Which of These Religious Accommodations For Employees Do You Find Reasonable?

If I were the customer, I think I would leave my groceries and exit the store

No. I have less and less sympathy for accommodation of religious beliefs when it involves putting other people at a disadvantage. Muslim women should have to show their faces on driver’s licenses. Christian pharmacists and businesses owned by Christians should have to supply birth control. Sure it can definitely be argued in the above mentioned case that the disadvantage is slight if even at all but the principle still applies since somebody is being put out. If your religious beliefs are that important to you then find another occupation or do another action. But don’t put the burden of your rules and beliefs onto someone else.

None. If peoplr find themselves incapable of doing the job for which they were hired due to their religious beliefs why should employers and customers be the ones to suffer? Let the zealots find employment that doesn’t conflict with their beliefs instead of expecting everyone else to make accomodations.

I’ve never heard of any of these situations actually occurring, except for the christian pharmacist refusing birth control and emergency contraception. I’m also unaware of any religious rule that says you can’t touch these things, I thought the rules were about consumption.

But anyway, all that being said, I find none of these really acceptable in the general workplace. And I place the blame squarely on the employer for not only failing to clearly explain the job requirements, but also for hiring someone who would be unable to meet them for no apparent physical reason.

People who refuse to serve people based upon religious reasons are merely assholes who use their religion as a justification to be an asshole. I’ve had friends in the service industry who are Muslim who had no problem serving booze, who were vegetarian and had no problem serving meat, why? Because they were responsible adults who knew they were hired and part of the contractual agreement to do their job was to serve the customers their orders, not to be assholes.

If someone is paid to do a job and refuses to do it because of some BS religious reason aren’t only just assholes, but they are liars and should be rightly fired for breach of contract.

I wouldn’t take a job at a mega-church and then get all bent out of shape when they object to me being all atheisty all over the place. I just wouldn’t take that job.

Actually the cab situation did pop up in Oz. The company was fined as there, like in the US it’s a huge no-no. I think you can guess the reason the cabbie gave…

I’m against all these religious exceptions.

I wouldn’t mind that a muslim refuse to sell me bacon at a store that doesn’t have bacon for sale, or a jew refusing to sell me honeyed ham at a kosher deli, or a Mahayana Buddhist waiter refusing to bring me a meat dish at a vegan restaurant, or a Catholic pharmacist to declining to sell me birth control pills at McDonalds.

I do however see a problem with a Muslim getting hired by a pig farmer then refusing to feed the pigs. I’d also have a problem with an Amish man enlisting in the Army, getting paid, and then refusing to fight in a war. I would also have a problem with a high caste Hindu refusing to serve an untouchable if he worked at McDonalds, or was a doctor or nurse in a hospital.

You see I’m unreasonable that way. Expecting people to take jobs that align with their religious beliefs.

I say this. If they didnt want to sell alcohol, If they didnt want to sell Pork Products, or any of the things you have said, then they shouldnt be working there.. To work in Marks and Spencers It is a choice they made.. They cant go around and say i want to work there, but i wont do this, wont do that. If your Belief is So strong then you should leave the place and work at a place that is more suited to your beliefs.

Absolutely absurd. Other supermarkets here in the UK have no such policy and nor should they.

>People who refuse to serve people based upon religious reasons are merely assholes who use their religion as a justification to be an asshole.

Doubly true as in the case of the Muslim cab drivers who had to ask if their passengers had alcohol in their baggage.

They’ve been in the news. One Muslim family moved in next to a dinner and sued because they could smell the bacon being cooked.

Anybody ideas for products that the non-religious can refuse to sell based on religious (non-)belief? Maybe bookstore employees who don’t want to sell, “Heaving is for Real”? Grocers offended by pastafarians might refuse to sell folks ziti? There’s got to be more such products…

The only time it would be acceptable taking religious sensibilities into account like this would be if the conditions of employment changed AFTER the employee was hired. If a Muslim takes a job where there is no requirement to come into contact with, say, alcohol and is later asked to, I think s/he would be perfectly entitled to refuse.

If it’s part of the job when you sign on, live with it or get another job.

