, gay, or otherwise unacceptable to them, this is a much bigger hassle for the customer, because you can call a cab, but you'll probably be waiting that much longer. The uproar was mostly over stuff going on at the airport.

On the other hand, when calling for a cab, you can ask whether it's going to be a problem that you're drunk, and tell them only to send you a driver who's going to give you the ride you need. When I call for a cab, I have to make sure it'll have sufficient seating to accomodate my family, and seatbelts for the carseats, and a driver who isn't going to get pissed off at me for taking the time to install the carseats. Smokers used to be able to smoke in any cab; now they have to make a special request to get a stinky taxi. So my sympathy for the drinkers is tempered by the knowledge that lots and lots of people already have to have a short conversation with the dispatcher to make sure the cab will meet their needs.

However, "I'm drunk -- send me a taxi driver who won't care" is a world away from having to announce your sexual orientation and demand a taxi driver who isn't a bigot.

FWIW, I always call Airport Taxi now because all their vehicles are minivans with seatbelts. They'll do pickups and dropoffs anywhere in the city, though, and they don't allow their drivers to refuse passengers with alcohol. My guess is that they don't allow them to refuse gay passengers, either.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have that experience when calling for cabs, too, with the carseat issue. (These days I think all Toronto cabs are non-smoking, which presumably makes some people pretty angry, but it's a rule I'm rather fond of myself. I know: hypocrisy...)

I'm entirely in agreement with you here. And I'm trying to articulate exactly why I instinctively feel it's perhaps semi-OK to refuse to carry someone who's drunk and extremely-not-OK to refuse service to someone on the basis of sexual orientation, and the only rational thing I can come up with is "you can't help being gay, but you can help being drunk", which is sort of beside the point...

Possibly my inability to be rational on this topic has something to do with the fact that this is the first time it's occurred to me that anyone might (in North America in 2007) be refused something so basic as a bus or cab ride because they're gay. (Have I mentioned that I live in Toronto, where the mayor rides a big float in the Pride Parade and there's actually a gay wedding-planning industry?)

Re: Lost

[naomikritzer]

Well, you can help being drunk. But that could be why you need a taxi ride, and as a society we have a strong interest in making it easy for drunk people to take taxis rather than driving home.

I can't think of a scenario where someone would need a taxi drive because they were so very gay. But I can think of plenty of scenarios where a very gay person would need a taxi ride even more than a drunk person.

Re: Lost

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

All very true.

And I've just realized that my perspective is skewed also by the fact that I live in a city with a subway, streetcars, and all-night buses: if ever it occurred to me to take a cab home because I was drunk, and the cab driver refused to take me, I could almost certainly get home just as safely, and a lot more cheaply, by public transit. One forgets, after 15 years in such a city, that sometimes a cab is the only alternative to a drink-driving disaster.

Re: Lost

[naomikritzer]

Minneapolis has decent public transit, but getting home if you live in one city and drink in the other can be a pain in the ass. The bus system also has kind of a steep learning curve.

Re: Lost

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

My home town is totally like that. I never used to notice it when I lived there, but now every time I go back I get lost.

I should really learn to drive ...

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine being offended at being asked to scan a product, especially if the cashier explained their reasoning (but then, I'm Mormon, and while I wouldn't refuse to scan an alcoholic beverage or tobacco product, I can sympathize with a Muslim cashier's strong feelings on the subject).

[katana-girl.livejournal.com]

What it boils down to for me is that the employer has to find 'Reasonable accomodations' for both the Somali and the pharmacist. If they don't they can get nailed for discriminating based on religion. If you take the right for 'reasonable accomodation' away from either group you open up the possibility of making discrimination in employment based on on your religion or lack there of kosher. I don't think we need a system like that.

[naomikritzer]

The key word is reasonable. You aren't required to accomodate your employees if they're refusing to engage in a core job function. There are taxi companies that won't allow their drivers to refuse fares to people with (or under the influence of) alcohol (Airport Taxi is one) and they are extremely unlikely to get sued because honestly, providing rides to drunk people really is a core function for a cab driver.

One of the things that annoys me immensely about the pharmacist thing is that there are a number of reasons why people arrive with prescriptions for birth control pills, some of which have nothing to do with birth control. For example, there are women with endometriosis who use bc pills for the purpose of stopping their menstrual cycle. Some of these women are celibate. The pharmacist does not know that any given prescription is not for this purpose; he's making assumptions and intruding on the personal life of the customer. That's not religious freedom, that's unadulterated nosiness.

My strong suspicion is that employers have been trying to accomodate pharmacists over this not so much because of the fear of lawsuits (that's part of it, but the odds are high that such a lawsuit would be tossed), but because there's a national shortage of pharmacists and it's easier to accomodate the twits than it is to fire them and find replacements.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

That especially annoys me about the pharmacist thing, too.

Although, every time I think that, I then immediately think, but that shouldn't matter! We shouldn't even bring that up! It's never OK for the only pharmacy in town to refuse to dispense anything a doctor has legitimately prescribed for any reason other than dangerous interactions with other medications or actually not having the thing in stock!

