A woman shared her brilliant strategy for dealing with a homophobe over on Reddit’s Am I The Asshole? subreddit, when she went over there to ask if she’d taken things a bit too far. The strategy in question? Pretending she has never heard of Jesus.
Things got started when she was at the bar after work with some colleagues. Our hero has some hearing loss in one ear, so when a co-worker she’d never met before picked the side with her bad ear to talk to her on, he was already setting himself up for failure.
At first, she thought he was being helpful. She lives in a pretty homophobic state and, as she said, “the whisper network has saved my ass a few times.” So when he told her not to mention she was gay around the office because someone with a name she didn’t catch had a problem with it, she thought he was warning her about a homophobic co-worker.
Except that co-worker turned out to be Jesus.
But I didn’t really hear the name he said, so I went “Who?” He seemed surprised like the guy was someone I should obviously know, and I was like “Who did you say?” And he said a name I still didn’t catch. I was feeling kinda embarrassed, I honestly am sorta insecure about my hearing, so I didn’t want to ask him to repeat himself a fourth time. So I was like hey man I’m sorry but I’m blanking on the name, could he point him out? I was still assuming he meant some coworker at the bar.
He started to get mad that she didn’t know who he was talking about.
At that point he raised his voice at me, and yelled that it was Jesus Christ. I realized then… He’s not trying to warn me of some bigoted fucker at work, he WAS that fucker.
Now, there’s a lot of ways you can respond to a bigoted coworker making your sexuality his problem, but OP decided to have a little fun with him. OP decided to continue the not knowing who Jesus is bit, responding with, “Dude, no need to cuss me out for asking!” before asking, “So seriously, who is it? Because you’re honestly freaking me out man.”
OP then repeated this for several more rounds as her homophobic colleague got more and more frustrated, eventually storming off after she responded to him saying “Jesus” one last time with “Language, man! I’m not talking to you if you keep cussing me out.”
After that, she rejoined the coworkers she’d come with who wanted to know what happened. OP told them “I dunno, it was so weird? He was talking about how I should hide that I’m gay at work, cause he knew some guy here would have a problem with it? But he wouldn’t tell me what guy – and I hate to say this but I’m starting to think there isn’t another guy?” Her co-workers were concerned and told her to report it to HR, and she agreed she would if it happened again.
However, OP found herself wondering if maybe she’s the asshole in this situation for pranking and riling him up once she realised he was talking about religion and not an in-office homophobe. Describing it as “poking the bear,” she asked the denizens of Am I The Asshole to weigh in on whether she was the asshole for “playing that bit just to laugh at a guy instead of being direct with him.”
Redditors applauded her reaction.
“You made his religious rant funny as fuck. Good job OP!” one person commented.
“The best part is that it was completely unintentional,” said another.
Overall, the sub absolutely loved her and thought her response was brilliant. “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen on aita in ages,” one commenter wrote.
With a lot of users saying they were going to start doing the same thing when confronted by religious bigots.
Redditors also advised her to report him to HR now and not wait for another incident, just in case.
