(A supervisor comes into the office with a smile on his face. [Colleague], who works on the desk opposite me, is in her late 70s and is retiring in six months. She is known for her conservative views.)

Supervisor: *to me* “I’ve finally converted—”

Me: “What?”

Supervisor: “I’ve converted. You know, the—”

Colleague: “Oh, that’s wonderful news.” *quick side glare at me* “It’s a good day when one of the lost finds the flock again.”

Supervisor: “Ugh, sure… Anyway, I converted my measures sheet to metric. It took me all weekend, but I finally did it.” *beaming*

Me: “Oh, that is wonderful. That should save us some time!”

Colleague: “So, you aren’t converting to Catholicism. You should, unless you’re like [My Name] and her perversions.”

Me: “[Colleague]! You stop that right now!”

Supervisor: *to colleague* “Shut your puss, you old hag. My dad was abused by a Catholic priest when he was ten years old. He’s been very critical of religion ever since, especially Catholicism, which has more than enough secrets to damn the world thrice over. If you don’t like that, you can stick your crucifix where the sun doesn’t shine.”

(My colleague blushes and leaves the office, muttering about being so mistreated.)

Me: “Wow… [Supervisor], you might’ve just lost your job.”

Supervisor: “Who cares. It’s old witches like her that make life worse for the rest of us. What did she even mean, bringing you into that?”

Me: “My sister is gay, and I made the mistake of outing her to the office when she found out she was pregnant. [Colleague]’s been giving me nasty looks ever since. She’ll be gone in six months, and I don’t want the added baggage of a complaint so close to her retirement. It might give her the passion to stay, just to spite me.”

(He grumbled and left. When I went in the next morning, there was a nice new partition blocking my view of [Colleague], and a teddy bear with note attached saying to give it to my sister. To my knowledge, [Colleague] hasn’t complained about [Supervisor], and I’m counting the days until she’s gone for good.)

At my younger sister’s school, there’s a girl who somehow came up with the idea that Roman Catholics — the earliest form of Christianity — are devil worshippers.

She’ll sit near my sister and her friends and give my sister nasty looks and rude comments.

One day, just as my sister finishes doing the sign of the cross, there’s a blackout. The girl is staring at my sister in horror, so my sister shrugs and says loudly, “It worked!”

(I have a pink pixie cut. At work, my hair is covered by a hat that is part of our uniforms. I am helping an elderly woman find what she needs.)

Woman: “Why is your hair so short? I bet it would look absolutely beautiful long. Let me see it!”

(She grabs the hat off my head and gasps at my hair.)

Woman: “What did you to do to your hair? Why would you ruin something that was natural? You don’t look proper enough for Heaven!”

Me: “I wasn’t aware Heaven had such strict standards.”

Woman: “Yup! Just look at you! You’re going to Hell for sure!”

Me: “Okay, here’s the stuff you needed.”

(The ironic thing? This apparently religious woman was picking up condoms.)

(My dad is chronically unserious, even when he really ought not to be. He and my mother are in the intake of an ER, as he’s managed to injure himself somehow, and a nurse is doing the standard intake questions.)

Nurse: “Religion?”

Dad: “Orthodox Agnostic!”

(The nurse starts to write it down, then pauses and just looks confused.)

Mom: *exasperatedly* “None.”

(My dad has recently gotten very religious in his old age.)

Me: “Dad, you know what? I read that Jupiter has a storm that can fit three Earths in it!”

Dad: *looking disturbed* “God is great and God is big; if you believe in Him, that’s all you ever need.”

Me: “Wait, what? Why did you start talking about God?”

Dad: “Jupiter is big and God is, too. He made the Heaven and Earth.”

Me: “Did he make Jupiter, too? What about the other planets?”

Dad: *looking really disturbed* “Yes, of course.”

Me: “Why?”

Dad: “Just go read your bible. That’s all you need to know, not outer space facts.”