He still could not shake the disturbing kitchen scene from his mind. While working at a luxury resort restaurant, he had seen how the chef prepared live lobsters for wealthy guests.
The chef grabbed the writhing creatures from the glass pond where its kept alive and plunged them headfirst into a vat of boiling water. As the temperature seared their flesh, the lobsters thrashed violently in agony. Slowly their movements weakened until death released them from the torture.
Watching their suffering profoundly rattled him. How easily the chef inflicted such cruelty in the name of exclusive gourmet dining. The dark brutality behind this decadent delicacy shattered his perceptions.
In the eyes of the chefs and waitstaff, lobsters were mere sea insects. Not living beings deserving humane treatment. Their indifference to the lobsters’ pain chilled him.
Witnessing that traumatic scene, he swore off ever eating lobster again. He could not stomach benefiting from such gratuitous torture. Even if lobsters lack the complex nerves of mammals, they feel terror and pain as any creature would being boiled alive.
Yet the resort’s wealthy clientele would eagerly devour the lobsters’ cooked flesh without a thought to their agony. Only caring for indulging themselves in the prestige of lobster, regardless of ethical cost.
In retrospect, he sees the lobster’s gruesome end as a metaphor for the resort industry. Where the workers’ humanity and well being mean little next to profits and pampering the elite.
But it is not too late to infuse ethics into business and stand up against needless cruelty. If we open our eyes like he did, our conscience will move us to act more compassionately.
Maldives Resort Workers 