It recently occurred to me that many retail choices make no sense whatsoever. For example, the most common place to buy cigarettes is at a gas station. A gas station is the last place on earth where you’d want to light a match, much less walk around with a burning ember in your mouth.

Liquor stores are often located next door to tanning salons. To me, this suggests that you take the edge of your radiation burn by downing a fifth of Southern Comfort.

It’s all relative, I tell you.

However, what bothers me the most is the local butcher. Yes, that harmless man who carves cow and poultry corpses for our amusement and enjoyment. The man whom we trust with the job, which we fear the most: connecting our food with dead animals.

If you walk into any grocery store you’ll find the butcher standing behind his glass case, proudly surveying his flayed meat, glistening in the cool, harsh light of the fluorescent bulbs. He knows what part of the animal each cut of meat came from. He knows, so that we don’t have to. He does the dirty work and we’re willing to pay him a premium for derumping a heifer for our roast. We trust that “tender loins” is just a phrase, and are happy that they aren’t named “tender crotch.” He calls it “milk-fed veal” so that we don’t have to call it “imprisoned, crippled, force-fed, tortured baby steer.” It’s “sausage” not “scraped from the floor leftovers stuffed into intestines, flavored for ripeness.”

But, the only thing that bothers me about the butcher is their uniform. Their job is to carve meat. A bloody, gross job. Why do they wear white coats? They emerge from the fright-inducing back room splattered in blood, looking like a back-alley plastic surgeon who has lost his license and performs nose jobs for a rock of crack and sexual favors. Blood stained, pristine white coats and goggles to protect their eyes from flying meat debris that is deflected off their gleaming sharp instruments.

Why white coats, which soak up and display the remnants of their gruesome task so well? White coats. Like doctors. People, whom we are supposed to respect, admire and trust.

Who do we see more of? The doctor? No, we like to avoid him because he has odd, cold, clammy hands that massage and prod our bodies looking for what may possibly a life-threatening tumor lodged deep inside our soft parts. No, we see the butcher who gives us lovely, red, beautiful meat. Meat we will gather around as a family and admire as it is screaming and searing on the grill.

We associate the doctor with sickness and life saving work. We associate the butcher with cold beer, picnics and tangy sauces. And, bloody clothes.

I think we should allow the butcher to wear multi-colored clothes that befits his industry. Giving him a white coat makes him look like a screaming, insane scientist performing horrible experiments in the backroom. We envision the Island of Dr. Moreau, not Fun Time With Meats and Sauces.

I propose that we provide our butchers with a nice burgundy outfit, with coordinated, comfortable shoes. We should call him Mister and never, ever mention what he does for a living. We should thank him, but look blankly at the ground so as to not make eye contact.

And let’s change his title to “Meat Artiste.” Butcher just sounds udderly barbaric.