Legendary baseball player Yogi Berra once said, "If people don't want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?" To paraphrase his quote, "If employees don't want to do their work, how are you going to stop them?" Well, in fact, there are different examples, and in this story we’ll tell you about one of such cases.
The story we suggest you read today was first told by the user u/mleam a few months ago and caused quite a lively discussion among netizens and a kind of even religious debate - can you use your faith as an excuse to avoid doing work you don't like?
More info: Reddit
The author of the post has a husband who works as a custodian and also has to check other employees' work
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
One day, he found out that another worker hadn't completed the task of cleaning out the feminine hygiene waste bins
Image credits: mleam
Image credits: EyeEm / Freepik (not the actual photo)
After being asked about this, the worker replied that this is against his religion since he "can't touch this stuff"
Image credits: mleam
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
The author's husband just suspected it was a trick on the guy's side to avoid work and reported him to the supervisor
Image credits: mleam
It all ended in the guy's supervisor giving him a direct order to "put on his gloves and go to work"
So, the Original Poster (OP) says that her husband works as a custodian, and he is one of two employees who report to supervisors about other employees' work. One fine day, while checking the work of one of the janitors (the author suggests calling him K), he found out that he hadn’t emptied the feminine hygiene waste bins in the bathrooms.
The author's husband went to sort it out with the worker, and he told him that he didn’t want to and couldn’t actually touch tampons, pads, and other similar things - simply based on the requirements of his religion. The OP's spouse, barely holding back his laughter, reminded K that he had once told him in a personal conversation that he was a Baptist. K, however, repeated again that he still can't touch this stuff.
Well, after thinking about it, the author's husband decided that religion is religion anyway, but someone still needed to do the work. So in his next report to the supervisor, the man described in detail his conversation with K, as well as the reason why this conversation actually took place. In his opinion, K had simply found a plausible excuse not to fulfill part of his job responsibilities.
Most likely, HR had a similar point of view - because first K had a meeting with them, and then the supervisor literally ordered him to put on gloves and go do his job. In the opinion of our heroine, her husband acted absolutely correctly in this situation, putting work above all else.
Image credits: EyeEm / Freepik (not the actual photo)
Well, some religions do indeed recommend that men do not touch feminine hygiene products, but, as far as I know, Baptism doesn’t directly indicate this. I decided to check and looked in various written sources related to Baptism, and everything only confirmed that the original poster’s husband was right.
Yes, some branches of Christianity - for example, Orthodoxy - don’t recommend, for example, women taking part in certain rituals during menstruation (some Orthodox churches generally forbid attending the temple at this time, considering women during menstruation "unclean"), but even in this case, there is no direct ban on touching tampons and pads for men either.
By the way, in the comments to the original post, several Baptists and former Baptists appeared, who also stated that there is nothing like that in their religion. At the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, this is completely reasonable. Otherwise, how, the responders wondered, would men go to the store for hygiene products for their wives?
The general opinion of people in the comments is that this guy, K, simply wanted to avoid work that he didn’t like and tried to find any excuse to dodge it. Well, in that case, many commenters are pretty sure he could’ve found another job that would not interfere with his faith... So what do you, our dear readers, think about this situation?
People in the comments agreed with the author's spouse, believing that guy was just a slacky worker, nothing more