Short answer: Yes. But to be more clear, I think that’s all part of the business decision. Businesses have the right to not hire anyone who won’t partake in some aspect of the business, or to accommodate them in the manner I described, but no one has the right to say they want a job, but they aren’t willing to do something that’s a major component of that job. The government certainly should not be involved in this in any way (with the exception of the pill, which is a matter of medical necessity).

[Edited to add a very important “not”]

I would tell them if they didn’t ring up my purchase, I’d say that means they are giving them to me for free, and take my groceries and exit the store.

Target deals with this by simply reassigning the employee to other type of work.

Judaism gets very complicated. It’s not just pork and shellfish. Anything with gelatin, including many yogurts and marshmallows, any hamburger made from the back end of the cow (so ground round), rabbit, grape juice not prepared in a kosher manner, hell anything not prepared in a kosher manner. Some aluminum and steel cans are made with metal rolled with lard as a lubricant, which makes them unkosher.

Wow, they must be real efficent because whenever I get a new cashier who doesn’t know how to do things it holds up the line, especially when three people in a row need something unusual. Plus the people on the other line are now waiting while the checkout person moves to the next register whie your food is on the belt. Of course, we solve this problem in the US by not selling hard liquor in grocery stores. So the kids manning the lines can handle any item. New cashiers get paid less of course.

BTW, the Kevin Bacon picture is probably not fair use.

As well as a Jehovahs Witness who owns a business and refuses to allow insurance to pay for an employees blood transfusions.

The queues in M&S don’t work the way you are imagining.

FFS! The prohibition is against consuming pork and alcohol not fucking touching it.

Get a pair of latex gloves, and a life.

Ah yes, the “should we accommodate people’s goofy superstitions if they call those beliefs ‘religious’?” argument. Yeah, these people need to grow up and do their jobs.

One exception: if a person could explain, without any reference to religion, why they should get an exception. For example, it makes sense to deny picking up a person with a dog in your cab if you’re allergic to dogs. That’s a real reason that’s based on real-life reality. But if your entire argument is based on “my invisible friend will be mad at me” then you should just deal with it. Because really, why should we worry about making invisible non-customers happy when there are very real people with very real money to spend?

I disagree; employers have a right to change job
descriptions in reasonable ways to match business conditions. It would
place an unreasonable burden on small business owners to have fixed forever
business plan to accommodate every employee’s religious sensibilities..

“Atheisty”….I like that!

Good luck getting them to give you that one.

What happens if all the casiers on a shift are Muslim?

Presumably the same that would happen if, say, all the florists in an area refuse to serve gay people, which is part of the reason why that’s illegal.

It’s like the thing with Christmas displays. If people are going to ask for ridiculous religious exceptions, atheists can ask for equally ridiculous exceptions to point out how stupid it is.

If an employee at a store or restaurant refuses to sell me something because that item or service is forbidden in their religion, basically they are forcing their beliefs on me. They are saying that I’M not allowed to have the thing because THEY’RE not, even though I don’t share those beliefs.

That is obnoxious and wrong, and I’m mystified as to why anyone is even contemplating letting employees at a place of business dictate what customers can and cannot buy from that business.

If someone refuses to do certain parts of a job that they are physically able to do, they should not be hired for that job.

None of us get the right to hold our free speech clause of the 1st Ammendment sacrosanct in the workplace, but those that believe in myths get to use their religious clause? Actually, almost the entirety of the Bill of Rights gets thrown out at work, for the job, but this one iota gets respect only if an employee has some twisted idea about reality. There is something extremely twisted here.

If you’re talking about restaurants, you have a little bit to learn. If you’re old enough to serve alcohol, and work for tips, it’s more than likely that you are getting paid LESS than an under age person. Minimum wages for tipped employees are sub-minimum wage by federal law, though some states have over-ridden that. Current federal law states that tipped minimum wage is $2.13/hour. Tips are expected to make up for the difference.

I’d go so far as to say that if, say, you’re a Muslim who doesn’t want to get within three feet of pork for religious reasons, then you should be able to discuss it with your supervisor and see if there’s a way to give reasonable accommodation. In the same way that if you’re a vegetarian, you can ask not to be assigned to the butcher section. A little flexibility on everyone’s part can make life a lot easier.
Beyond that, if you and your management have failed to come up with a good solution, it seems that you need to do your job. If you were hired as a cashier, and your sincere convictions prevent you from dealing with 5% of your customers, then you can’t do that job.

