U.S. Supreme Court is set for arguments in Tulsa retailer, hijab dispute

NewsOK.com ^ | 02/23/2015 | Chris Casteel

[caligatrux]

Count down seven paragraphs from the top. It says in black and white, "Elauf never told the company she wore the hijab for religious reasons and would have to wear it at work."

I don't read that as saying that she did not wear it at the interview. I read that as saying she never specified that she was wearing the scarf expressly for religious purposes. It seems to me that she wore the scarf at the interview, the people interviewing her liked her "look" except for the scarf, they assumed it was for religious reasons, and when they asked their district manager or whatever about it, and he/she said don't hire her.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Hijabs are offensive. Anyone who wears one is being rude and insensitive.

Watching the National Governors’ Conference, I was much taken by a speaker Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas introduced. The speech by Danny Meyer, author of Setting the Table, was striking. Mr. Meyer, a highly successful New York restauranteur, proposes in his book a very interesting theory of management: that it is not the customer, not the community, and least of all is it the stockholder who must come first. No, Meyer says, the employees must come first because that is the only way to generate true hospitality within your organization. He defines hospitality as how the delivery of your service or product makes the customer feel. And that can only come from how the employees feel.

Make no mistake, he calls for nothing less than the best training you can give your employees for their positions (and for upward mobility potential). But no matter how well you train and discipline, he says, you won’t be anyone’s favorite restaurant (or whatever) unless the morale of your people is even better than their technical performance. And that, he says, implies that you must hire and retain only people who not only can do their jobs, but who will be hospitable to each other. Your employees are happy, their delivery of their service to the customer will make the customer feel happy. And, in a virtuous circle, that will make the employees feel happy.

To me, the application to politics is obvious. Having the government decide who can be hired means true hospitality, as Meyer defines it, becomes impossible (which should be no surprise; it has been known “forever” that socialism is the enemy of quality). The government regulation of business inevitably involves blunt instruments and crude measurements - and the evasion of impossible mandates always subverts the incentive to produce quality.

In the present instance, of course you are right - the wearing of an article of clothing which contrasts with the meaning of the organization undercuts everything the organization is trying to do. In this case, the clothing store is selling the way its customers feel about what they buy to wear. It is unreasonable to expect that the kerchif would not interfere with management’s objectives. Can you actually have morale when you have employees selling clothes they wouldn’t be caught dead wearing?

[Albion Wilde]

I’m on your side in this discussion.

[Albion Wilde]

You may be right. I do recall that IKEA had to design special uniform hijabs for their many muslim employees over there in Sweden, many years ago. Hope we do not get forced down the same path of legalized multikulti fascism that has failed Europe so badly.

[GeronL]

I would think so.

[ConservativeMan55]

Taqiyya indeed.

[Eaker]

Why the Sam Hell would anyone ever consider hiring a muslim under any circumstances?

[Eaker]

Its too expensive and too bad for PR to for Abercrombie not to just settle.

Not hiring a muslim should be good PR.