Blame us for having Thanksgiving turkey on our minds. Blame us for having a laugh — still — about the meat activist budtender who lost his job last week, when he refused to sign the vegan-owned dispensary’s employment agreement prohibiting meat on the premises. Or just blame us for being high.
Either way, we can’t stop musing about other reasons — some might argue better reasons — to fire a budtender than a turkey sandwich.
1. Bringing a Tofurky sandwich to work.
Imagine the owner of Cattleman’s Steakhouse decides to diversify into Oklahoma’s Green Rush™, opening a dispensary that specializes in cannabis-infused meat rubs. Dick’s employment policy would likely ban from the premises all vegan meat-substitutes like Tofurky and Beyond Meat…and even questionable items like hummus, kale and broccoli sprouts. Indigo Girl budtender has a suspicious looking sandwich in the dispensary fridge, which leads to a confrontation and a confession: It was goddamn Tofurky sandwich! Of all things! You’re fucking fired, Indigo — fair is fair.
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2. Arriving to work on time.
Being a punctual pot head makes the rest of us look bad and forces us to run on square time. Sometimes that means not taking that last toke, before rushing out the door in a haze of ambiguous time. This may be counter-intuitive to a dispensary owner, but think of your target market: Budtenders coming to work on time just makes the entire medical marijuana community look (and feel) bad! Punctuality should be grounds for immediate termination. Unless I’m the one standing at the dispensary door at 9:59 a.m.
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3. Not being hot enough.
According to Tulsa comic and Happy Ogle writer, Trever, some dispensaries build their images around beauty. At these dispensaries, it may be necessary to fire people whose perceived attractiveness has diminished since being hired. Maybe a bout of acne has plagued a beguiling beauty…or maybe one of the guys has started looking more ‘hobo’ than ‘hipster’ (that shit is a fine line, and you know it). If budtenders fall short of their employment agreement to be attractive, they are done! Fired! Just to be clear, even the budtenders fired for not being hot enough are still at least five times better looking than you will ever be. So don’t gloat.
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4. Unpleasant breath.
Obviously your budtender does not trust you to take hold of that jar of green gold without hovering around (and sometimes inside!) your personal bubble of space. It’s a tacit agreement both sides tolerate. But for that reason, dispensaries may choose to have budtenders sign agreements to maintain Larry David-level minty breath while on the clock. No one wants to smell what their budtender had for lunch or see those gross cotton-mouth blobs stretching from between the corners of their lips as they answer all of your dumb questions. Step outside for a lunchtime bake sesh and forget to brush those pearly beiges before sliding back behind the counter? Agreement broken. Fired!
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5. Not being on-brand.
Whether the budtender did not have the correct tattoo:piercing ratio; didn’t look ironic enough; or gave off too warm of a vibe (aloofness is key, sometimes), this is a violation. Everyone wants to buy weed from a guy that looks like Joe Exotic, if it’s at a tiger-themed dispensary. When a dispensary has a unique vibe, budtenders should agree as a condition of employment to look and act the part: Hippie, Hipster, Rasta, Woke Healer, etc. This goes for you, too unemployed meat activist: You worked in vegan dispensary named Friendly Market, and putting slices of turkey flesh between slices of white bread is not particularly friendly. Sorry, Chad, you are fucking fired!
