restaurants

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When is a Byzantine cross just a tattoo and when is it a reason to ask another question?

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On one level, this is a simple story about Culture Wars American in 2019.

A trans woman, a regular customer, is eating dinner in a local restaurant in a corner of America — the upper Midwest — where liberal and conservative citizens regularly bump into one another.

A pair of elderly locals is seated nearby and they make some unfriendly comments about the transexuals — not to the trans customer, but to their waitress. The waitress is triggered, when her boss insists that she serve these customers The woke NBC News double-decker headline outlines the outcome of this exchange in the marketplace of ideas:

'Morals over money': Waitress fired after refusing to serve transphobic customers

"Turning a blind eye to hate is just as bad as saying the hateful things in my opinion," the waitress, Brittany Spencer, said.

This is the stuff of shallow television news reports, of course. But here is the question that haunted a GetReligion reader: “Did anyone think to ask what's on her neck and what relevance it might have to morals??”

The waitress, you see, is heavily inked and she has a large, prominent tattoo on her neck that raises some interesting religious issues.

This tattoo includes a large Byzantine cross, of the style favored in Eastern churches — Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholic — in Slavic lands and elsewhere.

But the cross is upside down.


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Culture of Chick-fil-A? A holy ghost in the eye-popping minimum wage planned by this franchisee

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In my first regular job, I flipped burgers at McDonald's for $3.35 an hour.

That was the minimum wage when I was a high school junior in the mid-1980s.

With inflation, the comparable amount today would be $6.62 an hour. The federal minimum wage is, of course, $7.25 an hour.

I bring up those figures in light of an eye-popping news out of California, as reported by The Washington Post:

By 2022, the minimum wage in California will rise to $15. But the owner of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Sacramento plans to go ahead and raise the wages of his employees now, offering a huge bump to $17 to $18 from the $12 to $13 he pays now.

The sizable raise represents a possible new high-water mark for fast-food workers, say restaurant industry analysts, at a time when competition for even unskilled labor is rising amid low unemployment, greater immigration scrutiny and fewer teenagers seeking to work in fast-food jobs. While analysts can't say whether a $17 to $18 hourly wage is the highest in the country for front-line fast-food workers, it certainly appears to be among the higher ones, said David Henkes, a senior principal with Technomic, a restaurant research and consulting firm.

"We’re seeing a lot of operators that are in that $12 to $15 range, especially in higher-price areas like California, but that’s sort of a new threshold," he said. "In an era of 3.9 percent unemployment, restaurants — which typically are not seen as the most attractive of jobs — are struggling to not only fill jobs but then retain workers." 

Here's a strange question, one that won't sound so strange to those familiar with Chick-fil-A: Is there any chance that this story is haunted by a holy ghost? Any chance at all?

After all, Chick-fil-A closes its restaurants on Sundays so employees can rest. When is the last time you read a story about the Atlanta-based chain that didn't include a reference to the Christian faith of the chain's owners (or their beliefs on marriage)?


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Associated Press skirts key element of 'tips for Jesus' story

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As anyone who’s done it can testify — or, to be candid, so I’ve heard — waitering is a tough job. People are rude, hours are long, and wages are often sub-sub-minimum wage, all in the hope of getting some tips. Thus it ever has been, apparently, and thus it ever shall be.


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