So the company I work for is doing some charity work and we’re trying to spread the word about it. That’s fine, right? Right. Typically when we do something like this, we’ll have a little pow-wow at work and when the charity event comes up, whoever’s leading the meeting will say something like “Give these flyers to your neighbors, your friends, ask your spouse/loved one to take some to work with them, or take a stack to church.” That’s totally fine, too. I can do three of those four things and a lot of other people can do the fourth. Great. Spread the word, raise money, and we’re all happier people.

But this morning that wasn’t the line they used. The person leading the meeting said, and I quote, “All of you go to church, right?” That struck me as being kind of odd. They corrected themselves, saying, “At least most of you?” But the damage had been done. Being that I (and at least one other atheist that I know of) were in attendance, the obvious answer to the original question was a big fat no. Statistically speaking, the majority of people attending the meeting probably adhered to one religion or another, and it would probably be safe to say that most were Christian. But if we’re still speaking statistically, most of the people in attendance probably don’t attend church regularly (source from four years ago).

Isn’t that strange? The speaker just made a pretty huge (and most likely inaccurate) assumption, and it just seemed a little biased to me. The speaker might as well have said “Most of you believe in god, right?” which would have been more likely, but just as inappropriate. Statistically, I’d bet that most of us in attendance were heterosexual and it was obvious that most of us were caucasian, but I think everybody would agree that to say “You guys are all straight, right?” would be incredibly inappropriate and may even result in the loss of a job.

Maybe it’s just me, but I was at least a little offended by the assumption that was made. No, I won’t take it to Human Resources because I happen to be friends with the person who said it and would hate for them to get in trouble (even though that would be unlikely), especially as the result of what was possibly just a faux pas. I maintain, however, that it would have been far more appropriate to have said something like “If you go to church, take some of these with you.”

Is my being offended just an overreaction? Don’t get me wrong – I’m not seething over this and if I weren’t taking the time to make a post about it I’d probably have forgotten about the whole thing by tomorrow anyway, but the whole situation just made me go “Hm, that was odd.”