M&S cashiers can refuse to handle pork and alcohol

[HermioneWeasley]

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/10532782/Muslim-staff-at-Marks-and-Spencer-can-refuse-to-sell-alcohol-and-pork.html

I would be extremely annoyed at being held up by someone refusing to "handle" alcohol and pork. After all, the stuff is either in bottles or cellophane so it's not coming into direct contact.

Personally, I wouldn't have this policy, but if m&S think it's reasonable to refuse, why not put employees who object in a different part of the store, instead of inconveniencing customers?

And before cries of racism and Islamaphobia start, my family are Muslim (though I am not) and would have no problem with putting bottles and packs through a checkout.

Marks and Spenders have issued a statement, the lady who refused to handle Alcohol should have been working elsewhere in the store.

Basically we can buy our Percy Pigs, a honey roast pork and a bottle of red wine with no anxiety of being asked to change tills.

I wouldn't work for a company like Allied Tobacco or Nestle because I object to their product and their business strategies. If I had such strong beliefs I couldn't even touch a glass bottle because it contained alcohol I would also not work for a company that sold these products.

I find any other stance somewhat hypocritical.

The question is - why does the worker feel entitled enough to demand that she wont sell customers the very thing they have come in to buy!!

So thankfully, that was all a big fat fuss over nothing then.

Poor M&S-victim of a misunderstanding by the press.

If I have understood correctly, handcream, M&S were aware of her issues with selling pork and alcohol, and employed her on the basis of keeping her out of the food hall - and this worked fine for some time. Unfortunately, something went wrong, and she was sent to the food hall, where her religious beliefs about pork and alcohol caused problems at the tills - this wasn't her fault, as M&S knew her views and had accomodated them up to that point.

Had she not been sent to the food hall, no-one would have been any the wiser, and no-one would have been inconvenienced or offended.

The article says "At M&S, Muslim staff who do not wish to handle alcohol or pork have been told they can politely request that customers choose another till at which to pay."

Well then you can politely state that it would be inconvenient to re queue when you are already at the front of this queue so they can start scanning...

Gloves, hand sanitizer, wipes and hand lotion are often on hand at tills in case of sticky packets ect so if needs be they can wear gloves/wash hands before and after touching products they don't like.

I still think that if you can't do the job you're hired for get out and make way for those who can. I hate the smell of sea food, it makes me dry heave and I have serious issues with touching it. At 17 I wore gloves on the tills and held my breath while touching it so it wouldn't stop me doing my job... If it had gotten to the point that I couldn't physically touch it I'd have left or asked to be moved off tills permanently

Not really the point but I can imagine several of my elderly relatives seeing a 'no pork or alcohol' sign and explaining to the cashier that they didn't have any - just a little bit of ham (which they seem to think is suitable for vegetarians) and some (medicinal) brandy.

I don't know.

But mostly I feel the brute embrace of the BNP coming on and so I will resist it.

I've had a quick skim to see what the muslim poster who I happen to agree with on almost everything, mostly non-muslim-related, had to say but I haven't seen her.

But then I bailed at page 6.

Maybe that was cowardly of me, but I confess, that's me all over. I'm not going to name her because that might embarrass her, but I hope by some celestial means she knows who she is and that we'd probably agree

Like others have said, a warning at the till would be handy.

But supermarkets expect customers to suck it up when the checkout person is under drinking age or the customer is under 25, entirely for their convenience because serving alcohol by underage people or to underage people is disastrous for them, so why not here?

I only wonder how the person would handle other offensive products? Or whether handling but not partaking is banned. I guess others have asked that.

What happens with teetotallers, or vegetarians or Catholics who object to the use of condoms?

A muslim customer services person in Sainsbury's once thanked me profusely for telling her that my bag contained pork when I returned it.

She thought I was telling her so she didn't have to handle it.

The religious aspect didn't cross my mind. I'd mentioned it because the meat was rotten (some kind of hideous stock control mistake) not because it was pork.

I don't know what I think about that. I was slightly offended, but not that much. And she was grateful.

We've lived to celebrate another Christmas.

So, as expected, a storm in a teacup and not the Armageddon-At-The-Tills that some Posters were expecting.....

Or M&S frantically back-pedalling after they saw all the online comments and facebook pages set up to protest?

I quite like M&S for accounting for someone's religous practices and views. Having an equalities-based approach in the retail world sounds quite refreshing. Yes, someone gets 'inconvenienced' temporarily but big deal.
Nothing to do with the 'politically correct' element. That slur is often used to misrepresent being a bit sophisticated and civil.

