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agonyaunt2022-11-17 01:01 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2022-11-17 01:01 am
Entry tags:
Ask a Manager: My coworker prayed that I'll return to Jesus
content advisory: Christian religious harassment directed at a Jewish person.
I work in higher ed at a university that has roughly a 40% Jewish population. I have worked in my office for a little over four years. About a year ago, I converted to Judaism. I am quite open about this and often wear a Magen David necklace. In the office suite across from my department is a woman who is an evangelical Christian. Prior to my conversion, she had asked me to come with her to church several times. I always told her no. Tried to hand me religious pamphlets. I wouldn’t take them. In the last year, she has asked me to church several times — I told her I was Jewish and no thanks. She asked me what I was doing for Christmas, I reminded her I was Jewish so I do not celebrate Christmas. It’s all annoying and I now regret not pressing this with her supervisor and/or mine after what happened today.
I was walking down the hallway and she walked up to me, cornered me, put her hand on my head, and before I could run away told me she’s going to pray for me. She said this very long prayer that ended with, “And may you come back to Jesus.” I was floored. I honestly had no idea what to say. I looked at her in shock and walked away. I feel violated to my very core. And I am unsure what steps to take next. Even if I was a fellow Christian, this was not something that I think is professional in a workplace. I know I really need to go to HR, but is that the right path? Is there anything else I should do to protect myself? I fear what will come next if she’s not talked to.
That. Is. Outrageous.
Yes, HR is the right path. Tell HR that your coworker has made numerous religious overtures to you, including repeatedly inviting you to church and trying to give you religious materials, and you’ve declined them each time but this latest one crosses a new line and you you want her religious harassment to stop. Use those words.
It’s not clear to me if you’ve ever told your coworker directly to stop — you’ve declined her overtures, but have you ever explicitly said “please do not raise religion with me again”? If not, that’s worth doing too. You don’t need to do that in order to ask HR to intervene — your coworker’s behavior is so over the line that it’s not on you to address it yourself at this point — but if you’re up for it, ideally you’d cover that base too. Ideally you would have done that earlier on and it might have short-circuited what followed (or who knows, it might not have) … but either way, it’s reasonable to take this to HR because (a) her latest action is so over-the-top that it warrants it regardless and (b) we don’t want her to just stop doing this to you; we want her to stop doing it to anyone at work, and your company should want that too.
P.S. An acquaintance of my mother’s recently drove eight hours from another state to visit her to attempt to convert her from Judaism. When my mother wasn’t sufficiently receptive, she later mailed her a bible. This is deeply offensive. Do not do this to Jews, please. Do not do this to anyone.
I work in higher ed at a university that has roughly a 40% Jewish population. I have worked in my office for a little over four years. About a year ago, I converted to Judaism. I am quite open about this and often wear a Magen David necklace. In the office suite across from my department is a woman who is an evangelical Christian. Prior to my conversion, she had asked me to come with her to church several times. I always told her no. Tried to hand me religious pamphlets. I wouldn’t take them. In the last year, she has asked me to church several times — I told her I was Jewish and no thanks. She asked me what I was doing for Christmas, I reminded her I was Jewish so I do not celebrate Christmas. It’s all annoying and I now regret not pressing this with her supervisor and/or mine after what happened today.
I was walking down the hallway and she walked up to me, cornered me, put her hand on my head, and before I could run away told me she’s going to pray for me. She said this very long prayer that ended with, “And may you come back to Jesus.” I was floored. I honestly had no idea what to say. I looked at her in shock and walked away. I feel violated to my very core. And I am unsure what steps to take next. Even if I was a fellow Christian, this was not something that I think is professional in a workplace. I know I really need to go to HR, but is that the right path? Is there anything else I should do to protect myself? I fear what will come next if she’s not talked to.
That. Is. Outrageous.
Yes, HR is the right path. Tell HR that your coworker has made numerous religious overtures to you, including repeatedly inviting you to church and trying to give you religious materials, and you’ve declined them each time but this latest one crosses a new line and you you want her religious harassment to stop. Use those words.
It’s not clear to me if you’ve ever told your coworker directly to stop — you’ve declined her overtures, but have you ever explicitly said “please do not raise religion with me again”? If not, that’s worth doing too. You don’t need to do that in order to ask HR to intervene — your coworker’s behavior is so over the line that it’s not on you to address it yourself at this point — but if you’re up for it, ideally you’d cover that base too. Ideally you would have done that earlier on and it might have short-circuited what followed (or who knows, it might not have) … but either way, it’s reasonable to take this to HR because (a) her latest action is so over-the-top that it warrants it regardless and (b) we don’t want her to just stop doing this to you; we want her to stop doing it to anyone at work, and your company should want that too.
P.S. An acquaintance of my mother’s recently drove eight hours from another state to visit her to attempt to convert her from Judaism. When my mother wasn’t sufficiently receptive, she later mailed her a bible. This is deeply offensive. Do not do this to Jews, please. Do not do this to anyone.
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This one was freshly posted, so I'm looking forward to seeing how many comments it takes before someone defends the coworker. AAM's commentariat skews liberal(ish) but there's always someone.
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I dunno, that crosses the line so much that the co-worker is probably going to get written up. Any university with that large a Jewish population, if in the US, is almost certainly (a) large and (b) coastal, and will have an HR department that will freak the fuck out at the threat of that kind of behavior in the office.
(Note LW has their own stereotypes to confront, in that LW is almost certainly wrong about 40% Jewish population; even Brandeis is only half Jewish, and no non-denominational US college or uni tops a third. Sometimes campus hillels skew the reported numbers by listing everyone how self-reports Jewish ancestry as "Jewish", and some skew the numbers by including graduate schools and undergrad combined.)
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That's not only harassment; touching LW moves it closer to assault. I hope there were witnesses and imho LW should look into legal options if HR doesn't think there's a problem.
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ugh thanks for the warning.
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I know, right?
I was taught to act like this, when I was a child. I know where the coworker ia coming from and I hate knowing it, hate knowing that those philosophies exist like a fungus twisting minds, supposedly in the name of God. Ugh.
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If LW had reported the previous harassment, I'd expect it would be.
Here's hoping that the coworker gets a strong enough spanking from HR that she STOPS FOREVER (although, with evangelicals, that may be a futile hope), and that LW never has to deal with her again.