Last month 7 new people started in my office, most of them are not white and have names relevant to their cultures. We work in the office btw so all of this is face fo face.
My line manager makes zero effort to pronounce their names and it’s even annoying me - I can’t imagine how they feel. Over the past month, he makes a song and dance about it. He walks up to the same individuals daily then pulls a face and says “you know I’m bad with names”. He then cycles through say 10 different incorrect names and then laughs it off as “being bad with names” when he’s told he got it wrong again. This happens multiple times a day, for the past month.
When he’s told their name, he just says he won’t remember. He’s even resorted to referring to some of my colleagues by their first initial or giving them a random name like Mike, John or whatever instead of taking the time to remember their names.
My manager finds this funny/a cute personality quirk, but I’m thinking it has to be indirect discrimination, if not direct discrimination? It’s not even as if the names are super long or difficult to pronounce. I don’t work closely with the new starters but I remember their names.