I have a colleague who is new to our function, although not new to the company, and from fairly early on I had the sense that something was quite off in her attitude towards me.
I hope people know what I mean. Nothing you can formally put your finger on, but a pattern of small things. Meetings I am left out of, emails that don't get forwarded, deliverables I am only brought into at the last possible moment. We are at the same level.
Every individual micro incident is absolutely in nothing to see here territory. Taken together (been six month) they paint quite a clear picture.
I thought I'd make a very intentional effort to build bridges. I looked at her public social media to see whether there was anything we might have in common, I don't know, something very innocent, a first step. Dogs, travel, hobbies, sport, whatever. Her own feed is very mainstream, mostly food, travel, family events and fashion, occasionally some local news reposted.
However, I discovered that her partner, whom she publicly tags as being in a relationship with, has a very specific prejudice against people of my birth nationality.
To anonymise this, imagine I'm Argentinian (I'm not), with apologies to any Argentinians reading. More than 50% of his posts are things (mostly reposts, with some crazy conspiracy-theory shit) along the lines of "deport all Argentinians back to Brazil if Argentina is so bad for them ", reposting crimes no matter how minor committed anywhere in the world by Argentinians, "lock Milei, lock Milei" protests, stats on Argentinian corruption, or claims that Argentinians are all Nazi descendants and shouldn't be allowed into the UK. I am actually surprised some of what he reposts is not automatically flagged by algorithms as hate speech.
Neither he nor she appears to have any connection whatsoever to Argentina that I can work out, or even to anywhere in South America, which somehow makes the fixation even stranger.
I OBVIOUSLY know his views aren't automatically hers, and I certainly don't want to hold someone responsible in my head for everything their partner posts. There were views my partners held that I didn't, and vice versa. Still.
AIBU to wonder whether I found the reason?