So, you’d say she wasn’t working, but was “working it”? 🙂

“In a reasonable way” – agreed. But if you are a strict Muslim, suddenly being expected to handle alcohol is not reasonable. The number of times this will happen anyway is minuscule – the point I was trying to get across was it is entirely UNreasonable to take a job and then complain about its duties.

You are mixing apples and oranges.
I have worked for tips. I earned more per hour in salary (around $3.00) at my McDonald’s job, but left that job to work for one where the salary was only $1.55 an hour plus tips yet made twice as much money per hour. Why? Because I was pulling in between $15-$150 in tips per day. So no only did it “make up the difference”, it more than doubled my take home.
Just imagine the tip you’ll get when you refuse to serve your table any alcohol.

Yeah, I took that into account. I expected an explanation of why it was more efficient in handling troublesome employees.

Hey, the store refused to take the money – how is that the customer’s fault?

Are you trolling me? I don’t want to waste my time explaining this unless your IQ is really less than 80.

Hey, if I offer the money and the store’s representative refuses to take it how is that my fault? Its not as if I refused to pay.

Brian’s being kind of a tool, but he is nonetheless correct. The store can refuse to complete the sale, which does not entitle you to the goods for free; in order for the sale to be completed both the seller and the purchaser must successfully complete the transaction, so if the seller refuses to accept payment the transaction has not occurred and ownership does not transfer to you.

It would only be more complicated if they were refusing to sell you the goods because of some feature about you (race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.) that triggers a protected category. In this case, in contrast, it is a feature of (an employee of) the seller that is getting in the way, and that is perfectly legal, if incredibly stupid. Generally speaking, the seller of a good or service has the right to refuse to transact with anyone for any reason, with the anti-discrimination protections making up the most prominent set of exceptions to that general rule.

The appropriate way to retaliate is to call over the manager, and tell them that you will no longer be shopping at their store because of their stupid accommodation policy, and that you will be telling all your family and friends about the incident (add Twitter or Facebook for garnish).

Someone (on this blog, I think) mentioned something about someone being an atheist.

Someone else responded with something like “No, Richard Dawkins is the atheist, the rest of us are just atheier than average.” Damn near broke my funny bone.

This is why expansive accommodation policies are such an unbelievably bad idea in the first place. There is no easy answer for people who don’t have transportation and need the goods at the only local shop that has the dumb policy. This gets really nasty when the subject turns, for example, to contraceptives and small towns with just one pharmacy.

For what it’s worth, the Supreme Court of the US tried to cut this stuff off at the knees back in 1990. In response, Congress in its infinite wisdom shoved through the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to save these crazy accommodations. SCOTUS slapped down that effort on unrelated separation of powers grounds, which led to what might best be described as an orgy of state legislatures passing what are often called mini-RFRAs. As a result, this practice of bending over backwards to religious sentiment when applying otherwise generally applicable laws is now deeply entrenched in many areas of the law in the vast majority of states. Leading to such foolishness today as corporations themselves seeking religious accommodations.

I (unfortunately) know plenty of people who would say a Christian pharmacist should be allowed to refuse to carry birth control because, you know, anything else would be oppression. Of course, those are literally the same people who freak out at the idea of allowing a Muslim cashier to refuse to sell pork. The hypocrisy is stunning–and they don’t get it when I say anybody with religious objections to certain tasks should, you know, find another job, regardless of what sky daddy they worship.

Religious beliefs don’t belong in the public market place.
If you know going in that these jobs may conflict with YOUR beliefs, then don’t apply for that job.
Keep your beliefs out our reality.

At that point they are also perfectly entitled to quit.

Ugh, I saw the trailer for the movie Heaven is for Real on the big screen (before The Book Thief) yesterday. It was bad enough the first time in my little youtube window. 🙁

On a side note, I worked in bookstores for 8 years and there have been many books I wish I could have said “No. I can’t let you read this.”

