House of Eratosthenes

Make sure you aren’t alone in the children’s section of your local bookstore if male (thanks to the reader who sent this):

Barnes & Noble has apologized after a senior citizen said staff at one of the retail giant’s Arizona stores ejected him because he was on his own in the children’s area.

Omar Amin claimed a store worker told him a female shopper had complained he was in the children’s area in the store in Scottsdale, The Arizona Republic reported.

The 73-year-old, who was alone at the time, said he was in the store to buy books for his two grandchildren, who live in Wisconsin.

He told the newspaper, “Men alone cannot be by themselves in the children’s area.

At least they apologized, though this is a sad state of affairs. Notice that just a woman telling the store that a man alone was in the aisle was enough to get this man ejected from the store. Have you noticed that a female voice telling an “authority” that a man is a possible threat is enough to convict him of ill-doing without any real proof? Pretty soon, men will not be allowed out in public unescorted by a woman or some authority. It’s pretty pathetic.

The story to which Dr. Helen links, expounds somewhat on the bookstore’s apology:

Mark Bottini, Barnes & Noble vice president and director of stores, issued a statement Monday apologizing to Amin.

“We want to apologize to Dr. Amin for a situation in which Dr. Amin was asked to leave the children’s section of our Scottsdale, Arizona store,” Bottini said.

“We should not have done so. It is not our policy to ask customers to leave any section of our stores without justification. We value Dr. Amin as a customer and look forward to welcoming him in any of our stores.”

Dr. H calls this a “war on men.” I wish the term applied better than it does; most wars are declared, they are fought, and hopefully one side or the other will prevail within a short time and it will all become part of history.

Where a real war is somewhat akin to an explosion, this is more like a slow-burn. The problem is with the drawing of lines. Good manners, and the desire to live in and help buttress a strong, well-functioning society, these all demand a certain deference to the fairer sex. It takes a certain sophistication to be able to maintain that without treating the male as a second-class citizen.

What we’ve done in some quarters is, somehow, to eject all the things that really are part of this code of chivalry, while retaining all the things that are not. Offering your umbrella to a lady during a downpour, opening the door for her, removing your hat, these are thought to be antiquated notions. But losing arguments to her, even when the facts are not on her side, is like a minimal, baseline obligation; as is, on occasion, ejecting people from retail establishments and other environments when they haven’t done anything wrong.

Wondering if I’d consider going back, were I in Dr. Amin’s shoes. Seems like a drastic measure to hold the entire franchise accountable for the actions of one delusional female shopper, plus a power-mad clerk with poor judgment. On the other hand, accepting the apology with a “no harm, no foul” attitude seems almost like acquiescing to a caste system. The problem, as I see it through this situation and with some others, is that once a woman’s feelings enter into conflict with a man’s interests and truth & fact are not squaring with her beliefs, some sort of injustice becomes an inevitability. We seem to have developed this impulse to declare reality subordinate to good manners, and then go further, looking for the earliest & easiest opportunity to display our hostility toward the reality.

All this, while you stand a good chance of being mocked and ridiculed, maybe even scolded, if you pursue the more traditional & sensible notions of Vive la Difference. Stand and offer her your seat on the bus? What’re you tryin’ to say? How dare you.

I long for the day when women claim to feel “offended” or “threatened,” and are told by the authority figures to go pound sand, at least unless they can come up with something substantial.
- cylarz | 06/06/2012 @ 23:10
Other than the clerk’s say-so, is there ANY evidence that some (un-named, un- produced, etheral) other customer-person actually “complained”?
- CaptDMO | 06/07/2012 @ 04:35
Seriously, how ridiculous is that? As a mom, even if I were a bit concerned, I would have just kept a closer eye on my children. And the clerk deserves to be fired. Having worked in the public sector, I can tell you with absolute authority that I would NOT have done that. This isn’t just about the “gender wars”, it’s also a huge indication of how we are teaching (or have taught) people how to handle various situations. I think I’ll be working on that with my kids later today just so I’ll know that they have enough sense to be let out of the house some day.
- delicountessa | 06/07/2012 @ 04:43
I have some recent experience with this, having been drummed out of a supposedly-conservative Facebook group after a cabal of witchy women started stirring it up over something I said…interestingly, I was “shown the door” after the admin, reviewing all my comments looking for something particularly egregious and admitting he didn’t find what he thought he’d find, gutlessly concluded “with all this smoke there must be a fire somewhere” and laid it down. I respected his wishes and left them to deliberate in private what a misogynist I am (after having taught them how to spell it).

