B&H and Adorama Closed!

none wrote:

B&H has lost some of my money because of their frequent closings.
However, it is a privately owned buisness, which can be operated however
its owners like, as long as they do not break the law.

Personally, I would be more concerned about their hiring practices,
which seem like they might be discriminatory on the basis of both
ethnicity and religion. I have not met every B&H employee, but it does
seem like all of their employees are Hasidic Jews.

-Mike

Gee, imagine that. The amish roof metal guy down the road seems to
only have amish working for him. He has the best prices around all
you got to do is show up when daylight is shining. Don't expect to
call to check inventory.

Now the accounting manager working for a publicly traded company where
I used to work that only had Catholics working in his department
bothered me a bunch. Fwiw, the company president, another Catholic,
didn't seem to have a litmus test as he hired for ability and what he
could pay.

I suspect that b&h is willing to and has hired gentiles. I am also
sure they have hired hasidic jews since one tends to hire out of a
pool vouched for by the people of your social circle. I bet the
hasidic jews tend to stay longer than gentiles that find the work
hours strange at best.

Many of my brothers jobs as an electrician come from leads obtained
from members of his church. Was that discrimination or discrimination?

Wes


ps


For those that don't get english:

Discrimination

1. The act of discriminating.
2. The ability or power to see or make fine distinctions;
discernment.
3. Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather
than individual merit; partiality or prejudice: racial discrimination;
discrimination against foreigners.

[BnH] wrote:
Obviously you have not been to any moslem countries
Try looking for a local delicacy during the month of Ramadhan and I can say
to you .. good luck

Or to Israel, where during Passover, there are long lines at the
Arab-owned bakeries. They bring the bread out to your car, in order to
prevent double-parking, so traffic doesn't become even worse.

(PeteCresswell) wrote:
Per carrigman:

I think it is
outrageous for these two firms to treat its customers like this.


When's the last time anybody found stores open on Christmas Day in a
predominately Christian area? I've seen it, but my thought has always been
that somebody should get a life and just close the place for that day.

Not stores, but Chinese restaurants are very busy on Christmas day, with
non-Christian customers. It's almost a Jewish tradition to eat Chinese
food on Christmas day.

Don Wiss wrote:
On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 09:09:13 -0400, Charles wrote:


The other major stores in New York are open because most Jews are not
of that Orthodox persuasion like most of those employed at B&H and
Adorama. And no, they don't have enough employees who are not of that
Orthodox persuasion to keep the stores open.


Actually in the Orthodox community there is a bit of disagreement about not
working for the entire Sukkos period. All agree that they can't work at the
beginning and end, but some feel it is okay to work in the middle. So in
the middle days many take a middle position. They don't go into work, but
they will do work at home. And then some do go into work on the middle
days.

Hell, they can't even agree if legumes are okay on Passover!

Neil Harrington wrote:

Those are all national holidays. People know when the national holidays are
and on a few of them, expect at least some businesses to be closed or be
open only for shorter hours. Also, each of those holidays is ONE DAY and
therefore does not pose much of an inconvenience, compared to a religious
holiday that lasts several days or a week.

Technically, the stores could open during the time between Rosh Hashanah
and Yom Kippur, but they choose to shut down. It's almost like the
forced shutdowns many companies have between Xmas and New Years.

Neil Harrington wrote:

A Jewish friend of mine told me that very observant Jews would not even
carry pocket change for parking meters or public telephones on the Sabbath,
the idea being that even the use of those devices was considered a manner of
conducting business.

Since observant Jews don't drive on the sabbath, they probably don't
have much use for pocket change for parking meters.

ASAAR wrote:
On 22 Oct 2005 17:58:53 -0700, wrote:

They may not have been directly hired by B&H. There may have been
an ad agency involved, so they'd be working for the agency, not for
B&H. I occasionally hear B&H ads on the radio. I suppose I'll now
be inclined to notice on which days of the week they appear. B&H
does advertise in magazines, and it would be unreasonable to think
they'd consider prohibiting newstands from selling magazines
containing their ads on Saturdays and religious holidays.

Crap...

There's a lot of that around lately, usually somewhere in your
vicinity.

Are you claiming to be an expert on crap?

Newsstands sell magazines for their own benefit. They don't work
for B&H. And it is irrelevant whose ads are in the mags.

So what else is new? If you're trying to prove that you're
clueless you're doing an excellent job.

On the contrary, the fact that you could no longer address what I said
in an intelligent manner proves that you are the one that is clueless.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

carrigman wrote:
I'm just back from a trip to New York City where high on my agenda
was a visit to B&H to buy a Canon lens. Off I went one morning only
to find the store closed for the week...
All to do with a Jewish holiday, I understand. Surely they have enough
non-Jewish employees to cater for the rest of us?

Maybe they don't have enough gentile employees to provide the level of
service they want to provide. I sure can understand not wanting to provide
second class service. That is far worse than no service.

I suspect that

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 22:34:21 -0400, "Neil Harrington"
wrote:


"Nikon User" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Neil Harrington" wrote:

I have never heard a Jew complain about Christians that close their
businesses on Sundays.

Ever heard of Christians closing their businesses for several days or
a week at a time, for religious reasons?

Several days, yes; a week, no.

What sort of business would close for several days?

I am not religious and had to look this up on Google: The holiest week for
Christians, particularly Catholics, is called ahem Holy Week. It's the
last week of Lent and includes some holy days that I never heard of before
(and I was born and raised Catholic). The only one of those days that's
actually observed as a holiday, anywhere, as far as I know, is Good Friday.
I live in one of the few states that observes Good Friday as a state holiday
(lots of Catholics here). I don't know of a single *business* that closes on
Good Friday, though there may be some for all I know, but state employees
and perhaps municipal workers get the day off or comp time.

I will say, very gently, that the fact that you don't know everything
Is not surprising.
I don't, either.



But normally, businesses owned by observant Jews are closed for the two
days of Rosh Hashannah and the day of Yom Kippur, but are open during
the week in between. If a business closes for the entire period, it's
still only a week and a half, not for most of the month as some people
here have said.

And if they do close for that entire ten-day period, what is the big
deal?

Other than inconveniencing customers, you mean?

It should be obvious that this is not their intent. Instead, it is
their intent to honor their God, in the way they think is best.
That a customer is inconvenienced is a by-product, and is certainly
not something that they believe should overcome the real intent.
While it may be inconvenient to you, there are probebaly far more
things that are far more 'inconvenient.' Perspective and respect for
other ways might help here.



This is not like "blue laws" where the *government* *forces* the
businesses to close.

Right. But there aren't any blue laws that force businesses to close for
several days or a week or more, so that's not a very helpful comparison.


--
Bill Funk
Replace "g" with "a"
funktionality.blogspot.com

ASAAR wrote:
On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 17:59:25 GMT, none wrote:


Personally, I would be more concerned about their hiring practices,
which seem like they might be discriminatory on the basis of both
ethnicity and religion. I have not met every B&H employee, but it does
seem like all of their employees are Hasidic Jews.


That's the problem with stereotypes and profiles. They allow one
to make jump to conclusions that are flat-out wrong. Of course I
may be doing the same, as I assume that the very nice black employee
that helped me a couple of months ago wasn't a Hasidic Jew. I think
there are also one or two oriental employees, and a number of others
that don't wear traditional Hasidic garb.

B&H has PLENTY of employees who are not Hasidic. In fact, I don't know
how anyone who's ever been to their store could think otherwise.