That doesn’t make any sense.

Yeah, I want to see the phlebotomist who converts to a Jehovah’s Witness and claims they should keep their job.

True. I mean, I haven’t heard any stink about vegetarians objecting to serving meat in the States, it seems to *usually be related to things having to do with sex* since apparently, people can’t live in a world where they can’t show disdain for people who don’t ascribe to their puritanical ethics.

I guess this is the first time I’ve heard it come up with alcohol and unclean meat.

Also, being refused a cab ride is no small deal, especially in a place like Minneapolis where it gets rather cold in the winter.

I wonder how these Muslim cab operators would feel about right-wing Christians refusing to give them a ride because they believe in a false prophet and false religion. I mean, it’s part of common human decency not to have to pass judgment on every single person you come in contact with, and it’s kind of necessary in a pluralistic society.

Perhaps the private cab companies should be replaced by some sort of city-based mass transit system that, as part of the government, could not discriminate.

Are you sure that you just aren’t a bit on the angry side? Cashiers are human beings doing a boring job more fit for a robot. I find *excessive* socializing a bit annoying, but a few seconds isn’t going to bother me since if a few seconds is going to set me back, need to plan my trips better.

Um, where on earth do you live? Hard liquor is sold in every major grocery store that I’ve been to in my area, outside of chains that have limited offerings or don’t want to bother with alcohol at all as a business call. The local big box retailers sell hard liquor as well.

Just wondering, is there some general prohibition against handling treif, or any particular rules for what to do if it become necessary as part of a job? I’m not well informed on that one, mostly just since my family didn’t work to hard to keep kosher.

I like the idea of people trying to make accommodations, but if you have lots of workers with lots of accommodations, this can become difficult really fast, and then you have a problem with The Boss making the call on who gets accommodated, which means they can be granted or denied in a capricious and arbitrary fashion.

How is not selling bacon or alcohol to someone with different religious beliefs different than not selling wedding cake for a gay marriage? In each case, the customer has different religious beliefs than the seller.

A person’s right to swing hir fist ends where another person’s nose begins. A person’s right to practice hir religion ends when it infringes on another person’s rights to exercise their own convictions.

Funny, I never hear of Christians refusing to sell guns because of Jesus.

There’s always an out.

They aren’t refusing to sell to you because of your religion. They are refusing to sell because of their own. In either case you should NOT walk out of the store with goods you didn’t pay for unless you want a shoplifting charge.

In both Massachusetts & New York you can’t sell any liquor in grocery stores.

Being a tool?

Yes.

Really do I have to explain the concept of theft?

No, you don’t. And even if by some twist you did, I saved you the trouble, since you have enough time to complain about not having enough time to explain and I am a helpful sort of fellow.

If you don’t pay for goods you can’t walk out of the store with them. I’m literally chuckling to myself. I guess all those who think this is an option should try it. There are all sorts of reasons they might refuse to sell to you, computers down, out of change, closing, etc. If you think you are owed stuff you didn’t pay for in those cases, or any other, I highly suggest you sue them in court, not walk out of the store with the goods. They will call the police.

I managed to explain that earlier in about forty-five seconds of typing, only more clearly and with less self-indulgent tooling around. Like chuckling to yourself. That’s kinda creepy.

Oh, and BTW, if you find something in the street and you don’t own it you also cannot just walk off with it. You have to make a good faith effort to find the owner before you can keep it in order to establish that it was not lost. Obviously, with stuff you found in a store it will be easy for you to tell who owns it.

Not entirely sure why you’re bringing this up, but yes, you are also correct about this piece of trivia.

I find nothing reasonable about going through the all the motions to get employed, only to have an objection to the work/job itself. Only someone with poor work ethics would pull such a stunt on an employer.

You do understand that there are trolls who act like idiots to waste other people’s time forty five seconds at a time.

Right. The part that’s confusing me is where you decided, given this, to respond at all. Nobody compelled you to do so, but you’re acting as though you were being put upon to deliver an explanation when you could have just walked away whistling.

