Pork Not
By Mitch Berg
I was going through the checkout at the store on Sunday.
The woman at the till, wearing a hijab scarf but speaking with a Minnesota accent, pointed at the package of bologna. “Could you pick it up and put it in the bag for me?”
“Huh?”
“It’s pork. I can’t touch pork”, she said, smiling. “Can you…”
I thought about responding “No, it’s plastic. You can touch plastic, ya?”
I thought, then again, about asking “you do realize that it’s just a tiny little film of overdramatic imams in Minneapolis that are knotted up about check-out girls touching pork products swathed in blisterpak, right?”
I shrugged, and picked up the package. She scanned it, and I put it in the bag.
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:41 am
“I’m so sorry, no I can’t pick it up either. First, my religion forbids me from supporting the practices of a religion of satan that beheads and stones children, rapes women then gives them 200 lashes, that also reveres a pedophile rapist with false attributions. And second, by paying for food at this establishment I pay you to do your job. So, I guess I won’t be buying food here. And I’m naming both my garbage can and dog pooper scooper Mohammed. Happy Kwanzaa!”
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:45 am
Oh no, wingnuts are being persecuted again! Don’t people know that we should only make allowances for wacky *Christian* beliefs?
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:19 am
wingnuts are being persecuted again
Where “persecuted” = “noting an interesting little cultural transposition”.
It’s the same (lefty) “logic” where 15,000 people are a “Million Mom March” and parental notification laws are “repression of women”.
Talking with lefties is like that Monty Python “furniture store” sketch where one has to divide everything the manager says by ten.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:29 am
Zat why you classified it under “Culture War”? And Amendment X seemed to overreact just the tiniest bit, dontcha think?
Righties think there’s a Culture War and a War on Xmas. And everytime Bush craps on the Constitution cause it’s more convenient than following the law, it’s cause of the War on Terrah. And remember when you wingnuts were hyperventilating over “Saddam’s Nukes”? Hee!
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:45 am
Your rambling, AC. The world does not revolve around your hatred of Bush.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:54 am
Zat why you classified it under “Culture War”?
Which, if you look carefully (hahahahahaha), varies from “to the barricades” stuff to some pretty tongue-in-cheek things.
Which, if you noted the tone of my actual piece, this bit pretty much is.
I know – “nuance” is only for conservatives, not clowns. Just saying.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:58 am
Another wingnut overstatement. Angryclown doesn’t hate Bush (and likes bush). Angryclown simply recognizes he’s incompetent. No go back to plotting world domination or surfing kiddie pron or whatever it is you do in your volcano hideout.
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:36 pm
“Angryclown doesn’t hate Bush”
Another moment for self-discovery lost. You do a marvelous job of imitating a person who hates Bush, clown.
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Enough with the “self-discovery,” Terry. Both hands on the keyboard.
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:45 pm
AC exists simply to be contrarian. You could say water’s wet, and he’d respond with “only in Wingnutistan.”
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:28 pm
It’s the obsession with Bush I find interesting. I know a fellow like this here in my secret hideaway in Volcano. He insists that he doesn’t hate Bush, takes pride in his being a rational person, yet somehow everything is Bush’s fault — and I mean everything, including the ‘bird flu’ scare of a few years ago. Housing values skyrocket in the early part of the decade’s, natural market forces. Housing values crash after 2005? Bush’s incompetent economic management.
The clown lives in NY, so it might be due to the waves of shoddy, dishonest ‘reasoning’ that emanate from Paul Krugman’s well appointed digs.
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:57 pm
You did the Minnesota Nice thing, and I don’t think that’s wrong, although I don’t think it would have been wrong if you’d called over her supervisor and invited him to do the part of the job that his employee was unwilling to do.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:43 pm
I’m with Joel on this. I would have asker her (in my best Minnesota Nice way) to kindly find someone who can do her job.
Maybe these stores need to have pork-free checkouts. Have a big sign with a pig circled with a diagonal line.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:57 pm
I’m sure you wingnuts all agree that Christian druggists have no business declining to fill prescriptions for birth control, even though it may conflict with their beliefs.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:59 pm
Kermit: “Have a big sign with a pig circled with a diagonal line.”
Most people will mistakenly believe the the supermarket has instituted wingnut-free shopping, Kerm.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:00 pm
I’m sure you wingnuts all agree that Christian druggists have no business declining to fill prescriptions for birth control, even though it may conflict with their beliefs.
Er, perhaps you have me confused with someone who actually gave the girl s#!t about it.
Did I not exhibit cultural sensitivity, even as I wondered?
Why yes. Yes I did.
Do I have to do ALL the explaining, here?
