Customer service and faith clash at registers— When did the emergence of creepy self-rightousness appear in the USA? People who do this also think you are an infidel to be killed.
Beryl Dsouza was late and in no mood for delays when she stopped at a Target store after work two weeks ago for milk, bread and bacon.
So Dsouza was taken aback when the cashier — who had on the traditional headscarf, or hijab, worn by many Muslim women — refused to swipe the bacon through the checkout scanner.
“She made me scan the bacon. Then she opened the bag and made me put it in the bag,” said Dsouza, 53, of Minneapolis. “It made me wonder why this person took a job as a cashier.”
found by Julie B
And Minneapolis cab drivers refuse passengers with alcohol or dogs (even seeing eye dogs). If your faith prevents you from doing your job, then find a job that better suits you. Don’t expect your customers to be inconvenienced because of your faith.
What I can’t figure out is how a religious requirement to abstain from consuming alcohol and pork has evolved into failure to tolerate others who wish to consume such products. But it doesn’t really matter. If they want to believe such things, then that is their right. I am not going to judge them.
In the Western world, and especially the US, religion is considered a private matter. If you accept and respect that others might have different religious beliefs than you, then you can except that other will respect your beliefs.
If your Islamic faith make it so you can no longer tolerate other who may feel differently than you, then I’m sure you will be much happier in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or some other country where only Islam is tolerated.
When societies become too diverse they fall apart. The human brain is still wired to be tribal. We are born to be intolerant and judgmental.
Many Muslims have commented that this is not a Muslim thing, but an extremist, fundamentalist twist. The bacon was wrapped in plastic, so handling it is a non issue.
#1 – In the Western world, and especially the US, religion is considered a private matter. If you accept and respect that others might have different religious beliefs than you, then you can except that other will respect your beliefs.
Yeah right… as if God doesn’t get pushed down the throats of non-believers wherever they turn in the US? God is everywhere, on bills, coins, in and by the President, other politicians, news reports etc. Christian fundies are just as bad as Muslim fundies. 😛
When did this creepy self-righteousness appear in the US from the article, it sounds like quite some time ago:
“Retailers have accommodated other religious groups over the years. In the Twin Cities, these include those who don’t want to sell lottery tickets or work on Saturdays”
If they accommodate other religions’ prohibitions, then they should do the same for Muslims. I do agree about the cabbies, though – they are common carriers and have to accept whatever fares come their way.
@3. Agreed.
By the way, I have never seen target store that sells food items. How is their prices?
@6 Search, and find you will. – Yoda
How is this cashier any different from a vegetarian working as a grill cook at Burger King (or Mr. Meaty)? IOW, why in the heck would someone take a job where the duties involve betraying your core beliefs.
The minute the US caves to this kind of crap is the minute we lose to the radical Islamic fundies. A line must be drawn here, and IMO that’s where it needs to be. Same goes for the MN cabbies…fark them, they are not allowed to choose their fares, period. We screamed and got all excited when cabbies chose fares on racial lines, and this is exactly the same concept. It cannot be tolerated!
Here in the UAE, they sell pork (and other non-halal) products with Muslims working at check-out counters.
Never a problem. Why?
Because it is only forbidden for them to EAT pork. Touching it — especially in a wrapper — is not forbidden as far as I’ve ever heard.
Solution: Fire the cashier.
#9 – Olo
“…why in the heck would someone take a job where the duties involve betraying your core beliefs.”
How can they? Simple. They don’t intend to change their ways, they’re gonna make everyone else change theirs. Like Xian fundies, ultracon Repugs, PCers and every other sheeple who lives by irrational dogma – they just so happen to know that their way is the only way that matters, since it’s so clearly obvious to anyone but unbelievers that they’re right!
What about RESPECTING the cashier’s beliefs? People in America are too narcisstic. They want to be treated like if their beliefs are the only ones that matter. Yet, how many buildings do you find with a 13th floor? Americans only want to protect their own superstitions and not others.
Bacon comes from pigs that ARE SMARTER THAN DOGS. What if you were a cashier and had to scan dog meat? Would you take offense? Of course, you would. You’d probably call the ASPCA and a lawyer to sue the bejeezus out of everybody.
A little courtesy. That’s all that is at steak here.
