Your Schedule Is Not My Cross To Bear
It’s Christmas Eve, and one of my flakey, lazy coworkers comes over to me.
Coworker: “Yo, can you work my shift tomorrow?”
Me: “Christmas Day? Hard pass.”
Coworker: “But it’s not like you even celebrate Christmas!”
Me: “Huh? What makes you think I don’t celebrate Christmas?”
Coworker: “Aren’t you Muslim?”
Me: “Uh…no? But even if I was, Christmas isn’t all that religious these days anyway.”
Coworker: “Oh… but you look Muslim!”
Me: “Pray tell, [Coworker], what does a Muslim look like?”
Coworker: “Like… brown?”
Me: “That’s a tan, you idiot, and I’m Filipino!”
Coworker: “Oh… Do Filipinos celebrate Christmas?”
Me: “Dude… It’s like one of the most Catholic countries in the world.”
Coworker: “Oh… so about tomorrow’s shift?”
Me: “Are you Christian?”
Coworker: “…uh, sure.”
Me: “Awesome! I’ll see you at the midnight mass at [local church] tonight, then?”
Coworker: “…whatever.”
[Coworker] moves on to trying to get someone else to take his Christmas Day shift.
I’m Filipino, but a suuuuper lapsed Catholic, so I gladly stay home with family that night and sleep in the next morning. My boss calls me asking if I would come in to cover [Coworker], who, shockingly, did not show up for their shift. I gracefully declined, and when I went back to work on the 26th, I was told that [Coworker] had been fired for too many no-shows.
