Ah yes supermarkets, those hubs of progressive enlightenment. Pronouns are on sale this week.
A Sainsbury’s supermarket in Edinburgh has introduced pronoun name badges for staff to avoid misgendering staff members.
Meaning…so that staff won’t “misgender” colleagues? Or so that everyone, including customers, will avoid doing that murderous thing? The wording is clumsily ambiguous.
Workers at the Murrayfield supermarket have been wearing tags that declare their preferred gender pronouns, such as she/her or they/them.
Managers and cis colleagues have also been adding their pronouns to their badges to show solidarity to the LGBTQ+ community.
Cis colleagues? What does that mean? Are there trans colleagues there too? People who identify as Sainsbury’s staff but don’t actually get paid?
I think somebody should start a custom of wearing badges that declare one’s favorite adjectives. Adjectives are way more interesting than pronouns. Pronouns are just the dull functional undergirding, adjectives are where the fun starts. I’ll start the betting with “intransigent.”
It comes as Asda announced a similar move to make their workers feel more inclusive by introducing pronoun badges for staff to help avoid the “distress” of misgendering colleagues.
Nonsense, the “distress” is the whole point. Bespoke pronouns are there to trap people and provide occasions for displays of righteous correctitude.
Comments
32 responses to “To make their workers feel more inclusive”
Next step: force their customers to wear said tags.
As for adjectives, I’ll take “irreverent”.
If that happens, What a Maroon, my tag will say “Paper/Plastic.”
I have been thinking about this and when the day comes people want to know my pronouns I hope to have the courage to answer: “his majesty” and “majestic”
I had a high school teacher tell me I was “obstreperous.” After I looked it up, I made myself a button that said something like “Hi, I’m obstreperous, what are you?”
Hahaha my brother and I used to call each other Obny for Obnoxious.
I’m afraid honesty compels me to choose the adjective “obtuse”. I just have such a hard time wrapping my mind around all this genders and identity politics stuff. Sorry about that; I just can’t keep up.
Someone once told me I was indefatigable. Maybe that should be mine. Does it work for me if my gender is plaid?
iknklast, I thought your gender was otter, no?
She’s gender fluid, alright! She can be otter, or plaid, or an indefatigable plaid otter if she wants to be. Damn, I used her and she. Crime.
Yes, scarred for life she is. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
What a bizarre fantasy land these people live in. On what planet do people go to a supermarket and have conversations with the cashiers and assistants? Conversations are perfunctory: ‘excuse me, where’s the dog food?’ or ‘hi, I can’t get this packet to scan’; or they are polite natter: ‘looks like a busy day’, ‘hi, how ya doing’. Maybe even – brace yourself – ‘g’day’.
Not once have I seen a person refer to the cashier or shelf stacker in the third person, because that is not how conversations work. Third person pronouns are only going to be used if I speak to one cashier about another cashier, and who the hell has done that? And what a weird conversation that would be. “Hi, not bad thanks, and you? Cool. Say…” *cranes neck around to see the neighbouring cashier’s pronoun badge* “… her hair’s a nice colour! No, no bag thanks.”
This is all performative. None of this has any relevance to any real, normal conversations; this is purely a wokeness cred move for PR.
Oh and most importantly, when my home group teacher abandoned his attempts to get me to tuck my shirt in a do me hair, he called me incorrigible. Once I had looked it up, I thoroughly approved of it.
@Harald Hanche-Olsen #6
Obtuse? What’s your angle?
That’s my local supermarket. I don’t think I have ever referred to any of the staff in the third person. My conversations with them have been, “thanks for that” or “I have some vouchers,” or “I always have problems with the Nectar card scan” or “where do you keep the planters?” All quite friendly.
Sounds like corporate queer-washing to me, and the poor employees had no say about it.
Also, this supermarket is not in your Hampstead-type part of town (the Edinburgh equivalent would be Stockbridge). Its clientele is the better off who come by car, and the immediate neighbourhood, which is working-class and immigrant. I’d imagine most of them aren’t woke types at all and will find this weird.