I work in a chiller with Muslims and they all handle pork products. Its in plastic wrapping ffs, although I was asked to pick up sausages off the floor because my manager is Muslim and didn't want to touch them

I just remembered my old flatmate telling me about the muslim boyfriend of another flatmate opening and tipping two expensive bottles of her (flatmate ones's) wine. She went ballistic. He didn't even live with us, not that that would matter. She said she'd have her ear pressed to the wall for any sound of premarital sex and dobbed him in to the LL for practically living there. Extreme case and most Muslims I know wouldn't dream of doing that, but I couldn't believe his nerve!

Having an equalities-based approach in the retail world sounds quite refreshing

That would be nice if large retailers accommodated most employees as regards work practices that the rest of us would regard as reasonable.

However, they don't.

M&S appear to have got themselves into a terrible pickle.

Tragic.

I am giggling about it, but mourn that they're wriggling on the religious hook rather than on an employment aspect.

Well I said it was refreshing, not the winning argument. and fwiw it's worth I'm seeing M&S retaining the integrity of their policy, which is an employment aspect and and equalities one.

Someone is saying online that this may not be what it seems.

Apparently there is a potential Qatari takeover bid... And this whole episode has dropped the share price before the alleged takeover

Interesting

It's all very strange thing though.

The checkout worker refused a bottle of champagne.

Unless she was just starting her shift and it was the first ever trolley to be served I'm finding it impossible to believe there was no alcohol or porkie stuff in the other customers' shopping.

M&S just before Christmas? No wine, bubble, boozy puddings, sausages and bacon in the trolleys?
Very hard to believe.

Are you (ie, a company) allovved to just ask at intervievv: 'Are there any aspects of this job - for example, products vve sell that you vvould prefer not to handle - that might restrict you in carrying out the role?'

& if someone says 'VVell, I'm vegetarian & can't bear the thought of handling meat/phobic about fluffy nylon slippers/vvon't pick up a jar of Nescafe/pastafarian (hail the noodly appendages!)' - then the company can choose vvhether that's something they choose to accommodate or not?

Morrisons have apparently been happy to allovv Muslim staff to choose not to vvork on the meat or booze aisles for years, for example.

As far as I'm concerned, from a customer POV, that's fine, & it's also fine if Tesco or Asda say 'no, this is an integral part of your job, crack on vvith it.'

Is there any actual employment lavv about this or is it just up to individual employers?

I think it's probably an untested area and no-one has seen it worth involving barristers on £££s to determine what exactly is lawful, and so employees and companies just rub on by on a case-by-case basis.
A guide is the Equalities Act 2010 which says no-one should be discriminated on their personal 'protected characteristics' - whether that extends to this scenario isn't clear at all, it seems.

Vegetarians aren't a protected characteristic...

No, & I don't imagine Nestle-boycotters or slipper-phobics are either.

I'm just intrigued as to vvhether a prospective employer could just avoid the issue by asking if there are any bits of the job the prospective employee couldn't/vvouldn't do - & then saying 'Yes, that's fine, vve can fit round that' or 'No, sorry, vve need you to be able to vvork in any & all departments', according to their company ethos.

I don't think it's clear at all (even whether this particular scenario ca nbe raised at interview poss), but as I say no-one wishes to spend a lot of money on a determination, which could be then open to further challenge.

Why is vegetarianism not a protected characteristic? I had a scroll through (must admit I'd never heard of them before) and it said religion and philosophical beliefs (or lack of). Vegetarianism affects the way adherents live and the choices they make.

Coffee good point.

They have to treat everybody equally and can't give special treatment to one group so if they are going to allow employees to refuse service because their religion forbids them from touching pork/alcohol then they must also pander to religious people whose religious forbids them from providing contraception, vegans who are morally opposed to having anything to do with animal products, those who are ethically opposed to junk food for the devastating health consequences, those ethically opposed to certain corporations for the negative impact they have in poorer countries, environmentalists who would like to reject everything that is potentially harmful to the environment or wasteful etc..... nobody would get their shopping through the tills uninterrupted.

The indulgence of religious prejudice is concerning, how far do we allow it to go? Today, the religionist refuses to scan alcohol or pork because it is unclean, next it'll be 'immodestly' dressed women, gay people... there is no end to what offends religious extremists.

They have to treat everybody equally and can't give special treatment to one group

Well quite the opposite is true. The basis of equalities and equal opportunity is that people are treated differently, depending on their particular characteristics. We live in a very 'mixed' society and so laws against treating everyone 'the same' (as if 'life' and it's conditions are the same for everyone i.e. we are homogenous) makes sense.