Ask a Manager: a coworker’s child keeps saying insulting and bigoted things to me

[minoanmiss]

Title as a content advisory.



t’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question

I work in a nonprofit child care setting and the environment can be toxic at times. These people have all known each other for decades and have habits of lying for one another in professional settings to make the organization sound better than it actually is.

That being said, I am an openly gay man and recieve much support from my coworkers. I truly love working here. I have pride flags in my office, i wear pride themed clothes often, I paint my nails, and have sparkly gems decorating my desk in pinks and whites.


So here’s the issue: I have one coworker, Lynn, who makes me feel uncomfortable who is also good friends with most of the executive staff. I recently had to ask Lynn not to play Christian worship music in the office because it was making me feel uncomfortable and she understood. Now she’s brought her seven-year-niece in a few times and while she’s super cute and its not unusual for us to have kids in the office, this child is rude and mean to me but says she’s just joking.

This seven-year-old has told me I’m ugly, I shouldn’t be painting my nails, I shouldn’t like “girly” things, I’m too hairy, I’m a weirdo, and that she wants to cut up my pride flags and wreck my desk gems when I’m not looking.

Now, she’s a child and I understand she probably doesn’t fully understand the impact of what she’s saying, but I feel that children say what they hear at home and are more honest than the adults around them. It feels like Lynn and her family have these feelings and the child is just repeating it.

I want to say something to Lynn about it, but I worry that I’m going to be making bigger issues for myself here because she is super close with the organization’s executive director and is one of the most gossip-oriented people I’ve ever worked with. I was warned on my first day that she was a gossip and I have firsthand witnessed her repeat private conversations to entire rooms of coworkers.

My question is this: how would you address a situation where a coworker’s child, who doesn’t actually attend our child-care program, is saying offensive and mean things to you that genuinely hurt your feelings, even though as a child she probably doesn’t understand what she’s saying?

Comments

[ermingarden]

You and I read this differently, but I don't think there's enough here to be sure Lynn has being doing any of this deliberately, or even knows what the kid is saying to LW – especially because LW says she "understood" when he asked her to stop playing the Christian music.

[minoanmiss]

The thing is, when I was a child in an Evangelical church, I listened to the adults talking, saying that being told to turn off their Christian music was a sign that the Devil owns this world, etc, and advising each other to combat "godlessness" (LGBT, feminism, other religions, etc) with amping up the Christianity at work including the music. I saw people plan to do this deliberately as part of claiming they were being persecuted for being openly Christian at work. That's why I think Lynn isn't so innocent.

I was also encouraged, as a child, to "tell people God's truth", including statements not far from what Emily's spouting. I didn't say things like that to random adults because of my personality, more or less, but I wasn't the only child encouraged to do that.

Furthermore, right now when queer people are being called "groomers" and the libel about queer=pedophilic is being resurrected in all its gory zombie glory, I am kind of suspicious about Lynn sending a kid spouting these provocative statements to LW, because there are people who would paint any interaction he has with her as Dangerous. I worry this is going to be a trap. I'd worry even more if Emily were Earl.

I mean, I could be wrong, but these are some of the experiences informing my opinion.

[ermingarden]

I definitely see where you're coming from! But the fact that LW says Lynn "understood" when he asked her to stop playing Christian music, and she stopped without pushing back on it, suggests that – based only on what LW reports – Lynn may be clueless but not actively hostile, and may treat the request to control the kid the same way she treated the request to turn off the music, especially since it sounds like Lynn may not be aware of the kid's behavior. If Lynn had that sort of persecution complex about it, I'd imagine she would have pushed back about the music.

To clarify, I'm not saying Lynn for sure isn't hostile – just that the facts LW gives us aren't enough to lead me to that conclusion. Plenty of non-evangelicals, even including some gay people (e.g., me!), listen to Christian artists like Matt Maher or Lauren Daigle, and although I have the common sense not to play religious music at work, common sense is...well, not all that common!

[torachan]

You sure are giving her a lot of benefit of the doubt.

And I think Christian pop music is pretty different from worship music, which is what she was playing.

[raine]

Christian pop tends to be subtler than worship music, but not by much, if you know what to look for.
- someone who got pulled into it

[torachan]

Definitely. But playing worship music feels much more deliberate and aggressive.

[raine]

Oh, yeah, definitely!