One thing that’s been bugging me about pronoun display is that it’s sexualizing the workplace. What it you don’t want to display something that’s related to your sexuality because you’d rather keep it private? Also, too, my boss has no business forcing me to make that sort of thing public.
Colin Day,
What a cute statement.
Definitely indefatigable plaid otter. Do you think that would all fit on a name badge? I wouldn’t want someone to misgender me.
KBPlayer
March 26, 2021 at 2:10 pm
I trust they were made to feel valid?
@AoS – Not always – quite often out of date, the wrong side of history in fact.
The State of California is now including this vital information in their bureaucrats’ email signatures. Not universally adopted, I might note. Which means it is, indeed, performative signaling of wokeness among those who do add it to Harry Wonk, Housing Policy Analyst.
Myself, I would choose “unfiltered”. Or at least that is the adjective given to me by coworkers.
Yes, the oh-so-woke California SJW crowd. I will not be legally compelled to use certain pronouns, or refer to myself as “cis” or anything of the sort. I calls ’em like I sees ’em, and if you’re a man who isn’t presenting as a woman enough to fool me, then I’m gonna call you he, him, his. If you aren’t presenting as a woman enough to fool me and you ask me nicely, well, maybe I’ll refer to you in your preferred pronouns out of sheer courtesy and politeness, but I’ll be goddamned if you’re gonna force me to.
This shit came up as legislation in the Canada C-16 bill, which was effectively and reasonably opposed by Jordan Peterson. I don’t agree with Dr. Peterson on a lot of things, but he absolutely nailed the argument against it way back in 2016.
I have sometimes talked about a supermarket worker in third person. Ex: I notice the milk carton is crushed on the corner, just as I get to the register. Checker calls another employee to take away damaged carton and return with an undamaged one. Either the checker or I might say, “he’ll/she’ll/they’ll be back in a minute.”
It won’t be long before staff are handing back the badges because they’re sick of being asked ‘What’s that all about, then?’ a hundred times a day by unwokened shoppers not aware that the assistant on the cheese counter, all appearances to the contrary, might not be a bearded bloke but a laydee, don’tcha know. They may be further disheartened by what I predict will be the average response to their explanations, namely ‘You’re fucking kidding, right?’
I cancelled my longstanding subscription to the Tate recently. (Major art galleries in London, Liverpool and St Ives, for those not familiar with the English arts scene.) I wasn’t making much use of it even without lockdown, and the forthcoming programme looked very boring apart from Paula Rego. I got an e-mail back from someone who’d printed his pronouns in rainbow colours below his name, so I replied that any doubts I’d had over cancellation were now dispelled.
Re Holms #11 – I often have conversations with staff in my local supermarket that go beyond the weather, though I haven’t got as far as discussing their colleagues with them. If they do start to sport badges stating the mostly obvious (one is FTM I think) I shall ask if they do so voluntarily.
Conversations are definitely the done thing in my nabe. Occasionally they’re so much so that I get twitchy, because the chat has displaced the actual process of paying for the groceries and then getting out of the way. Mostly, though, I like it, because it’s friendly and kind of villagey.
I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating. There’s a coffee shop in Madison, WI, that has a sign by the cash register instructing customers to use “they” pronouns when referring to any staff member. Which gets me wondering: do they only hire enbies? And if not, what would they do if one of the employees insists on pronouns consistent with their sex?
Fortunately Madison is both a college town and a state capital, so there are plenty of other coffee shops where they don’t require wokeness from their clientele.
What a Maroon @29
In Madison, WI, huh. Figures. Color me not surprised.
Ophelia, that’s the norm here, too. Of course, this city is small enough that a lot of people know a lot of other people. I had a short conversation with a worker at the deli the other day, because he is one of my students. I frequently have conversations with students, former students, and other people I have encountered. Of course, I usually “know” their pronouns…or at least, I know that they’ve never confronted me over them. And I don’t need to know their pronouns to say “Hi! Haven’t seen you in a while. How’ve things been?” and “That’s great.”
You is a nice pronoun; it doesn’t have any specific gender, can be used for any gender, fluid or not. You can even use it when talking to plaid otters.
@Colin Day #13
Damn near straight …