The Unethicist: What Doesn't Kill You Brings You That Much Closer to Death

"The Ethicist" is Randy Cohen's long-running advice column in the New York Times. Each week, Worker #3116's "The Unethicist" will answer the same questions as "The Ethicist," with obvious differences.
I am a hospital physician. My department schedules us to work a few weekends a year. Like other doctors, I'm occasionally assigned to split a pair of weekends with someone who makes religious observance on Saturdays, so that he can work two Sundays, burdening me with two weekends of obligation. Is it O.K. to make me accommodate someone else's religious practices? Name Withheld
Oh, you are so cute! "I'm occasionally assigned to split a pair of weekends with someone who works as a dishwasher and has a lot of family living in the south." "I'm occasionally assigned to split a pair of weekends with someone whose children excel at math and science and who inverts his l's and his r's." "I'm occasionally assigned to split a pair of weekends with someone who has a great, seemingly innate sense of rhythm and eats a lot of chicken." So, you work with a Jew. On to your adorable question, Baby Hitler.
Man, you would sort of think that six years of medical school or whatever would kind of beat the bitch out of you, but I guess not. "I've been asked to come in and save lives ... ON THE WEEKEND!" I'm sure you've got an extra box of tissues in your BMW 335i for all your salty bitch tears.
Maybe instead of complaining about how some Jew has Jewed you out of your Saturday afternoons normally spent ignoring your wife and shopping on the Hammacher and Schlemmer website for The World's Best ball shaver, you should remember why you got into this business in the first place: all that fucking cash. Dude, how awesome is that?!
You could also get a hobby, like building your own synagogue and then burning it down in hateful protest.
I teach fourth grade. I've heard about CDs of soothing music with subliminal messages implanted in them designed to improve learning and concentration. Would it be ethical to play these for my class? If so, is parental permission required? D.T., California
I've always thought that children were basically retarded. They don't know anything! I'm smarter than every child I've ever met. But apparently adults are retarded, too. And by adults, I mean you.
Anyway, Algernon, you should DEFINITELY play these CDs for your students, if only because I think it would be cuter than a picnic basket of orphan puppies to see a bunch of 10-year-olds go all Heaven's Gate, with the black sweat pants and the purple armbands and the phenobarbital-vodka coolers. To space, little children! Death space!
If I were you, though, I wouldn't tell their parents. Parents are always deluded into thinking that their children are soooo special, and sooo unique, and such precious little snowflakes who shouldn't participate in a mass suicide cult. Parents are always like "oh, we don't want our children working in factories until they're adults," and "oh, we don't want our children being brainwashed and living on a freakish commune where they're castrated and ritually sodomized." Grow up! Your kids suck! When I was their age we were castrated and ritually sodomized uphill both ways in a snowstorm, and we liked it!