Oddities

My New Religious Coworker…

---

At my job I had a room to myself for the better part of 6 months, with the only other person in the office being my manager who has his own room, and works from home on Friday’s.  I’ve been able to kick off my shoes, blast work-inappropriate music, and watch Youtube videos labeled NSFW.  It’s been a thin slice of fantastic.  This Monday, a new coworker filled the open desk in my office.  Frankly, I was happy to get a new coworker, even though it would result in the end of the above luxuries.  However, in the 3 days new guy has been here, he has mentioned “God’s Plan for me” a total of 4 times (2 of them today which makes me worry it is going to get worse).  I am an Atheist.  I am not one of those nice Atheists either, I’m one of those asshole Atheists who have to make wise ass comments anytime someone makes the mistake of involving me in their spreading of said “good news.”  However, this is not an environment where I can unleash my vicious paradoxes and brilliant wisdom at him (you know…logic), and really, there are very few ways this can end well for me.  As I see it, here are my options:

1)      Smart Choice #1 ~ Ask Him To Stop This one is pretty self explanatory.  Simply let him know religious discussion makes me uncomfortable, and I’d appreciate if he didn’t bring it up in the workplace, as it is considered unprofessional.

2)      Smart Choice #2 ~ Report to Management While not as nice to my new office mate (who in my head I’ve been referring to as Isaac) it is still correct in a Human Resources / Company standpoint, and wouldn’t threaten my job.

3)      Bad Choice #1 ~ Print out a List of Reasons I Think God Isn’t Real.  I figured that I could end this really quickly if I turn Isaac into a non believer.  HOWEVER, this would actually be like bringing a cannon to a knife fight, if knives were made of lying and thousands of years of bigotry.  Also, this would make me the asshole, being that I would take what Isaac did wrong and do something exactly like he did, just 8x worse and more offensive.  Also it’s been my experience that if there is one thing that really annoys religious people, it’s logic and pesky “information.”

4)      Bad Choice #2 ~ Invite him to come to my church, go to a strip club. The technical definition for “Church” in the Christian sense is a community of people gathered together to worship.  Strip clubs are certainly churches, depending on how loosely you use the word “worship”  In either case it’s a group of people zoning out, spending an hour picturing breasts, and giving money away to people who will most likely use it on cocaine.

5)      Bad Choice #3 ~ Tell Him I’m a Homosexual. I’m a big supporter of the gay community, and in the short time Isaac as been here he has used the term “gay” in the pejorative enough for me to get an idea of just how religious he is (We are talking G.O.P. Nomination Religious).  So I think if I simply tell him I’m into guys, he will be so disgusted with my lifestyle choices he won’t engage me in any dialog outside of what is needed for the job.  And from there, the obvious choice would be to flirt with him until he quits.

6)      Bad Choice #4 ~ Live out my fantasy of hitting him in the head with a baseball bat. This one is also pretty self explanatory.  If anyone reading this is wondering why I would commit a violent act like that since I would certainly go to hell, you obviously haven’t been paying attention.