Cancel Culture Wins as Marc’s Famous Parrot’s Get Put Out to Pasture

Mean Karen’s Petition Are Parrot's Undoing

In 1979, the shopping world of Cleveland changed forever when Marc Glassman opened up Marc’s at Southland Shopping Center in Middleburg Heights. Being only 2 miles away and being the last of ten children, the great prices and unique closeout section with “deep discount” pricing was a game changer for my family. It was still very new when a fire burnt the original store down after a madman arsonist set fire to the adjacent JC Penney’s  but came back bigger and better than ever with a grand reopening and a new attraction - parrots in the back of the store to add to the unique nature only a Marc’s store has. Marc’s is truly a Cleveland thing to those who know.

Marc’s empire has grown from that Southland store to 51 others and had flirted with a multistate chain for a time. Glassman has been a true driving force to the economic engine of the Greater Cleveland area expanding into the restaurant business as well in recent years.

 I remember being about 10 and walking up to the store multiple times a week to purchase what seemed to be a never ending supply of cap guns and ammo long before cancel culture did away with what was a very fun children’s toy from a bygone age. I still visit the store about once a week but something changed just a few months ago. Cancel culture has killed off the zany nature of the store as a petition was set forth to get rid of the parrots at the stores. According to a store clerk, when I asked what had happened to the parrots, I was told a customer began to question the sanitary nature of the birds and the possibility of Bird Flu during the height of the Covid craze that gripped the world's attention. 441 signatures later, many from well far away from Cleveland, Glassman ridded his stores of the birds that longtime shoppers had seen since the store’s “grand-reopening” over 40 years ago. Ironically, the birds were far from any food and were kept with great care. They beautiful birds would greet you with their loud voices. Now gone with the wind because of one Covid obsessed Karen with a grudge against cockatoos.

A person named Amy Schaffer, who I would guess is probably on booster shot number 4 by now, wrote a headline entitled Send Marc's Parrots to a Sanctuary. 

“Marc's Midtown in Parma, Ohio, is owned by Marc Glassman Inc.  It is a busy, loud grocery store.  In the corner of the store there is an enclosure with two lonely parrots.  Marc's workers have enough to worry about, who has time to care for and interact with two parrots living in a grocery store?

These beautiful, intelligent parrots deserve better.  They live such long lives, let them live away from bright lights and blaring music.  Marc's needs to send them to a sanctuary where they will live in peace and be properly cared for and loved.

Please sign and tell Marc's that what they are doing is wrong- parrots don't belong in a grocery store.

Thank you for your support in helping these parrots.  Please share this petition if possible!”

It would have taken far less energy from her and far better for everyone if she could have just gone to Wal-Mart or Giant Eagle on her grocery trips. She obviously doesn’t deserve deep discounts if she can’t be friends to Mr. Glassman’s birds.

What’s ironic is that the birds were probably treated better than most humans are in third world countries. They were an acquired taste as they were loud

ut once you understood them they were more than happy to converse with you. Kids loved them. When I told my 9 year old daughter when she questioned where the birds went she was wise enough to say “who would ever complain about harmless birds”. See, Karen, err Amy, wasn’t worried about the birds safety but her own because her brain had been damaged by the Covid-Craze and now had thought that Bird Flu would somehow have a terrible outbreak because of some parrots at a discount drug store. 

The bad news is that the birds have been displaced of their home after 4 decades happily chirping away at the store’s visitors. According the the staff at the Southland store there is some good news, the birds now call workers break area home. Don’t tell Amy, because that would may get under her skin and she may issue another Fatwah and steal the joy of the workers who say they love talking to them when they have some free time.