My take-away from it is that there is a uniquely female problem with costs & benefits. In that situation, I saw a lot of people, not all of them female, reaching rather extravagant conclusions about the things I think, me being a person most of them don’t know at all…and speaking with GREAT confidence on behalf of others with whom it didn’t seem they were actually coordinating, except in the most passionate & casual ways. Our society seems to have some weird thoughts about men & women speaking on behalf of other women; it seems to anticipate that the women will never say “Hey now, that’s not right, that’s not what I think”…that they’re way too timid. Or that if ever there is a cost involved in doing this, it will be far offset by the benefits.

Ironically, there’s a rather nasty streak of sexism wrapped up in that idea all by itself. You say something on behalf of many other men, you should automatically be thinking “This is reckless…there’s bound to be one or two jackasses in that crowd who don’t go along, and when this gets back to them there is going to be trouble.” But people start speaking on behalf of other women, such a thought is not even close to their minds. They get a swagger in their step. Especially the ones who behave in the exact opposite way at other times, like it’s a chance for the beta-males to play some catch-up. I’m very sure that’s what happened here.
- mkfreeberg | 06/07/2012 @ 06:11
While I do generally say something if I feel someone is being maligned, I’ve experienced similar over different types of subjects. Especially if I’m not as offended by something a Lefty has said that the crowd thinks I ought to be. Then, yeah, the crowd rule/intimidation tactics set in.
About the only real “gender reference” that gets me partially riled up is when hubby uses “like a girl” as an insult. Mostly that is because I have ONE girl (Who is also the next to the youngest child) in a crowd of boys and I don’t want her to think that “like a girl” is bad. Different from a boy? Yep… bad? Nope. Now that she is not a toddler/young child any more, I’m less protective about it, but it still irks me. Except now, of course, since Sarah Palin told Obama to “Fight Like a Girl” I have to say, we’re rather cool with that one. LOVE Sarah.
- delicountessa | 06/07/2012 @ 06:37
BUT I still think you’re missing the greater point of the story you posted. Customers of both genders complain. Everyone knows if you are dealing with customers, you’re going to hear complaints. Some are valid and some are ridiculous. The whole thing would have been a non-issue if someone had bothered to teach the clerk how to handle those situations. So some woman complained. Big deal. The complaint should have been handled with some tact and a healthy dose of kindness instead of that nonsense.
Cylarz says “I long for the day when women claim to feel “offended” or “threatened,” and are told by the authority figures to go pound sand, at least unless they can come up with something substantial.” Which is exactly what should have happened in a more diplomatic way. If the clerk had been taught by the parental unit(s) how to talk to people and hopefully diffuse situations that may be tense, then it would have been a non-story—as it should have been.
- delicountessa | 06/07/2012 @ 06:44
No, I agree, I’m not missing that point at all. The clerk screwed up, and I’m sure his training was inadequate…although, lacking even that, one would have to hope common sense would kick in.

This actually ties in to what I was saying about the incentives. We respond to things we aren’t even allowed to notice exist, like the fact that the complainant is a female. If it was a male complaining, I’m sure the clerk would feel very confident saying to his superiors “some guy made a bogus complaint, and I found out it was stupid…” But — a woman complains about a creepy old guy in the childrens’ section and, well, the dynamics are a little different.

It’s not just fear of the accusation of failure to exercise due diligence. And it isn’t concern over the due diligence itself. There’s a carrot being chased here. “I’m going to stand up for the girls and earn some female approval.” It’s a beta-male problem. In fact, that’s probably a good definition of beta-male right there: Female approval, in the everyday walk-of-life, is not commonly received and therefore becomes a precious commodity, to be pursued. And then every female encountered becomes a mommy. Does it go all the way back to the parents? Yeah, you’re probably right; at the very least, there’s a lot that Mom and Dad can do about this while the kid’s being raised.
- mkfreeberg | 06/07/2012 @ 07:25
Yeah, you are right. I didn’t think of it that way until later. Or, if it had been an old lady instead of an old man, they would have thought the complainer was insane. Even, possibly, said “maybe she’s looking for something for her grandchildren.”
- delicountessa | 06/07/2012 @ 15:24

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Grandpa Ejected From Children’s SectionWednesday, June 6th, 2012

Grandpa Ejected From Children’s Section
Wednesday, June 6th, 2012