Sometimes, when you get wrapped up in the season, it can be difficult to remember that not everyone celebrates the same way you do for a variety of reasons.
One employee made it very clear that she does not celebrate Christmas, but was still pressured by a co-worker to contribute to their company’s holiday charity initiative.
An employee threatened to go to HR when her co-worker wouldn’t stop pushing her to get involved in the company’s choice to adopt a family for Christmas.
A distraught worker who considered reaching out to HR for help shared her dilemma on Reddit.
“My job has adopted a family for Christmas and there are many options to choose from to get each adult and child,” she explained. “The gift options have started to fly off the board, cool, but apparently someone has noticed that I haven’t been joining in the conversation about what option they chose or what to buy a teenage boy/girl.”
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“I was asked if I chose something off the board and I simply replied that I don’t celebrate Christmas,” she continued. “Said co-worker then said that it didn’t matter if I celebrated or not, that it was a time for giving and we should help those who can’t do for themselves.”
The employee shared her backstory detailing why she chose not to celebrate Christmas including charitable donations.
“I grew up extremely poor, as in when these holidays came around, it was nothing but misery for my siblings and I,” she shared. “Thanksgiving was just normal dinner for us unless we were forced to visit family, and we rarely got anything for Christmas.”
“My mom felt we needed to be around family during the holidays, so we were always forced to go over [to] families’ houses for Christmas and watch the kids have everything we never had,” she said.
“Some of my worst childhood memories were … always having to hear my younger siblings cry from disappointment and then being forced to go over [to] a cousin’s house and watch them open their gifts.”
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This employee’s avoidance of the project to adopt a family was more complicated than just not being able to celebrate growing up.
“At some point, my mom signed us up for these adopt a family/firetruck to bring gifts/whatever charity you could think of just like the one my job is doing,” she explained. “She did for years (I know as I was usually with her when she signed us up) and no one ever came through for us, ever.”
“So it’s safe to say that I feel some kind of way about these so-called ‘charities’ and learned a couple of things early in life and vowed to never contribute to these things because no one cared about me and my siblings, so why should I care for anyone else this time [of] year?” she stated.
“So back to my co-worker,” she said. “I told her that these people are not my responsibility and if she felt so strongly about it then to grab an extra card off the board.”
Eventually, the co-worker called her a “grinch,” to which she responded, “‘If you keep harassing me about what I chose to not celebrate then it will become an HR issue.’”
Ultimately, it really doesn’t matter what her co-worker thinks.
Although harassing someone for not contributing to a charitable cause is strange and offensive, this co-worker’s opinion is actually irrelevant. This employee is under no obligation to donate.
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Law firm Fisher Taubenfield said, “Managers can often make it seem as though employee charitable giving is mandatory. It’s not. Legally, an employer cannot require that you donate to charity.”
So, this worker would be perfectly justified in going to HR over the harassment from her co-worker. She can’t be forced to participate, and anyone who thinks otherwise is in the wrong.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
