Christian Woman Says Boss Demanded She Remove Ash Wednesday Ashes From Forehead at Work

A Christian woman on TikTok claims that her boss demanded she remove Ash Wednesday ashes from her forehead at work.

She explained that she works in a restaurant and was ready to work at the hostess stand when her boss approached her.

"What the hell is on your forehead?" the boss asked her. "It looks like dirt. Take it off."

The woman replied, "No, it's ashes from Ash Wednesday."

Her boss then told her that he didn't care and continued to demand she take them off.

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"I don't think that you can ask me to do that," she said.

He then told her, "I'm not asking, I'm telling you."

The woman went to the bathroom and was "tearing up" because "it felt wrong."

Her boss then pulled her into his office for a talk, where he proceeded to tell her to leave work instead of taking the ashes off to avoid "legal trouble."

He claimed it was "nothing personal" but that he didn't want restaurant patrons to be "offended" by her religion.

The woman defended herself by sharing that her aunt worked at a different restaurant for 15 years and was never asked to remove her ashes.

She also added that people of other religions are allowed to work while wearing religion-related items such as hijabs.

The boss did not budge, so she decided to go home after her last table had paid.

However, the restaurant got busy and the only other employees working were a bartender, a new waiter and a trainee that the woman was supposed to train.

The bartender then attempted to talk to the manager on her behalf and he still would not change his mind on asking the woman to go home.

However, the disrespect didn't end there, because as the woman was preparing to leave, her boss reached across the hostess stand and untied her apron.

"Should I quit? I really don't know who else would put up with that crazy amount of disrespect," she said at the end of the TikTok video.

Many people in the comments section advised her not to quit and to take the incident to a lawyer.

"DO NOT QUIT!!!! That is discrimination against religion… Lawyer up!! Lawyer up!!" one person commented.

"Don’t go to hr, go straight to a lawyer. Hr is there to protect the company not you," another person suggested.

"HR here. File an EEOC claim immediately. Don’t even bother with HR. Also, wear it again on your next shift (even after Ash Wednesday) and make him put that in writing that you can’t wear it," someone else said.