I have always been of the belief that if someone pays you to do a job, you do the work to the best of your ability. That being said, most employers will be willing to make reasonable accommodations.
For example, if you’re recovering from a broken leg and work in retail you’re probably going to be allowed a stool to sit on to let the leg heal. As long as you can do the job otherwise, employers will make slight alterations.
Religious accommodations are usually more of a simpler variety, or at least they used to be. I have an uncle who wouldn’t work on Sundays so he could go to church. Nobody ever complained about it at the company he worked for, and it was just an understanding not to schedule him on Sundays.
Christians are by and large usually very understanding when it comes to having to do certain things at work. You will have Christians who are managers at grocery stores that sell beer stocking beer and making the orders despite being as dry as a brand-new sponge.
We understand the difference between consuming and merely handling it.
People of the Muslim faith take their religion to an unhealthy and unreasonable degree when it comes to making accommodations. I mean, I get taking your faith’s Sabbath off; but some of the other stuff is absolutely ridiculous.
This makes what I am about to tell you all the more alarming given the fact that the employer in this scenario did everything they could to accommodate a Muslim employee’s religious beliefs.
A Muslim employee at a Costco in New York is suing the company on grounds of a human rights violation taking place at the location. The violation? He was asked to ring up pork.
Yep, that was it. He wasn’t being asked to eat it. He was asked to merely ring it up.
Now, you would probably think that if you were going to be working at a place that possibly sold pork and you didn’t want to handle pork on religious grounds this would be something you would research.
Well, they wanted to move him to the liquor department and that was obviously out. So they had him pick up shopping carts from the lot. Which he complained about. He wanted to be transferred to electronics.
They already had someone in electronics so he moaned and complained and eventually got to the point where he is filing a lawsuit.
It might just be me, but there’s a difference between asking an employer to make a reasonable exemption and just making someone dance for you like a damned circus bear.
