An Employee Was Stunned to Learn His Supervisor Had a Girlfriend—Then Panicked Thinking He Crossed a Workplace Boundary by Bringing Up Religion
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Have you ever talked to a coworker and been surprised to learn something about their personal life such as who they’re dating or what they believe about something?
In this story, one employee is in this situation. He already knew his supervisor was really religious, but when he found out who his supervisor was dating, he was very surprised. He was pretty honest about why he was so surprised, but his questions seemed to offend his supervisor. Even a coworker seemed to think he was in the wrong.
Now, he’s wondering if he really did mess up. Let’s read the whole story to decide.
AITA for expressing shock upon learning my very religious supervisor is a lesbian?
So there’s this girl at my (a combo of call center and data entry and processing work) that I’ve worked with for awhile on my team, I always thought she was nice, smart and helpful, but she came across as way more religious than most people in this area especially our age.
She usually wears a cross necklace and her cubicle has a bunch of Bible quotes printed and pinned all around it.
I noticed she has a tattoo of one of that Jesus fish symbol too on her wrist.
I just figured that was probably less weird for her because she’s Asian and some Asians here are way more religious than the average person in this area. Plus she doesn’t hassle people over it so no big deal.
But he was surprised when they were talking later on.
She later got promoted to supervisor and I thought she was a fine choice.
A couple weeks ago she was talking with me and talked about how she was excited for the next couple weeks because her girlfriend got concert tickets for one in June and how she was excited to be going to see Endgame with her (that hadn’t come out yet then).
I know that women often call their platonic friends “girlfriend” but the way she was talking about her implied it was something else. So I asked “you have a girlfriend?”
And she said yes and they just started dating relatively recently and showed me a pic on her phone of them together saying “isn’t she so cute?” (She’s a pretty hot Hispanic btw, great catch!)
He was honest about his surprise.
I could tell she was really infatuated with her like people in new relationships often are but then said “oh I never knew you were into women”
There’s a lot of gays and lesbians at my job who are pretty vocal about it, she never is.
She told me she doesn’t like to heavily flaunt it and she hadn’t dated anyone since she worked here until now but yes she’s a lesbian.
I was shocked and confused so I said “oh I’m just surprised because of your Christian stuff…”
The coworker seemed offended.
And she got a little angry looking and said “um, yeah what’s the problem?”
I thought it was obvious but didn’t want to continue a heavily awkward conversation at work so I just apologized and dropped it.
A couple days later when she was gone I was talking with another girl on the team who loves to gossip and brought up that our supervisor was a lesbian and said how I learned that recently and was really shocked because of how openly religious she is.
And the girl was like “uh, what’s weird with that at all?”
He sees a contradiction.
I think being very devoted to a belief system that says you’re going to be eternally tortured for your love interests is pretty odd but didn’t say that outright.
She also seemed to think I was being rude.
I was just genuinely surprised and still wondering how someone can possibly have that contradiction. Especially since she’s open about religion and isn’t about her love interests as much but also doesn’t seem to be ashamed or guilt-ridden about it.
So is my reaction weird?
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His reaction was honest, but it would’ve been better not to gossip about the supervisor who clearly seemed offended by all the questions. She doesn’t have to share about her personal beliefs and private life if she doesn’t want to. I don’t think OP meant to touch a nerve, but he clearly did.
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
This person calls him ignorant.
Another person has a theory.
This person thinks he did multiple things wrong.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about customer who won’t take no for an answer when it comes to outdated price-matching policies.
Another person debunks his assumption.
Her lifestyle surprised him, and he was honest about it. His honestly offended her, so he proceeded to gossip about her behind her back. That’s pretty rude.
While it doesn’t seem like he meant to do anything wrong, he definitely offended her. I hope he stops with the office gossip.
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