"All Men are Pigs!"

This is the greeting I received at the checkout line at the Bearden Earth Fare in Knoxville yesterday. After work, I was driving by, had a coupon and thought I would stop by to pick up something for dinner. At the cash register, the women who worked there were congregated around talking, and finally after a few moments, the cashier started to ring up my order and stated to me that she had to impart her words of wisdom that "All Men are Pigs!" to the younger female grocery bagger. The younger woman, a petulant looking twenty-something yelled back, "Yeah, all Men are Pigs!" and started to laugh.

If you have been reading this blog, you know I was not a happy camper. I said to the younger woman, "All men are not pigs" to which she replied,"Well, they are pigs...but I guess not all are, some are okay." To which I replied, "I bet there is no way you would have stood here and said "All Women are Pigs! There is no way you would say that in public." Her response? "Well, we're all pigs." Great, so she thinks her customers are pigs too.

I could tell the older cashier understood that they had made a mistake. But after all, they were in their comfort zone. A health food store where organic food spelled liberalism and an intolerance for those people male or conservative. Grocery bagger girl quickly changed the subject to "paper or plastic." I stared at her as I got my bags and she looked at me with a mixture of intimidation, confusion and perhaps, hatred. I left. But I hope that next time these women feel free to play out their male-bashing meme at work in front of the general public, they will remember that not all of their female customers agree with the good old girl network.

Update: Earth Fare responds in the comments:

Dear Ms. Smith:

We are so sorry that you encountered this type of behavior in one of our stores. We respect all of our customers and are saddened that you had to deal with this sort of behavior.

We are dealing with the problem now. And, thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Sincerely,

Misty Faucheux
Social Media Manager
Earth Fare