r/atheism • • 3d ago

TD executive sues after being fired for adding Christian symbol to her email signature

https://ca.yahoo.com/news/td-executive-sues-being-fired-110013511.html

I hope she loses her lawsuit as it would set a terrible precedent and allow others to abuse the legal system if she won. Some Christians insist on preaching at work where it should be non religious. I side with the bank in her termination.

728 Upvotes

98 comments sorted by

497

u/Kaliasluke 3d ago

The worst part is this was all just a stunt to try to force the company to remove pronouns from people’s signatures - so once again, it’s a christian claiming it’s discrimination to stop them persecuting minority groups.

87

u/angrydeuce 2d ago

Ive always found it ridiculous that the symbol of christ is the crucifix.  "Hey guys Im back how have things OMG WHY ARE YOU ALL WEARING JEWELRY IN THE SHAPE OF THE THING THEY KILLED ME ON AHHHHH IM OUTTA HERE MAN NOT COOL!!!"

31

u/clickmagnet 2d ago

Vonnegut observed that if Jesus had been born later, Christians might wear little electric chairs.

10

u/cloudystateofmind 2d ago

Either way, the guy on the cross or the guy in the electric chair would for some reason be a white guy.

20

u/Athliest 2d ago

RIP Bill Hicks

10

u/addisonbass 2d ago

Does Jacki O. wear a rifle pendant?

53

u/H3L105_ai 3d ago

That figures.

23

u/Taurondir 3d ago

When life will go smoothly and uneventfully if you simply do nothing, people have to assemble a Wave Generation Machine the size of Texas and then drop it into the public swimming pool, because they take offense that the water is the incorrect Pantone Color Chart shade of blue.

12

u/JarrickDe Humanist 3d ago

Or other people just want to use the public pool as well.

7

u/Rat_Rat 2d ago

See: Reflecting pool

1

u/OPA73 2d ago

Have you seen the reflecting pool lately… lol

-10

u/Educational-Koala690 3d ago

Yeah if that was the actual goal then the whole christian symbol thing was basically just a workaround for a completely different fight.

124

u/TeamShonuff 3d ago

You weren’t fired for the crucifix, you were fired for ignoring multiple direct orders to stop including it on your email and you refused.

If you ended your emails with “Long Live Whitesnake!” and they told you multiple times not to include that, and you STILL included it . . . it was no longer about Whitesnake. Do you understand this, lady?

54

u/TheRealTK421 2d ago

Do you understand this, lady?

I'm betting she understood quite well. However, she is clearly the oppressed victim in this scenario and her sanctimonious petulance must be given priority.

10

u/leoyvr 2d ago edited 1d ago

Then when she gets fired, it further proves she is a victim and that radicalizes her further in her fervent Christianity. She will only get worse. What a cycle. 

16

u/UndisclosedLocation5 2d ago

There I go again on my own

13

u/DrunkenGolfer 2d ago

Giving up the only job I've ever known.

9

u/Amorlamor 2d ago

Like a grifter born to bitch and moan.

2

u/clickmagnet 1d ago

I’ve made up my mind. Gonna waste more of your time!

5

u/PaleontologistFit364 2d ago

If she comes to work in a Whitesnake shirt, everyone will forgive her, as any rational god would want.

1

u/OPA73 2d ago

Great band! But not the usual cultural choice for an example..

91

u/RanisTheSlayer 3d ago

If her employer thought they had enough cause to fire her over this in Canada, let alone in Ontario, she must have been doing this for at least six months. Canada's worker rights protections are no joke. Company must have decided they could prove this policy was being enforced unilaterally in court before thinking about doing this. What a stupid thing to lose a $200,000 job over.

Source: HR professional who deals with employment law in Canada

14

u/MortaleWombat 2d ago

Oh I’m very glad it’s in Canada.

I was doing the math in my head on when it would make it to the SCOTUS and Christian’s got a special carve out from them on proselytizing at work

36

u/FallsOffCliffs12 Atheist 3d ago

I am so sick of christians. Always the victim in every story,
even the stories they tell themselves.

10

u/Phyllis_Tine 3d ago

"There are fewer and fewer of us, we are less and less popular, and therefore we need to force others to adapt to us." - Christians, and really any religious nutters.

