Expressing personal beliefs is a choice we all have, but there’s a fine line between sharing and imposing them, especially in the workplace.
One Redditor shared an experience highlighting the importance of maintaining boundaries when it comes to religion in the workplace.
In this particular case, a Jewish/atheist woman recounted her encounter with an IT worker who started off their email reply to her with a religious blessing. This woman, who had faced previous instances of religious proselytizing (people trying to convert her to their religious beliefs), found herself once again confronted with someone pushing their beliefs onto her, even in a corporate environment.
Taking to Reddit‘s ‘Am I The A*****e‘ thread, the woman explained the situation before asking other Redditors whether they believed she was in the wrong.
“I work for a big corporation. I’m Jewish/Atheist with a long history of Christians trying to push their religion on me. I’m aware that there are many Christians who don’t do this and I believe in respecting people’s faiths. I also get annoyed when religion is inserted into the workplace,” the woman began her post.
“Today I got an email from an IT person that started with ‘pray you and your family are blessed and doing well’ before answering my IT question,” she continued. “I responded ‘not interested in prayers, but thanks for the $solution!'”
The woman then wrote that she asked a few colleagues about the situation, and that they’d told her she was being rude, given that the religious comment in the email had been a “figure of speech and they were trying to be nice.”
Concluding her post, the woman said: “I’m sure they were trying to be nice but I don’t like prayer/blessed language directed at me. I thought my response was polite-ish as I let them know my preference directly and included the thanks!”
Fellow Redditors took to the comments section to voice their opinions, with one person writing that the woman had done the right thing by imposing some boundaries. “I think it’s pretty fair to not expect religion in work emails. A lot of businesses and corporations actually have a policy about not pushing your religion on others even this sense,” they wrote.
“I don’t think you were rude, just said you weren’t interested in it and then thanked them for their help. You could have just ignored it and moved on. But at least with you establishing this boundary, it won’t happen again in future,” they continued.
Another person agreed, chiming in with: “The only place there should be religion in work emails is if the workplace happens to be a church, synagogue, temple or such. Otherwise it is unprofessional.”
A further user added: “I don’t buy the ‘trying to be nice’ excuse. They are so self absorbed that they think everyone believes what they do. I think they need to be gently reminded sometimes and I think you did that well.”
What do you think of this? Would you have done the same if you were in this woman’s situation? Let us know in the comments!
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