If you think it’s a waste of time, why not let people who are more willing to waste theirs do so? Me, I get quite a lot out of explaining seemingly simple things; it helps me hone my didactic skills, it helps me perfect my own conception of what I attempt to describe, and as often as not the act of answering questions reveals the seemingly simple thing to me to be not so simple after all. Also, many misunderstandings and a large quantity of ignorance in the world could be ameliorated if “simple” questions weren’t treated as some mark of deficiency or stupidity, and I don’t want to be part of the problem. So, what is to you a waste of time is to me a worthy endeavor.

As long as the have someone else available to ring my stuff up I don’t give a shit.

I don’t mind discussing with someone who’s being reasonable. Right now I’m talking with you. Although I’m starting to wonder why. I actually started commenting to improve my writing skills. My point is that it’s a waste of my time to talk with trolls, althought sometimes I find them interesting too. Right now I’ve got a health issue that’s preventing me from doing much of anything useful anyway, so I’ve got plenty of time. Who however doesn’t understand that you can’t take things out of a store without paying for them?

Rhode Island as well.

But if an atheist refuses to sell someone a crucifix or nativity scene, RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION!!!

Monty, we’ll choose what’s behind door number B….

Interesting. I should consider myself fortune that I live somewhere that I can get hard liquor from the same place I buy socks, groceries and power tools.

I’d just like to point out that I’ve worked several jobs where I had to be in on weekends, holidays, and any other freaking time the employer felt like.

Non-issue. I knew where the door was, and how to use it. I walked in that door every day. If I decided for any reason, religious or not, that the job didn’t hold to my standards, I was always free to use that door and not come back. I’ve worked Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and pretty much any other holiday you care to name. This year, I’ll be in on New Year’s Day. I’ll be doing mandatory overtime for probably the next three months after that.

I’d love to have the same livable wage rule. Truth be told, for the most part, I’m pretty happy with where I am, I just wish I could have some of those holidays off. Still, I can always choose to go elsewhere, and that’s probably the best thing about the modern working world. There’s somewhere else to go if you’re not happy for whatever reason.

Actually, given the existence of unemployment, there are more people than available jobs, and given the pigeonhole principle, that means *some people don’t have somewhere else to go.* And realistically, more and more employer are demanding more and more holidays on.

Choices might exist in some areas, like say, a large city, but imagine people living in the middle of nowhere where you’ve got very limited choices in where to work.

Oh it’s worse than that. I can’t even get certain liquors unless they have applied for distribution in my state. I found this great port wine in NY, Solace (Imagine Moore Winery) and I bought a case. Gave bottles out as gifts but had quite a few myself. Everyone raved about it. The guy excavating a ditch for me wanted to buy a case himself (I usually make on dinner or lunch for contractors). I ran out and tried to order some. They cannot deliver to Masschusetts address. Not only can’t they deliver to me but they can’t deliver to a liquor store. I’d have to have it shipped to someone in NY close to MA and then go pick it up.

I think that’s just a byproduct of conservative Christianity being more a right-wing political movement than a religious one.

I think it is much simpler than that, more a byproduct of people being very unwilling to examine the moral cost of something when that examination might lead to actual cost to themselves.

At a certain level, everyone participates in evil. There are very few–if there are any at all–products for consumption on this Earth that did not get produced and delivered while not furthering some injustice. Diamonds, cell phones, grapes for FSM sake. But to act on it all would be utterly paralyzing, so we draw lines (quite arbitrary ones, most of the time) that cause us to judge culpability by the remoteness of the injustice; how many steps removed from my using this good, how many individual person’s decisions away from mine in buying it, how close to active awareness I am brought to the injustice that aided in producing it. Most people would not think of the plight of immigrant grape-pickers when choosing produce, nor think of buying grapes as a(n im)moral act. This changes when the nightly news delivers reports of the grape-pickers striking and organizing.

So far, so normal. The costs of doing business in an international Capitalist economy. And giving up grapes for a while to support the efforts of grape-pickers to organize is not some terrible hardship. But these blinkers are intensified when one’s own livelihood is jeopardized by acting on those same moral precepts; the psychological incentives are much higher to be willfully blind to people getting shot when you own a gun shop than they are if you don’t. Not many people can face the idea that they facilitate murderers in order to feed their families, and so they artificially add distance between their act and the consequence, putting extra emphasis on the free will of the perpetrator in order to relieve the guilt of having been the one to provide the means.

