Religious Expression at Work: Persecution, or Pushy Employees?

A recent article at MSNBC.com by career-journalist Eve Tahmincioglu flatly asserts that “wearing your religion on your sleeve in a largely secular American workplace could hinder your career.” The author goes on to recount two cases of workers getting into trouble for “expressing their Christian beliefs.”

One young woman working at a ski resort in Vail was told to stop playing Christian music. She complained to HR and was fired in retaliation. Now she’s filed an EEOC suit. Another guy working at a Home Depot in Florida was fired because he wore a button that mentioned God on his orange apron.

Persecution? Religious harassment? Vicious attacks on Christians in the workplace?

It turns out that the guy at Home Depot was not supposed to be wearing any buttons on his apron other than the ones approved by the company. His special button said, “One nation under God Indivisible.” Harmless enough, right? Except that he was breaking the company’s dress code policy, one that was very important to its brand, culture and strategy.

Home Depot spokesman Ron DeFeo said, “Badges, buttons and pins are a big part of our culture. We give away thousands of them a year to our associates to recognize great customer service, store accomplishments, company milestones or to commemorate our community affairs initiatives. And we have a long-standing, well-communicated policy that states that only company-provided pins and badges can be worn by our associates.”

This young man’s actions may be interpreted as belligerent and antagonistic, rather than spiritually heroic. I probably would have fired him too. There are, after all, plenty of other ways to express your faith in God and country other than wearing a forbidden button on your apron.

And the girl at the ski resort? According to the article’s recounting of the EEOC settlement, a supervisor at Vail ski resort operations forbade the employee from discussing her Christian beliefs at work and from listening to Christian music during work hours, even though there were no such restrictions on other workers.

I don’t know, maybe this employee was just being a little pushy. Does it really matter so much if we play a Christian radio station on the slopes? If it’s so important, then put on your earphones, girl! I personally prefer many other types of music to Christian radio, but that’s just me. I’d be more worried about what my boss wants to hear, or what the skiers who paid so much to ski want to hear, than insisting everyone listen to what I liked. This could just as easy come off like an act of immaturity from a socially autistic worker rather than standing up for Christ.

Vail agreed to pay $80,000 to settle the case.

I don’t know about you, but if my company had policies for what I was supposed to wear, or how I was supposed to conduct myself in front of customers, I would generally want to follow those policies. Especially if there were good reasons for those policies in the first place, and they didn’t cause any particular breach of my beliefs.

Maybe these cases are less about persecution for expressing Christian beliefs, and more about transient and immature workers who are just being bad employees.

Either way, I’m sure they are keeping the lawyers very busy.

Photo by nAncY, used with permission.