This all started last week. I came in 5 or so minutes late and our front office ladies were asking me how I was doing. I said I was okay, and thanks for asking but I don’t really want to talk about it.
My boss came over and said “You can act like this on a Sunday but not on Monday. You should be getting here 15 minutes early and be grateful you have a job.” Basically saying I’m lucky to be employed so I shouldn’t ever come into work in less than a good mood.
I can agree that I should be on time, but the tardiness isn’t habitual. Last week I had some really painful health issues and two close family members in the hospital, both with serious conditions and both were a shock. It was shitty dumb luck and it was just a bad week.
I told my boss I’d come in clean, on time, and do my job, but that I wasn’t going to be in a good mood.
Today I had a coworker ask me if he thinks gay people are born that way. I’m really cool with him, and I genuinely don’t feel that he was trying to be rude or even thinks that himself. He’s from East Africa and he says his exposure to gay people is basically non existent. I said I can only speak for myself but I do think I’m this way naturally. I could never just marry a dude and be cool with it, just like I’m sure he loves his buddies but wouldn’t want to marry them.
It kind of became a conversation about “If a gay person marries straight are they really still gay” (another question from him) and I tried to give a watered down brief answer that some people do that for religious reasons or if they aren’t accepting their self.
Now I have it in writing from one of our receptionists that my boss says I need to stop talking about being gay at work and that it isn’t appropriate. I didn’t even bring it up, and I didn’t give any graphic sexual details. This boss is my direct supervisor and above her is our director. The director talks about politics, religion, and Covid theories all the time and our receptionists get to talk about their straight relationships.
The thing is: I don’t want continual tension or hostility and I also don’t want to just let this slide. I don’t want to quit my job because I’ve applied for and accepted two different grants for my project at work, am involving the attorney general’s office with my project, and in the middle of physically building something a year in the making. This is all as someone still in school for their bachelors. I just don’t know what to do given that HR isn’t actually your friend and I don’t want to go down as the gay person who makes a fuss about it.