Political Correctness Taken Too Far and Marks And Spencers
Here’s another story, just like the Duck Dynasty story, that shows that the public is no longer willing to get their rights trampled on just to be politically correct. The UK has a fairly significant Muslim population, thanks mostly to unchecked immigration policies. In many places, the Muslims are insular, living in tightly group communities and not integrating into society. Many companies make all sorts of accommodations when they hire Muslim people, from special holidays to multiple breaks per day to pray. It’s pretty unfair to everyone else who doesn’t get to slide away from work for 30 minutes every few hours, and it creates resentment and trouble. The UK is country with a huge racial issue bubbling under and soon to explode.
A recent event at Marks and Spencers shows just how fed up the public is with these unreasonable accommodations. It seems that a Muslim employee was working at the check out cash at one of their stores, and refused to serve a customer because the customer was buying alcohol, which is against their religion. Marks and Spencer has made the fatal mistake of allowing their employees to decide what their job is, using their religion to decide which tasks they can and cannot do – and the company is stupid enough to back them up.
News flashing for M&S and many other companies out there: If you have an employee that cannot do the work, don’t keep them on the payroll. Don’t give them light duties or selective jobs to avoid their issues, let them know that the job includes all of the tasks, and they can either do the job or leave. Telling a paying customer to wait because they refuse to handle a closed and sealed bottle of champagne (or any pork meat, for that matter) is horrible customer service, it’s insulting to the customer, it creates unneeded delays, and most of all, it’s political correctness gone wild. If they cannot do the job (all of the job) then don’t hire them to start with!
The backlash on this case has been huge, yet Marks and Spencers is still enough to stand by what amounts to being a very discriminatory policy. They have apologized that the employee refused to do their job, but still supported that employees right to refuse to help the customer. The press has gone wild, and in a country like the UK where racial issues are becoming more and more of an ongoing issue, it shows how political correctness and religious tolerance are starting to turn against those who refuse to integrate into society.
Not surprisingly, there is a move boycott M&S, and I support them completely. Policies that allow an employee to duck out of work or to not do all of their work because it might offend their gods is a step way too far that discriminates against everyone else.
