To have made a complaint to HR?

[soupforbrains]

I don’t want to drip feed so this might be a bit long sorry!

A little background for starters. I work for a large Italian company in the U.K. in a male dominated industry. The company has a number of ‘sub-companies’ which operate separately on different activities but which are often closely linked.

The company I work for owns our office building and one other of the Group companies ‘rents’ some floors in the building.

On Tuesday I was carrying out a task which involved checking the fire extinguisher types and locations throughout the whole building. All areas of all floors are accessed using key-cards and only people from the relevant company/project have access to each area.

One of our security guards, Bob, came with me to walk through the whole building top to bottom te ensure I could access all areas.

As I entered one of the areas used by the other company I paused to check my plans just outside the office of Mario whom I know, Mario gives me a cheery hello and I then continued to look at the plans to work out where to check.

Another employee let’s call him Luigi, walked past, and, nodding his head at me said to Mario “bordello”. Mario looks up from his work and says “eh?”. Luigi again nods at me and says again “bordello” before walking off.

I don’t speak much Italian, and in the moment wasn’t sure I had understood so quickly checked what I needed to and left the room. At which point Bob says to me with an eyebrows raised face “even I know what that word means”.

I felt a bit uncomfortable but still wasn’t sure what it meant so sort of brushed it off.

Yesterday I found it was still bothering me, so I looked it up, and bordello means brothel or whorehouse. Obviously this is very insulting/offensive.

In the male dominated environment I work in sometimes the ‘locker room” environment means people overstep lines, plus there is sometimes a linguistic/cultural difference and I have never before made a complaint. This is because A) all things a bit that have been said before I know were intended complimentarily/playfully and were just one party going a bit far or wording things in a way that comes across wrongly.
And B) anything which may have previously happened has happened with someone with whom I have a good working relationship and with whom I have no problem simply saying “no, that’s a bit far” or “you can’t say that” etc. No-one has ever ‘repeat offended’.

However I have lodged a formal complaint about this because I have never even spoken to Luigi AND there is no way at all that what he said could have been anything other than an offensive insult.

I mentioned this to a colleague who then asked what happened and their response was “it’s just a word”.

So, was I being unreasonable to have made a complaint?

*names have been changed throughout

I don't know if the op was right or not. Seems to have jumped the gun a bit. I think I would have had a chat with my boss first and seen what s/he said.

Often a simple conversation (in a mutual language) can sort this stuff out.

Bordello has a figurative meaning of "disaster area" or "shambles". Much more likely that this is what was said than randomly using the word "brothel" which would have meant bugger all. Context is everything.

I am usually all for people calling out others when they are rude or sexist, especially casually, but I suspect that you may have misunderstood. It would be extremely odd for Luigi to call you a bordello if he meant you looked like a prostitute--and frankly he would have to be pretty far beyond the 'extreme male banter' to do that without any warning. As you have said yourself, the culture of the firm seems to mean that you get things meant playfully rather than a blank insult.

I know that 'fare bordello' means to make a fuss, in Italian for instance, and it may be that he meant that going and checking all the fire extinguishers was a kind of 'tick boxy' job to have to do (some people having a supreme disregard for H&S matters). There are other possibilities, including that you misheard. If you hear a single word in another language, and don't know that language, you often tend to hear it as a word that you consciously or unconsciously know. So it is possible he said something else (ending in 'ello') which you picked up on. 'Fornello' for instance can mean 'hot' which you still might object to (and might have embarrassed Mario), but which would be a different level of rude. It was still rude to speak and reference you in Italian if you don't understand it, and that would be worth mentioning.

But it seems to me that it was Bob who got you thinking it was an insult--and he doesn't speak Italian. I'd check with a friendly Italian speaker myself (one of the colleagues you get on with), or Luigi himself, because this makes about as much sense as someone calling you a farmyard.

In short, I think that you are BU, simply because I do think that it is possible it wasn't a blank insult. But it is possible you might still object!

Are we really saying its rude and inappropriate for two Italian employees of an Italian company to speak Italian to each other?

OP, it makes no sense. You should have asked what he meant at the time. It's going to look weird if your complaint to HR is 'he called me a brothel'.

I think it was rude and unacceptable for the two men to talk in a language the OP didn't understand. It's a form of bullying IMHO. Especially when they used a word that might have had a 'dodgy' meaning. You were right to make a complaint.

I'm not convinced that he meant to call you a whore (puttana would have been better if he had) but I do agree with this: 'Regardless of whether or not the OP has misunderstood the wording, it's rude and unprofessional to speak in a different language to another person at work'.

Bullying?!

You might want to look that word up

I know English is really very superior but I don't think two Italian people working for an Italian company passing a remark in Italian is such a problem

Lovely sarcasm.