But, yeah. I probably live in the last place on earth where anyone would ever refuse to fill a BC prescription, I have been asked some obnoxiously nosy questions by pharmacists based on their assumptions (or their computers' assumptions) about discrepancies between my age and appearance and my prescriptions, so I'm particularly sensitive to that particular kind of unadulterated nosiness.

[katana-girl.livejournal.com]

My understanding of the statute is that 'reasonable' applies to what is reasonable for the employer and employee. What is reasonable for third party stakeholders is likely factored into what the employer views as reasonable. They have to factor this against their customer needs and expectations as well as laws such as those enacted by Maine and other states that say that the scrip must be filled but they can't fire or get rid of the pharmacist because otherwise they would run into the Federal law that grants the 'reasonable' accomodation

The other thing that plays into this is the numbers. I don't know what percentage of scrips running through a pharmacy are birth control. For sake of argument lets say 5% is birth control. In this situation the pharmacist is capable of fulfillign his 'core job function' 95% of the time. The other 5% can be dealt with by 'reasonable accomodations', having them work shifts with other pharmacists etc. Actually, when you think about it based on the way 99% of birth controls are packeaged(ie they come in premade pack sets) a technological despensor fix is also reasonable accomodation. And honestly over time I suspect technology will replace such functions of the pharmacist.

Regardless of how you cut it I am more concerned with the possible ramifications of removing the 'reasonable accomodation' from any working group because it would seem to open up a Pandora's box.

One other comment on your line of reasoning. Your logic about 'nosiness' works for standard birth control. However for the OTC Morning after pill it doesn't work because there is, to the best of my knowledge no other application than the ending of a nascent pregancy.

[naomikritzer]

In a pharmacy where multiple pharmacists are on shift at the same time, I think it's a reasonable accomodation to say, "OK, Bob will do those while you do something else." And you are correct about the MAP being a different situation from standard bc pills.

And honestly over time I suspect technology will replace such functions of the pharmacist.

Part of the fundamental problem in this particular situation is that regulations haven't caught up with technology. There is a shortage of pharmacists because it's a job that requires a ton of training (graduate level, I think), and yet most pharmacist jobs are mind-numbingly boring. You don't even count pills; you check the pills that the pharmaceutical assistants (or the robotic pill-counter) counted. The theory is that a well-trained pharmacist is a fail safe to catch the mistake if your doctor accidentally gives you contraindicated prescriptions, but the reality is that they spend so much time on other legally mandated tasks that they're unlikely to have time. And in any case, that can also be fixed with technology: the pharmaceutical system can pop up a warning box when you mix meds that shouldn't be mixed, and it will almost certainly work better than relying on human knowledge to remember which drugs don't go together.

There are apparently consulting pharmacists who work at hospitals, who are brought in to figure out appropriate drug cocktails for patients with specialized and complicated situations. In that role, a human pharmacist can't be replaced by a robot. But for pill-counting, the robot will probably do it better. And the robot will not get bored. And the robot could really not give two figs about your personal life.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

There is no way CNN will run your interview.

White people are supposed to hate and fear Muslims, and you're not saying the right things.

I hope to be proved wrong, of course.

But I won't be.

[naomikritzer]

I didn't even get a chance to say, "Hey, you know what? I really LIKE Somalis. I think it's awesome that they're here. They're hardworking, they're all learning English, they're involved parents at my kid's school, the ones with citizenship all register to vote and the ones who don't have citizenship yet volunteer for candidates, because they're so excited to live in a stable democracy! What more could you ask from an immigrant population? They're going to fit right in once things settle down a little."

Seriously, these issues are going to be transitory because the Somali kids who are the children of today's immigrants are not going to be ringing up groceries and driving taxis. They're going to be prescribing antibiotics and filing court briefs.

The whole accomodating religion thing

[muneraven.livejournal.com]

You know, back when I had strong religious beliefs, we had a way to deal with jobs that required you to do something that was offensive to you spiritually.

We called in quitting.


But obviously things have changed. Woo-hoo! I'm gonna start up a religious cult in which blog-reading and posting are required hourly devotionals.

Re: The whole accomodating religion thing

[naomikritzer]

Honestly, I approve of the fact that most of the time employers need to give you your major religious holidays off, even if that inconveniences them slightly. And that if your religion requires you to pray during the day, that they are required to allow you to go wash your hands, unroll your rug, and say your prayers. And that if your religion requires you to wear a small hat, that they are required to bend the dress code to allow you to wear your small hat, unless it poses a safety hazard. Etc. The vast majority of religious accomodations are trivial, and the vast majority of devout people seek out jobs where the accomodations will not be burdensome on anyone.

I bet the Flying Spaghetti Monster wants you to read LJ at least five times daily.

Re: The whole accomodating religion thing

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I bet the Flying Spaghetti Monster wants you to read LJ at least five times daily.

Yup. Sure does. ;^)

And I'm nodding along with everything else you said, too.