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I am directing my comments to the Mitchketeers, whose instincts were much less tolerant. Though I think you have a pretty good idea what you’re doing when you throw red meat to that pack of hyenas.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Though I think you have a pretty good idea what you’re doing when you throw red meat to that pack of hyenas.
I especially like it when he puts the red nose and frizzy wig on that roast.
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Tolerance for the intolerant is what I find interesting from AC.
He would pick and choose which intolerance to give a pass to, and which one to be offended by.
I find it all distasteful.
1) Yes I expect a sales clerk to ring up my purchases, even the dreaded infidels bologna of blasphemy. If the store carries it, she damn well better ring it up. It’s part of the job, there are plenty of other jobs that don’t involve handling the stock.
2) If I go to get a perscription, I expect the clerk/pharmacist to ring it up, and hand me my farqin pills. I’m not there for a sermon. Shut up and gimmie my pills.
3) when I go to the store; I’m there to buy stuff not to participate in the religious or political agenda of random employees.
4) If a store wants to go all “speacialty” Like Mohamed’s Halal grocery, or Larry’s catholic pharmacy, I know that some products may not be available. It goes with the turf when you go to such an establishment. I can choose to go there or not.
This common sense approach makes me part of the wingnut heyeena pack,
Heee-hu heee-hu heee hu heee.
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:36 pm
red nose and frizzy wig on that roast.
Yet another Lileks book reference.
December 3rd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
You’d think the store could equip their cashiers with fireplace tongs, or maybe a spatula, so they could do their jobs without violating their religious beliefs.
Customers could help. I like the No Pork aisle idea. Taking a page from the city’s recycling program, how about “Point of Source Sorting” where the customer sorts the items before putting them on the conveyor belt: fish first (but only on Fridays during Lent, otherwise last), dairy next, then meat (not touching the dairy, to keep them kosher), shellfish on a special tray, pork in Easy Grip packs for tong-handling; anything containing peanuts in specially sealed bags bearing big red warning labels, etc.
After all, you bag your own groceries at Cub. If it’s a small load, you scan them, too. Why shouldn’t you sort them?
.
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:39 pm
What Would Clown Do?
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:00 pm
After all, you bag your own groceries at Cub. If it’s a small load, you scan them, too. Why shouldn’t you sort them?
As a matter of fact, CUB has self serve checkout. Why pretty soon all of those hijab-clad immigrants will be free of the horror of working in an establishment that sells pork.
December 4th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
They bag the groceries for you at my local Cub. I don’t know why, but I have suspicions.
December 5th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I’m not interested in my pharmacist’s religious opinions, ac; if they become a problem for me, either I’ll find a new pharmacy, or my pharmacy will find a new pharmacist to fill my prescriptions. No problem, either way.
As to the religious views of checkout clerks, I’m not interested in them, either, unless they become a problem for me. Then I’m even more not interested in them.
That said, I think that those folks who don’t want to — for any reason, religious or otherwise — handle plastic with pork in it should feel free to get a job where they don’t have to. And, mirable dictu, they are!
December 5th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
angryclown said: “I’m sure you wingnuts all agree that Christian druggists have no business declining to fill prescriptions for birth control, even though it may conflict with their beliefs”
I think the Christian druggist every right to decline to fill birth control prescriptions. And then face the consequences for doing so.
I think the Muslim checkout person has every right to decline to touch plastic coated pork. And then face the consequences for doing so.
Doesn’t the “invisible hand” usually takes care of these “problems”, unless some foolish people get in the way? *looks at angryclown*
December 11th, 2007 at 11:01 am
[…] A correspondent and Shot In The Dark reader writes from Kabul, Afghanistan with comments on my post on the pork-averse WalMart checkout girl (link fixed – thanks, Flash): I’m an aid worker in Kabul, where I’ve been based for the past [nunber of] years. I’m writing to comment on your post about the Muslim woman who didn’t want to touch the pork at the supermarket. I thought that you might be interested to know that here in Afghanistan, one of the most fundamentalist of all Islamic countries, you can quite easily buy pork products in what is affectionately known by the locals as the “Bush Bazaar”, where all sorts of imported goods (often obtained through mysterious means from the US base at Bagram) are available. The Afghan shopkeepers have no qualms about keeping it in their shops or handing it to you if you wish to purchase it. If you’re happy to buy it they’re happy to sell it. I’ve seen both pork and alchohol openly for sale in a number of countries in the part of the world. Based on my fairly extensive experience in the Muslim world the controversy in MN seems to be to be entirely contrived. […]
December 17th, 2007 at 9:05 am
[…] A few weeks ago, I wrote about an episode where a WalMart cashier politely, genially asked me to pass a pack of bologna in front of the scanner for her. […]