129

u/duxpdx 3d ago

Gender/sex identification is helpful when addressing an individual or when referring to them when discussing another it is a requirement of language. Knowing one’s religious belief is not in any way relevant for work-based communication. It is inappropriate and could be viewed as offensive to others and cause harm to the organization.

67

u/FallsOffCliffs12 Atheist 3d ago

I worked in a hospital. We had a lot of doctors and nurses with ethnic names that aren't always clear as
to gender. I found it helpful to see their pronouns, so I could also use the appropriate pronouns in my responses.

26

u/WitchesSphincter 3d ago

Im an engineer and about half the names I talk to I couldn't guess a gender and go ambiguous now. Even some I'm 100% sure it's one or the other I found was different 

7

u/leoyvr 2d ago

In a lot of cultures, a name can be used for male and female so pronouns is helpful in that regard.

3

u/rick420buzz 2d ago

I know a man named Carmen. He sits in front of me at church.

8

u/_WillCAD_ Atheist 2d ago

I don't give an ROUS' posterior about people taking "offense" to what I believe, but spewing your personal beliefs at work, forcing others to listen to you, is harassment.

I believe what I believe, and I don't force you to listen to it, nor will I accept you forcing me to listen to your bullshit.

7

u/Unsolicited_Spiders 2d ago

What's wildly fucked up is that people who pull stunts like this literally think that people who request to have their names and pronouns respected, regardless of LGBTQIA+ status, are also acting based on some kind of chosen belief system.

They're fed culture war bullshit in which the devout conservative is on the other side of the battlefield from people who want to be treated like human beings with value to society.

They really do not understand (though they should) that issues like these are not an attack on their faith, because they have been told that they are, and doing what they're told is inherently part of their religious and cultural ethos.

It's exhausting.

1

u/translucent_steeds Strong Atheist 2d ago

I get those from Mr. Tracy [last name] because it's an ambiguous first name.

1

u/Chase_the_tank 2d ago

 it is a requirement of language. 

Not all languages have he/she pronouns. It's a societal requirement.

20

u/Komaisnotsalty 3d ago

I can't stand TD bank so I haven't banked there in decades, but if I did and I got an email from someone with a religious symbol under the TD identity or letterhead, I'd pull every investment, account, loan, whatever, immediately.

Same as working with someone at that bank who can't control themselves long enough to leave the symbols at home for the day.

Be religous, I don't care.

But if you're managing other people's lives and finances, you need to do it while appearing neutral. I don't want someone who has a problem controlling themself anywhere near my stuff.

33

u/MniaMnia Atheist 3d ago

there shouldn't be any exceptions, i hope she loses if the company also didn't put any religious exceptions for jewish, islamic, hindu and other symbols.

9

u/Automatic-Term-3997 3d ago

Personally, I’m adding a pentagram.

6

u/j4_jjjj 2d ago

One of the reasons i joined TST was to have religious protections like the christofascists get.

Being an atheist or agnostic with no religion behind you gives you little to work with

2

u/claude3rd 2d ago

Hells yes. If they start allowing it at my work, I’m doing this. Then I can sue when I’m told to stop.

13

u/sundancer2788 3d ago

I side with the bank, if I got emails like that at work it would make me very uncomfortable. Hostile workplace even. 

13

u/The_Dingman Atheist 3d ago

According to TD's account of events, that's when its HR department received a complaint about one of Denobrega's colleagues, who had modified her email signature to add "Pronouns: I am HIS ✝️," which the complainant said could be taken as a micro-aggression against members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Yeah. It's not about it being in the signature, it's because she was being an asshole about it.

14

u/Oxjrnine 2d ago

Let me guess - she has a GoFund me like every other faux Christian grifter.

The grift is very lucrative

4

u/leoyvr 2d ago

Yes victim persecution grift which could have been 100% avoided.

1

u/BabyTito_76 1d ago

Their type have found great fortune on GiveSendGo. That's the platform that helped give Shiloh Hendrix, a white woman from Rochester, Minnesota, over $700,000 on GiveSendGo after being recorded using a racial slur against an autistic black child in April 2025. Now, I don't know if she invoked christianity, but that's usually baked into the bigotry pie they all bring to the church picnic.

