DEAL OR NO DEAL

My life's course has been placid in these past few weeks, my garden of gripes not requiring much in the way of weeding. Then yesterday I helped out at a yard sale held at my parish church, and one little, noxious weed did begin to sprout.

Due to inclement weather the sale was held indoors, in the church space proper and thus would more accurately have been labelled a rummage sale. The pews were rearranged to display the wares and one despaired of getting everything back to normal. If you've ever been to one of these events - there was a lot of junk.

I was one of the people taking cash first for the books, then for the lamps. Towards the end of the day (the sale only ran from 9 until 1:30) we announced that people could fill a bag for $5, which made things go faster. That, of course, did not apply to the lamps, which would not fit into the bags provided. I had been instructed to haggle to a certain point. But.

One woman was willing to take a floor lamp for $5 rather than the $20 marked. That was fair enough, because as I showed her, the cord was missing and it was only useful if she knew how to fix it. There were also two table lamps marked at $5 each, which I allowed to be argued down to $2; there was nothing wrong with them, except they did not have shades. Well, how about $1 each, she suggested. After all - no shades. At that point I stuck to my guns and insisted on $2 each or nothing. And she walked away with the floor lamp, making an offhand remark that implied I was stupid not to sell her the other two.

Actually it struck me that however socially acceptable haggling is becoming, however fun it might be to a certain degree, it is extremely boorish to do so at a charity fundraiser which is already offering goods at dirt cheap prices. If you don't care a fig about the charity in question, so what? It is still people attempting to to some good in the world and you are diminishing their power to do so with your petty pennypinching. The more I think about this, this is a serious moral issue. The acceptability of haggling encourages viciousness and deceit on both sides - sellers overpricing goods because they know buyers will deliberately undervalue them.

The leftover goods at the end of the day went in three directions - some to Goodwill; some to another church which will distribute directly to needy people in their parish; and the rest to the dump. If Madame is upset that she did not get the steal that she wanted, Madame is welcome to rummage through the last destination.

QUEER AS FOLK COGNITIVE DISSONANCE #5

Workplace discrimination? Early in Season Two, Ted gets fired from his boring accounting job after being caught by his boss masturbating at his desk. Actually, he wasn't masturbating - he was viewing a gay sex video and was startled into accidentally spilling liquid into his lap when his boss arrived. But all Ted's co-workers had been watching sex videos as well, and they weren't fired - obviously, Ted thinks, because they are straight. It's a clear case of discrimination!


This must be some workplace! At one point in the day the entire (all-male) accounting department is simultaneously viewing sex videos, in full screen, in an open-concept office where privacy is not assured. Apparently the IT department hasn't noticed the sharp spike in internet usage during some times of the day, nor what sites are being visited. Apparently the managers have never thought of installing filters preventing access to sex sites. But they do have fairly standard policies about inappropriate use of company equipment and inappropriate work behavior, and too bad for Ted, he was caught violating them.


In real life, Ted might talk to his legal advisor who might or might not tell him he had grounds for wrongful dismissal; but in all likelihood, he would not be encouraged to consider it to be flagrantly anti-gay discrimination (as Melanie tells him). I am sure that tightass Mr. Worcshafter would be just as likely to dump any other employee caught engaging in workplace misconduct. (Although it seems he's very near-sighted.)


And the point of this? The writers might have contented themselves with writing a bawdy little satire of how Ted is fired from his job for viewing porn, but turns the tables by creating a new job for himself as a producer of same. There was no need to try to shoehorn in another dubious moral.