I wouldn’t put that on any political wing or any religion, but just on humans having a harder time bearing moral judgments (especially obvious ones) than we have in producing rationalizations for why we don’t have to.

They can do the job they were hired to do or they can quit.

They aren’t even refusing to sell to anyone. They’re saying you should go to a different register to buy those goods!

It’s not hypocrisy when I do it!

I don’t know what your problem is peaople! What you can visit here are the result of left-wing ideologies’ like feminism and atheism + contstant demands for diversity. In a rational world the muslim woman would just have been fired but because diversity companies are bending over backwards to accomodate even the craziest demands.

And the irony: if the woman had done her job and sold the alcohol but told the customer that he should receive 40 whip lashes for drinking it she would have been fired immediately just like the guy from the duck dynasty.

He was black?

Obviously no legal implications (except perhaps the pharmacy situation). Bad business though….alienating clients. There are plenty of alternatives for everything. If a customer is inconvenienced at one place they will simply go to the next.

Wouldn’t work. Their reasons for refusing the ring up bibles wouldn’t be unreasonable enough. They’d have to pretend a ghost told them the books were haunted to have a chance.

So a living wage means you get a computer, cell phone, car, expensive apartment, etc. ???

Again, why the down vote for ha2? Just a factual statement. This voting stuff is pointless if you aren’t going to explain yourself.

Disagree with the first one. Okay with the second.

I don’t see why. He doesn’t have to eat it. Would you be okay with a Fundamentalist not ringing up a Christmas card for you because “Christmas is an evil pagan ritual”.

Then you become a minister/preacher and go on TV!

So I have to go to the back of the bus, I mean line, because they disapprove of my non-religion?

If he has some strange religious thing against touching the card, I don’t want to make him do it. Especially, if he’s simply having someone else ring it up.

This is true. But the more reasonable people are willing to be, the more likely it is that things will work out in a rational and equitable fashion.

Hmm…fair point.

Religious beliefs can be respected and accommodated as long as they don’t harm others. So, yes, you can refuse to bring me my wings, IF there is another waiter who will do it. And yes, you can refuse to handle my alcohol, as long as it doesn’t make for more than a couple of minutes wait while another cashier steps over. In fact, it doesn’t have to be a religious belief. If the smell of peanut butter fudge makes you actually ill, it’s fine with me if you have someone else ring it up. (Semi-but-not-really-relatedly, I have a story about an incident when I was a cashier and a customer opened his jar of peanut butter and shoved it under my nose and laughed at my reaction. That gives me some sympathy for people having to handle things they’re uncomfortable with, regardless of the reason, and despite that it’s somewhat different.)

But once it crosses that line where the job *can’t* get done, or causes undue difficulty to the customer or other employees, just no. You can do your job or get one you can do.

Again, sometimes you can do most of the duties of your job. Maybe my cashier is 8.5 months pregnant and can’t lift my bag of dog food. Maybe she can’t stand for long periods of time and is permitted to sit, even though store policy says sitting while serving customers is rude, Maybe he is 16 and has to get a co-worker over to sell alcohol.

All that stuff is okay, as long as the job *does* get done, in a reasonable manner and time. There is such a thing as reasonable accommodation- hey, maybe some religions should be categorized as a disability, that would make the decision easy. It’d be covered.

“Libertarian” means “opposing unjustified government interference”, not “ascetic”.

Personally, I don’t think employers should accommodate your religious beliefs in the first place. Don’t work at a store if you object to selling alcohol. Don’t work as a butcher if you don’t want to handle pork. Don’t work at a tanning salon if the idea of a woman in a bikini fills you with hate. Take some personal responsibility and don’t apply for a job that you won’t accept doing.

And what if those pork rinds were morning after pills and the bodega was the only pharmacy within a reasonable distance?

Same deal in my state (South Dakota) as regards the selling of booze. That I can understand. “My religion say it’s bad, so I won’t sell it”? Do your job, or find another.

It must have been a grammar nazi downvoting it. I should have written “That sounds reasonable to me”.