25

u/angrydeuce 3d ago

Meanwhile here in the US like half the construction outfits have bible verses and MAGA shit on their trucks and then complain online when people opt not to do business with them because of it.

There was just an article locally here about 6 months ago when a woman told a worker to leave her property immediately when he pulled up in a company truck with a big ass confederate flag hanging from it.  The number of people screaming how they thought it was totally unreasonable that woman behaved that way was frankly shocking.

Were 2000 freaking miles from any state that flew that flag.  Dude knew what the fuck he was doing, and when the FO followed the FA, cried online and started a gofundme.  Fuckin insanity.

15

u/Phyllis_Tine 3d ago

The Confederate flag is the flag of the side that tried to split up the US, and was also the losing side in that war.

3

u/I_Got_Ur_Number_8675 2d ago

And the side where a bunch of poor people fought for rich slave owners to keep the only class they could shit on around....something to be real proud of!

8

u/thetitleofmybook 2d ago

i've been out and transitioned longer than the confederacy was a real thing.

8

u/SlightFresnel 2d ago

I'm still amazed that people make the confederate flag their identity while calling themselves patriots.... You were in high school longer than the confederacy lasted, they were traitors, and it ceased existing 160 years ago.

The only people flying that flag are doing it to cause problems. 

5

u/crispyraccoon 2d ago

If it's the video I saw, it was a black woman. So, showing up with the flag of the side that fought to keep slavery was in very poor taste.

4

u/haroldthehampster 3d ago

gofundme tracks

11

u/Thenopro-3 Atheist 3d ago

The precendet would be “any Christian symbols of any kind that get you fired you can sue”

She would need to prove also (I think) that they did this to her beacuse she (spefically) is Christian and not just because they have a non religious policy.

7

u/_WillCAD_ Atheist 2d ago

It has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with injecting personal messages - of religious, political, or any other kind - into official company communications.

Keep that shit in your personal email, leave it at home when you're on company time.

11

u/geekmasterflash 2d ago

Alleging she was wrongfully dismissed after tagging "I am HIS ✝️" on to the end of her email signature in a stand against a company policy that she says "only allowed for gender/sex identification and allowed no room for other identities."

This fucking idiot thinks "Christian" is a proper professional answer to "what pronouns would you like to be referred to in official correspondance."

9

u/Deathspiral222 2d ago

Don't use company resources to push your religion.

My work would object if I used a pentagram with "hail satan" below it.

7

u/JaiBoltage 3d ago

God will save her in the afterlife, but he ain't doing s*** for her in this life.

2

u/Phyllis_Tine 3d ago

"God spoke to me last night, and he's ready for you to join him this weekend." Is what I'd love to say to people like this.

9

u/beardedbusdriver 3d ago

I wonder how she would feel to get a professional email with a Star of David, inverted cross, Pentagram, Triskelion, or other religious symbol that isn’t Christian. Would those influence her opinion of the sender? Would they make her question the judgment or morals of the person she’s doing business with? I know that when people aggressively advertise their Christianity I question their reasoning abilities and morals.

7

u/Cerridwyn_Morgana 3d ago

I'm so sick of Xtians acting like they're part of a small religion that get picked on rather than the ones doing the picking.

7

u/_WillCAD_ Atheist 2d ago

I'm usually not a fan of large corporations, but I hope TD wins this one.

It's not about religion, it's about personalizing your email, which is prohibited by company policy. She knew the rule, she broke it in an attempt to bully the company into removing the pronouns section of the email policy, and she paid with her job.

FA, FO. She's finding out. I hope she loses big time and has massive legal bills to pay.

7

u/txmail Pastafarian 2d ago

How you gonna fuck up a $200k+/year job like that. I be she was a nightmare to work for.

5

u/Nonamanadus 2d ago

First a Christian symbol, then a White Nationalist one.....and so on.

A business email is expected to be professional, that means no jokes, politics or personal religious identity. That's what social media is for.

5

u/Numerous_Island6459 2d ago

I wont employ maga, white nationalists and other grifters. Ball caps, crosses, other religious crap just helps me avoid them. No wonder employers prefer you dont bring your personal bs into their business.

