Posthuman Blues

Jesus goes corporate

Today at work I looked up from a mass of filework to see my supervisor standing next to my desk. "Here," she said. "I thought I'd give you this." Her tone was friendly and I assumed the sheet of paper in her hand might be a brief "thank you" for the punishing amount of work I've been doing this week.

Not so.

The sheet was a prayer guide with all sorts of helpful advice for submitting to Our Lord Jesus before beginning a day at work. I wanted to shoot myself. This wasn't the first time I'd fielded religious drivel from co-workers. If it had been, maybe I would have let it go. But I'd already been through the no-religion-at-work issue; it had raised its head before with predictably ugly results. I had even emailed my supervisor, privately requesting that religion and work be kept distinct. Is she dense?

I promptly photocopied the "inspiring" prayer and gave a copy to our human resources magager. "If she wants to hand out gospel tacts, let her do it outside the Palace Theater on the Plaza," I said. (The Palace is a regular hang-out for brain-dead gospel crusaders and other human refuse.)

I think it's notable that I work for a large corporation where rules and regulations are obsessively standardized and enforced. Loud signs in the break-room proclaim that all employees are entitled to equal treatment. Yet the assumption that all employees are rabid Christians seems strangely ubiquitous and goes conveniently unquestioned. (I was perhaps the only employee to take offense at the hideous juxtaposition of Christian/military iconography that graced our online newletter's obligatory page devoted to the National Day of Prayer.)

"God Bless America." "God Bless This." "God Bless That." Does "God" really want me to perform to the best of my abilities at a corporation that mocks the very notion of "time off" and threatens its employees with termination if they should fall sick? Am I the only one who sees something tragically and fundamentally warped about this?

Apparently so.