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Good for you. We're all not you. Many people are uncomfortable about other religions or any religion.
The wake and funeral is really for the living. You should be kind to people while they're alive. Hearing how wonderful Aunt Marge the town drunk was at a funeral is a load of BS yet people do it all the time. Neither myself nor my husband have any idea who people were talking about at my mother-in-law's funeral. The way people talked about her made Mother Teresa look like a crack *****. It was absurd.
Funerals and wakes are for paying one's respects to the living not the dead. The dead don't know you're there. They're dead! I already have strict guidelines from my mother....no flowers....she'll be dead. She wants her flowers now while she can see and smell them. And no BS stories about how wonderful she was and the world is a greater place because of her. She's knows it's BS. I've been told to kick out anyone trash talking her like that. Oh and "Imagine" must be played preferably on a loop......I'm sure I'll be sooo sick of that damn song.
Thus the "to each his/her own".
I've said more than once you go because you respect the people involved - I said nothing about the deceased.
This is obviously a hot button for you, so carry on with all your personal anecdotes, but it's going way off topic and has nothing to do with the OP's original question at this point.
[quote=the_grimace;39386992]Coworker did not personally tell me about the funeral. Our manager simply thinks we should do it to pay respect to the employee.... I guess we can go for just a minute, say "I'm sorry" and slip out... but still, we both don't feel comfortable being there in the first place. I know if I had a funeral and random co-workers showed up to pay their respects to me, I would honestly be quite insulted.
quote]
Why on earth would you be insulted if someone stopped to pay their respects?? Go in .Sign the book. Be seen and leave in a matter of a very few minutes.
Now if I were the grieving person and found out my employer was offering to pay people to attend I would be quite insulted.
Why is everyone focusing on the funeral? OP was also given another option of going to the viewing. Much simpler. As someone else said simply go, sign the guestbook, spend a few minutes expressing your condolences to the co-worker as a sign of respect for him/her, and leave. As far as it being a grandparent... I know a few oldsters who raised their grandchildren, and they were rarely referred to as parents by those grandchildren even though that was the role they took on. Granny, Nana and Pop-pop spring to mind.
That's an awkward request. I would feel uncomfortable going, unless on the off chance I knew the family member somehow or was close to the coworker personally as well. If I wasn't close to the coworker personally, it would feel a bit invasive.
Just go and only stay for a few minutes just to pay your respects to the coworker. I don't get why this is a big deal. If this is a close-knit community, it's to be expected. It could not only hurt your career, but it might hurt your relationship with others in the community as well.
I wanted to see people's thoughts on this. A co-workers family member passed away and my manager is insisting me and my other co-worker (that I work directly with) both either attend the visitation or the service. The co-worker who is holding the funeral is from a very different department and we only work very loosely with them, so it's not like it's someone I work with everyday or what not.
Long story short, both me and my other coworker feel uncomfortable attending, feel it is inappropriate for us to attend, and feel it is inappropriate that our manager is insisting we must go. We have been told we would be paid for our time, which unfortunately blurs the lines worse. Simply put, this is a religious matter and I do not feel that we should attend. However, we are both worried that refusing to attend may hurt our careers and not be smart from a strategic standpoint. (Because career advancement is strange like that...)
What do people think about this? Will it hurt our careers if we tell our manager we will not attend the service or visitation? Personally, I am appalled we were asked to do this in the first place....
It may be that the deceased will have a religious send off, but visiting the relatives or attending the funeral is making a gesture of sympathy with the family and not a religious matter. I cannot imagine being "appalled" by your boss's request as that is a very strong word, but I would certainly find it very out of line.
If I did not know the co-worker well, I would feel the same way as you. I would not be comfortable with with doing either really.
You have not mentioned if your boss is attending. But given that you and your co-worker are not close to the family of the deceased it would seem sufficient that your boss go as a representative of the company. But I don't imagine to want to put that to him.
Given the fact that your boss has made this unusual demand in the first place, I would be afraid that if you did not comply he might hold it against you two.
I don't know why being religious was even introduced into the discussion by the OP. A wake, which he/she would more likely attend than a funeral, is not religious until the time when prayers are said.
But you don't decide whether or not to attend based on it being religious. Do people who feel this is an issue also stay away from weddings??
In my experience, even the wake tends to be religious. Most I have been too have had religious prayer cards, religious music playing softly in the background, and a whole lot of god bless yous. Some wakes even have prayer services for those that might be unable to attend the funeral service.
As far as the weddings go... they are religious in many cases as well. I know plenty of people who may refuse to go to a wedding in the church but then they would be ok to go to the reception. However, even some receptions can be religious.
I personally do not think it is appropriate for me to be there, and my co-worker comes from a very different cultural and religious background whom has even stronger reasons not to attend.
[quote=longneckone;39397759]
Quote:
Originally Posted by the_grimace
Coworker did not personally tell me about the funeral. Our manager simply thinks we should do it to pay respect to the employee.... I guess we can go for just a minute, say "I'm sorry" and slip out... but still, we both don't feel comfortable being there in the first place. I know if I had a funeral and random co-workers showed up to pay their respects to me, I would honestly be quite insulted.
quote]
Why on earth would you be insulted if someone stopped to pay their respects?? Go in .Sign the book. Be seen and leave in a matter of a very few minutes.
Now if I were the grieving person and found out my employer was offering to pay people to attend I would be quite insulted.
I would be insulted. I would prefer not even to have funerals in my immediate family because you get all these people that come to the funeral who really don't give a rat's ass about the deceased. They come in, say all this flattering stuff about the deceased, how much they will be missed, blah blah blah, but in reality they never cared or spent time with the person while they were still alive. Funerals for should be for those truly cared about the person, but you get lots of people who attend who never even knew the person blathering about how great they were.... It's insulting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevxu
It may be that the deceased will have a religious send off, but visiting the relatives or attending the funeral is making a gesture of sympathy with the family and not a religious matter. I cannot imagine being "appalled" by your boss's request as that is a very strong word, but I would certainly find it very out of line.
If I did not know the co-worker well, I would feel the same way as you. I would not be comfortable with with doing either really.
You have not mentioned if your boss is attending. But given that you and your co-worker are not close to the family of the deceased it would seem sufficient that your boss go as a representative of the company. But I don't imagine to want to put that to him.
Given the fact that your boss has made this unusual demand in the first place, I would be afraid that if you did not comply he might hold it against you two.
I did say in an earlier post that my boss is attending and I gave the reasons why. She has much more legitimate reasons to attend. We do not.
While I agree the manager should not be mandating the attendance of either the wake or funeral, I'm stunned by some of the lame excuses I'm reading for not attending. The bereaved would be offended??? It's because the manager is part of a community? It's too religious?
Do some of you not know that people attend wakes and services or pay a shiva call when coworkers lose a loved one all the time and it's always appreciated? It sounds like there's ignorance around this.
Is there no such thing as etiquette anymore? (rhetorical question - no need to respond, I already know the answer)
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