If they are so into following the precepts of shari’a law, then why don’t they move to crap-hole countries where shari’a is the law of the land? Oops — I just answered my own question!
If you are going to come to / live in the US, you’re going to have to do some degree of assimilation. All of these types of news stories are *NOT* good PR for ‘Islam’. Mohammet needs to fire some of his virgins and hire a marketing firm!
#13, Hey Brew, how about the cashier respecting the customer’s beliefs?
And nice non sequitor, by the way. Your comment about 13th floors or lack thereof doesn’t have squat to do with a cashier basically refusing service.
This reminds me of a funny story from college. I majored in Computer Science and I did some of my group projects with Norizum Badron, who is from Malaysia. He is Muslim, which I knew at the time, however what I didn’t know was that some/all? Muslim’s believe that dogs are very unclean and avoid them at all cost. He came over to my house one day to work on a project and when Bart ( my dog ) came to greet him, Norizum started running around trying to avoid Bart and so Bart obliged Norizum and chased him around the house. Norizum ended up standing on the couch shouting stuff in Malaya. Eventually I stopped laughing long enough to put Bart outside and when Norizum clammed down he tried to explain to me why he freaked out. After that, we always worked on projects at Norizum’s apartment.
The superstitions of some semi-evolved apes are hilarious. It is unfortunate that most semi-evolved apes can not throw off the bad habits, superstitions and irrational thinking and behavior of their ancestors.
A little courtesy. That’s all that is at steak here.
You made a funny!!! 🙂
#13, Brew,
You missed the point here. The customer went into the store to purchase goods sold there. The cashier, who is a representative of the store, refused to sell her one of the goods the store sells. The apparent reason is because of her religion.
Now, if the policy of the store is to sell items to the public and they stock them, then it stands to reason the store should sell them. If a person takes employment at a store that sells goods to the public then she should participate and sell the goods. If the person is unable to sell items because of her religious beliefs, then she shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.
What accommodation should a store make to the cashier if she were a fundie hired to work at an adult video store?
Um, she didn’t prevent the person in question from purchasing it, Mr. Fusion, read it again. She merely didn’t touch it herself. I have to scan alcohol for 19 year olds here is Ohio, is scanning a slab of bacon really so much to ask? This isn’t some sort of hatred, it’s their belief, and it’s worth respecting it as much as she respects our right to eat bacon, and it seems she does. I don’t think the problem here is so much the muslim woman as the person so willing to be outraged. The flipside of acceptance is accepting others; freedom, letting others make their decisions freely. Taxi drivers and seeing eye dogs aside, this does not seem to keep this woman from performing her job at all, and only requires milliseconds of respect for another human being. At times there are awful things that occur, and we should be outraged, but and occasionally outraged people are themselves outrageous.
I’m curious, is Beryl Dsouza related to Dinesh D’Souza? I wouldn’t be surprised. . .
this is exactly why I use & why self checkout will become more popular. I use it everytime I go get some items at my local grocery store.
no more having to deal with retarded cashiers.
When societies become too diverse they fall apart.
Yup and that is why immigrants of today are so frowned upon while the large influx of the late 1800 and early 1900 wasn’t. Those who immigrated then, melding into the culture of this country, speaking the language, wanting to belong all the while keeping parts of their unique culture, making this country great. Immigrants today don’t think that way. They refuse to learn the language and expect us to accommodate them. They expect that we should all change our ways now that they are here. They are not citizens or welcomed guests, but instead a deadly virus looking to re-write the DNA of this great country.
Li, the difference in your alcohol situation is law vs. beliefs.
I respect her beliefs, but she’s put herself in a situation where that’s impossible, where she expects respect but can’t do the job as a result. Not our problem.
If I were buying the bacon, what I’d do is intentionally fail to scan the item and put it in the bag. Gee, it didn’t scan the cost. What’s the cashier going to do now? I’m just too dumb to do it…I might even drop it on her foot…..which is why she’s there in the first place, eh? She’s gonna call the manager to scan a pound of bacon? Some employee.
And if she can’t touch the package, how many degrees of “can’t touch this” is she required to observe? It gets ridiculous very quickly. Can she touch the other products that touched the bacon? The conveyor? The cart? The hand truck that carried the boxes containing the bacon? Where’s the line?
Could 9/11 have been prevented by simply requiring all non-US citizens to touch a piece of bacon before going through the metal detector? (They dont have to eat it, just touch it.)
