I don’t know if anyone remembers this post, but I thought I would update you nonetheless.
Quick recap: I was consulting at a firm where the HR Director turned out to be a Jehovah’s Witness. Unfortunately this person was not doing a good job and it seemed as though his faith was interfering with his work standards. The company was not happy with his performance and I was hired to see if I could figure out the problem.
First thing is first. I kept things professional. I never brought up his JW faith to the people that hired me and I tried to stay as neutral with him as I could. I just focused on the task I was hired for, and focused my energy on helping him professionally. I also never told him about my Witness past, figuring there was no point to it. It would have just made him uncomfortable and I think he would have regressed professionally even more. To be honest with you, I played dumb. There were a few times when several aspects of the Witnesses came up (he brought them up) and I would act as though it was the first time I was hearing about the Witnesses or their beliefs.
As it turns out he has been a Witness for about 5 years and it appears he is still in the honeymoon phase. If he is happy, who am I to burst his bubble? Yet I couldn’t help but try and make him think about what he was doing when certain issues arose at work because of his beliefs.
For example, the company was going through a major acquisition (also part of the reason I was hired) and it was all hands on deck. And of course during the most crucial part of it, he announces that he will not be there because he has to attend the District Convention. The GM about had a coronary when he asked for time off. I asked him if this was the only convention during the year or if there was another convention he could attend at a latter date, as this was a horrible time to be asking for time off. He said that there were other conventions but he could not attend those because he had not been assigned to those conventions and he could not disobey. I tried to help him by telling him that I understood how important his faith was to him, but that it was the message or information of his convention that was important, not the location of where he worshiped. I said, "I don’t thing God is going to smite you if you go to another convention at a later date. And I’m sure God realizes how important your job is as well, he will understand if you attend another one." Nope, nothing that was said could change his mind to attend another convention at a later date. However, he lucked out because the people coming from overseas for the acquisition were delayed and he was able to attend his convention. I’m sure he thinks Jehovah helped with this.
Another time, an employee who had gone to India, brought him a gift; a very nice and tasteful sculpture of small fish in a pond. It looked expensive. I was there when the employee gave it to him and he accepted it. However, as soon as the employee left, he had a frown on his face. I asked him what was wrong and he said the he might have to throw the sculpture away. His reasoning; the sculpture might have a hidden religious meaning since it was from India. He said he could not have anything to do with something that had a pagan background. I told him that then he should not have taken the gift to begin with if he felt this way. He just glared at me. And then I was a jackass, I realize it, but I couldn’t help myself. I asked him that since he couldn’t have anything to do with pagan backgrounds, if he was going to stop using the names of the days of the week and the names of the month. He looked at me puzzled. I asked him if he was aware that the days of the week and the months were named after mythological gods and deities. They have a pagan background! I also asked him if he was going to stop wearing his wedding ring since it also has an Egyptian pagan background. I tried to make him reason that the pagan background is not really important nowadays, what is important is what the current meaning represents. Such as to us, the names of the week are just that, names. We don’t associate them with the deities anymore. A wedding band is just to let people know that one is married. And the gift he had been given, was just that, a gift from a very nice employee. He could keep it and enjoy the gift from an employee who thought of him. I mean honestly, the gift did not look religious in nature at all! The interesting thing was that he just shut down. He basically called me a liar and just sat there with a puzzled look on his face and kept shaking his head from side to side. It was rather bizarre.
Anyway, a lot of little things like this happened while I was there. I could tell you so many stories about his faith affecting his work; such as his preaching activities, the holiday debacle on the 4th of July (a holiday here in the U.S), and the employee birthday disaster. His witness apparently is to shoot himself in the foot at work, and remain faithful to the JW’s. I did my job, and gave him professional advise and kept the religious aspect out of it as much as I could. It was only when he brought it up that I would comment on reasonable accommodations, without much success. I will give credit to the company, they certainly are going out of their way to help him, I’ve seen others fired for much, much less. I helped as much as I could and gave the company my professional (and unbiased) recommendations; the ball is now in their court (and his). Still, I feel for this guy and wish him well, maybe one day he will open his eyes. After all, I used to be like him, a long, long time ago.