I get several glurge emails from this person every month. This is also the person who inspired me to buy the voodoo pig. (We get along fine now, but we didn’t when we started working together.)
Normally I would let this go. However, this email got to me today:
Blah, blah, blah…
I replied:
Perhaps I’m just in a snarky mood today. Perhaps its because I’d just read MrVisible’s thread about his nephew and the gay bashing was too much. Or perhaps its just because I believe its your right to be sexually perverted and/or kill unborn babies. So I shot off this reply.
What would you have done? What have you done in response to your religious glurge emailers at work? Any viable ideas I can use against future glurgers?
I probably would have emailed her that I found religion witnessing and such inappropriate for the workplace, so I would prefer that she take me off her mailing list for this kind of thing. Professional, but to the point.
If that hadn’t garnered results, I would have emailed her a less professional, but still civil note that I found this sort of thing tiresome and unprofessional, and that if she kept it up I was putting her on my “Block Sender” list.
If that didn’t work, and blocking her address wasn’t feasible, I’d talk to HR about her continued religious harrassment.
Oh, yeah! That’s a GREAT way to deal with it. Blow a mere annoyance utterly out of proportion and call it “persecution”–lump her into the same class a murderers. My, but you must be SUCH the scintillating individual to be around.
Had it not occurred to you to simply ask politely?
That’s not half as fun as turning the persecution complex around for ironic value. Another example of irony is you using sarcasm to make a point about asking politely.
I am 100 percent in favor of irony, sarcasm, and wit. Well done, sperfur.
CrazyCatLady’s already given my advice. Of course, I have a slight advantage in this situation in that I already am a Christian, but sperfur, if you’re not, and she says something about how you’re only acting like that because you’re not a real Christian, please tell her a real one would be similarly bothered.
What you seem to fail to understand is that this woman’s political and religious glurging is rude. There’s a reason why you’re supposed to avoid subjects like politics and religion with casual acquaintances. Opinions on these subjects are very resistant to change, deeply held and potentially offensive. Your co-workers aren’t working with you by choice and they don’t have the opportunity to leave whenever they wish. Do the courteous thing. Do what the rest of us are doing and shaddap when you’ve got a captive audience.
“Thanks a bunch; haven’t you heard that these email chain letters are actually started by SATANISTS? - just so they can track the address of every devout person to whom the message is forwarded”
I get so sick of that crap after a while. There’s a couple of girls at school who, though I love them dearly, I want to slap upside the head. They view it as their personal mission to “save” me. Arg.
BTW, thanks again for the ride back from the KC Dopefest.
I would of and do do (ha! I said do do! Ahem. Sorry. Down, Beavis) what CRAZYCATLADY suggested: Send a professional response saying that I don’t appreciate the e-mails, don’t believe they’re appropriate at work, and don’t want to receive them anymore.
I probably would not have said what SPERFUR said not because I think he (she?) doesn’t have the right to feel that way (he/she does), but because I think it’s disproportional and snarky. I’m not above snarky myself when I know the person on the other end deserves it, but this might have been a “pure heart, empty head” sort of person, who truly meant no harm and didn’t realize that a lot of people don’t like to get crap e-mails, religious or not. So I prolly would have gone with “y’know, this bugs me, and I bet it bugs a lot of other people as well, and since it’s religious maybe the company wouldn’t like it, so please stop sending me this stuff.” Or something.
“It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent on him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.”
Most places I’ve worked, using the company email system to send non work-related emails was severely frowned upon. Also they didn’t like the idea of using work time to send such emails, instead of doing the work they were paying you to do.
So complain to management about this. Don’t even have to get into the “religious conversion” nature of the emails, just say “non work-related”. Mention that it’s annoying that she’s goofing off sending out this stuff when the rest of you are trying to get the work done. You might even ask the manager how he/she assigns staff workload, since this person has time to do this while others are working hard to keep up production.
Been in the same position, sperfur, and sent essentially the same e-mail; however, I did also pull the person aside and informed them that if I came across as snippy I apologize, but the glurge that was sent does not follow company rules and takes time from actually completing my work.
She thought I was “so cute” for being so serious, but stated she would remove me from her list.
When she sent another, I promptly forwarded it to her supervisor, noting that we had previously discussed the matter and I had thought it resolved.
Never received a non-work related e-mail again.
I was in the same situation, and I am a devout Catholic, although I work in a place full of Bilbebelt Christians. I don’t feel the need to proselytize or be proselytized to. I brought it up at a company-wide HR sponsered meeting. My company is pretty liberal with their e-mail and internet policies, but I said I thought it was inappropriate in the workplace. They have more or less stopped.
Anyone else for don’t even bother reading it and just hit the delete button? As long as you can tell that it’s going to be glurge from the title, that seems to me to be the easiest solution as long as she’s only sending a few per month.
At my work, I’d just glare evilly at the glurgist, with that spooky glittery Andrew McCarthy sort of look in my eyes.
If you have the spare time, it’s sorta fun ripping the glurge apart.
Deleting might be the saner thing to do, but it’s amazingly unsettling and annoying when someone continues to send you proof positive of their ignorance, shoving it happily in your face even. shudder
Sigh. So am I, but it’s really unfortunate how often they sail right past the truly committed and/or dense.
It’s a work environment and work-funded system. Willingness to co-exist peacefully with coworkers doesn’t extend to being bombarded with partisan anything: political, religious, personal cause du jour. Not that I don’t (grimly) grin-and-bear-it on lots of cutesy “work” glurge. Most of it is just a different delivery system for the staff bulletin board stuff I rarely read either.
But the delivery system does make a difference. By showing up in your personal e-mail, it’s…personal. It’s focused. The message isn’t “read if ya want”, so it’s perfectly proper to decline. Glurgers are telemarketers of personal opinions. Opt out.
“My in-box overfloweth. Please do not send me anything that doesn’t relate to our work.” That isn’t mean; it’s realistic–and respectful. Anyone who takes offense…oh, well.