Could we prevent all future terrorist attacks by requiring non-US citizens to eat some delicious pork rinds before boarding the plane? (Or would this simply increase the number of terrorist attacks by PETA activists?)
She should have pretended she was jewish and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine and whine until the muslim got fired.
This could have been prevented by getting rid of the equal opportunity clause… and if the lady who was making the purchases had more sense, she would have taken a pic of that idiot muslim cashier with her camera_enabled_cellphone & then posted a pic somewhere to generate a lot of anti-muslim sentiment.
thats what I’d have done anyway.
And #13 – Did you intentionally spell stake wrong? (steak) Or are you just a complete moron?
Muslims are not merely forbidden to eat pigs. Pigs (and dogs) are considered dirty. Even after touching one, we have to go through a retardedly tedious cleansing ceremony involving muddy water.
I live in Minneapolis, probably have shopped at that Target, and maybe even have been helped by that same cashier.
My son also goes to a school in which there are quite a number of Somali students due to the English language program available at the school.
Last week after school there was a community meeting of sorts at the school and one of the sessions was with several Somali parents who shared some of their beliefs, experiences, etc.
The subject of pork came up briefly and so did the topic of dogs. One of the young Somali women there said simply. “We believe that the saliva of a dog is unclean. If a dog licks us we have to wash 7 times. Frankly it’s just not worth the process.”
But there was some disagreement among the Somalis about the extent to which they really needed to avoid dogs. One, who seemed to be more of a religious expert, said touching dogs is fine as long as they are dry and you avoid the saliva. in practice, dogs in Somalia were typically used for hunting or as guard dogs and not as pets. Many Somalis avoid them out of fear because a strange dog was not likely to be friendly.
One of the things I took away from that evening is that in general the Somalis have no interest in pushing Islam on anyone. In fact they’d rather avoid the topic of Islam if they can because they live in fear of aniti-Muslim backlash.
The other thing I away I learned, which should have been obvious, is that there is a tremendous amount of variability in which they observe and interpret Muslim practices. I believe that incidents like the one that occurred at Target could probably be minimized in a number of different ways.
One very important thing to know is that these people aren’t radicals bent on the Islamification of America. They came here to escape civil war and would gladly go back home if they felt it were safe to raise their kids there.
As far as Taxi drivers and transporting alcohol are concerned; I think that it’s ironic that this is such a hot topic today. My grandfather (son of immigrants) spent time in jail for doing just that in the 20’s (good thing they didn’t find out about the still). Those same Somalis that we complain about today would have been seen as upstanding citizens not all that long ago.
I live near Minneapolis and a great mystery for me is why this area has become the hotbed for Muslim Issues. Taxi Drivers refusing to carry passengers with seeing eye dogs and passengers with alcohol(unopened, it a box, in the trunk mind you), the six flying Imams acting suspiciously, being forced off of the plane before takeoff and filing suit against the airline and airport, and now this.
Minnesota is a pretty liberal, diverse, and tolerant state, could this be why it has become the nexus of Muslim/traditional American issues?
#29
If it weren’t for 911 and the Iraq war, the relatively minor culture clashes that Somali Taxi drivers and Target cashiers have had would barely make the local news. The flying Imam incident would have never happened.
As far as why so many Somalis have come here, there’s no single reason. The availability of jobs that require little English literacy is one factor.
Another factor is that once you get a critical mass of a certain group of people in an area, you naturally attract more of that same group. That’s the same reason why a century or so ago so many Germans, Scandinavians, and Irish came here and settled in clusters of people of the same “nationality”.
In 1900 there was actually a higher percentage of the population in Minnesota didn’t speak English than there is today.
23 & 30 – Tom, thanks for the insights.
13 – That’s hilarious. It was meant as a joke, right?
23 – Right. That’s why so many Norwegians settled in Connecticut and Seattle. That’s why Chinatowns exist in cities. It’s because the immigrants were so eager to join the majority culture. Sorry, dude – it’s the second generation, not the first, that traditionally is ashamed of parents who don’t speak English or share the ideas of the surrounding culture. And not always even then – the Chinese, for example, famously congregate as small islands of people who are only marginally integrated into the surrounding local culture. You can find insular Chinese communities in just about any country.