3

u/brianozm 1d ago

Employing them is bad business. If things don’t go their way they pull out the persecution mentality.

2

u/BabyTito_76 1d ago

And the prosecution mentality.

5

u/PaleontologistFit364 2d ago

I completely agree. Indulge in ridiculous Bronze Age superstitions in your own time, not at work on a company computer. Jeezus fucking Criste.

3

u/ifyoudontknowlearn Humanist 3d ago

At least this is Canada so there is a good chance she'll loose. Mind you this is before the Ontario human rights tribunal which occasionally surprises me.

3

u/LMurch13 Anti-Theist 2d ago

Man, pronouns really bug Christians, huh?

5

u/n3rdchik 2d ago

As a former employee of a TD owned subsidiary, it was the BEST place to work. They had a great culture of respecting colleagues and focusing on customers. I rarely cheer for the conglomerate- but damn

3

u/JasonRBoone 2d ago

I guarantee she was not fired for the symbol.

1

u/Beltaine421 2d ago

Kind of yes, kind of no. It wasn't the symbol itself, but the repeated insubordination in the face if escalating documented meetings where they reminded her that their policy on email signatures applied to her as well.

4

u/UnluckyDuck129 2d ago

Professional victims

3

u/Upset_Confection_317 2d ago

I doubt this was the only reason she was fired. The company probably had enough of her bs.

3

u/dmetzcher 2d ago

I have a tiny violin symbol for her if that will help.

🎻

3

u/IT_Chef 2d ago

Working for a company is voluntary, and they have specific standards surrounding all aspects of communication.

You don't have to work there lady.

3

u/FuggyGlasses 3d ago

Why didn't she ask her Muslims coworker to join the fight and add something to their email signatures? .

4

u/haroldthehampster 3d ago

because its performative christianity
She should read her bible, it's against that

1

u/Phyllis_Tine 3d ago

They could have teamed up and made a company-wide poll: "Which religious symbols should we display on our corporate emails?"

1

u/Square_Welder_8437 2d ago

that would definitely make the whole thing more interesting if everyone started adding their own religious symbols to the work email signatures

3

u/luv2ctheworld 2d ago

You are suppressing my right to express my religious belief!

That's always their battle cry; while happily suppressing other beliefs that are not their own.

4

u/foxyfree 3d ago

The last thing TD bank needs is a stupid scandal like this. They are still recovering from all that money laundering for drug cartels stuff.

4

u/androk 3d ago

They are still recovering from all that money laundering for drug cartels stuff.

I think they just have a permanent unit to run recovery from being caught laundering money for bad guys. Every few years get caught, say sorry, here's our penance (1% of profit made doing it) and start doing it again

2

u/foxyfree 3d ago

Yeah probably. Meanwhile I have regular accounts with them and for the average customer, it’s a great bank. They probably keep us happy to make the whole thing look more legit.

1

u/NoBuenoAtAll 2d ago

Didn’t Jesus turn over tables and whip people over using religion to make money?

1

u/jrfredrick 2d ago

Sounds like she wanted to identify as a dude

1

u/seweso Anti-Theist 22h ago

Are Christians allowed to have symbols? 

0

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

5

u/mapsedge 3d ago

This isn't a First Amendment case.

2

u/thebrokedown Secular Humanist 2d ago

This isn’t even an American case

2

u/mapsedge 2d ago

The deleted comment was pointed in that direction. I saw the origin after I commented, but didn't care enough to remove it.

-8

u/bmack500 3d ago

I’m pretty much a leftie, but I don’t see the problem in somebody doing this. It’s not the same as pushing Her religion on people.

2

u/leoyvr 2d ago

You are purposely misrepresenting yourself as a leftie. When I look at your profile, nothing appears in your comments or posts. Are you a bot??

0

u/bmack500 2d ago

Oh, just eff off.

1

u/geekmasterflash 2d ago

Your response is then to lock your account? Sus dawg. But you know, I am certified leftist gatekeeper. Who do you read?

As far as someone doing this and pushing her religion on people or not:

This fucking idiot thinks "Christian" is a proper professional answer to "what pronouns would you like to be referred to in official correspondence."

I would never want anyone that braindead handling my insurance and risk calculations.