It's a company in the UK where, from what the OP writes, English is the business language.

More broadly, people speaking in a language they know or assume a colleague doesn't speak is inappropriate and rude. At best it can lead to misunderstandings (as, I suspect, will turn out to be the case here).

MissFlash "Are we really saying its rude and inappropriate for two Italian employees of an Italian company to speak Italian to each other?"

to each other alone, fine.
to each other in front of other people who speak Italian, fine
to each other in front of anyone who doesn't speak Italian - not fine. They could be saying anything!

It's hysterically funny hearing English speakers complain about this. Presumably not so outrageous in multi-national companies where the lingua franca is English then?

I don't think it is rude if they were just carrying on as they were. It sounds like the op was there with Bob quietly getting on with her job and the other two men just carried on.

Therefore perfectly fine to speak in whatever language they like because the op was not in the conversation. If they were using technical terms she wouldn't understand either there would be no expectation they should use words someone else would understand so they could eaves drop.

I think reporting it to HR is the right thing to do. However, I tend to agree with those who think you and Bob may have misheard the word. If he wanted to call you a whore he would have said puttana or prostitute. Calling you a brothel seems very odd.

Barbarian, I'm not sure I follow. If the lingua franca is English, staff should talk to one another in English, wherever the company is located.

By the same token if I worked for (say) a German company where the lingua franca was German, I would speak German, not English, to an English-speaking colleague if German-speaking colleagues were also present.

Moving

I can't understand people delightedly scribbling things down to go and report to HR (like you're about 6yo and they're your mum) rather than actually just saying something at the time! I've spoken to line managers in the past if it's not appropriate to speak to the person but always immediately or after having slept on it.

That's not the same as feeling unable to say something or being intimidated into silence at all (which often happens when the culture is rotten or what is happening is truly awful). That's taking a gleeful delight in getting people into trouble.

If we all took responsibility for our work place and spoke up at the time (like adults) a lot of behaviour that should not be tolerated will find it much harder to get a foothold.

There are all sorts of reasons why speaking up isn't the best thing to do in all situation. It might be fine to call out a one-off comment or remark but what I experienced was a sustained period of deliberate exclusion, misogyny and unprofessional behaviour. You can't just call that out because it's entrenched and it's the culture/bhevaiour that needs changing.

If I'd have called them out, I have no doubt they'd have moved their discussions to somewhere they couldn't be overheard by me and nothing would have changed. However, an HR complaint made it clear that the behaviour itself wasn't acceptable anywhere and that there were serious consequences (not just being called out by a random colleague once or twice).

I also don't particularly like the idea of "just say something" in general as it places the onus on the people who are the "victims" of behaviours, or at least subject to it.

Moving

Therefore perfectly fine to speak in whatever language they like because the op was not in the conversation

But the OP wasn't given the chance to be in the conversation because the deliberately excluded her by speaking a language that they knew she didn't understand.

Technical language is completely different.

He said one word! Are we policing any non-English usage then?

And bullying? Get a grip.

Bella love how you quote my whole posts and then paraphrases part of what I actually wrote myself to educate me. Things I have written and you have just cut and pasted!

Hilarious

I confirm what others have said -'bordello' here would have just been used as meaning 'madhouse' absolutely inoffensive and a commonly used expression. YABU to complain to HR.

From what others have said on this thread it sounds like you have misunderstood what they were saying. It is possible they were saying something along the 'health and safety gone mad' lines.

It also seems from what OP said that she was doing her job accompanied by Bob and the two Italians were just around but not involved with her directly so it would not have been rude for them to speak Italian to each other.

I rather think you may have overreacted OP.

She was there doing a job Farticus presumably one that involves disrupting business as usual as little as possible.

Doesn't sound like there was a conversation to me.

Rhiannon that really isn't how it works. Multi-nationals don't just have staff who all speak together in 1 language. They'll have 1 or 2 international languages (so for Siemens English and German) which is how the higher level staff in the different countries communicate with each other but they'll still employ lots of people that speak either one or neither of these. So if you work for a multinational you will hear other languages spoken between colleagues. Only the English have a problem with this.

He said one word! Are we policing any non-English usage then?

Er, no, just the usage of another language that they knew excluded the OP, and a word that she (rightly or wrongly) took to have an offensive meaning.

Only the English have a problem with this.

I love a good sweeping statement.

I agree with Slim:
to each other alone, fine.
to each other in front of other people who speak Italian, fine
to each other in front of anyone who doesn't speak Italian - not fine.

Insert any language instead of Italian. The principle is the same.

I work in a multi lingual organisation and it’s quite the norm for people who are having a private conversation with each other to do so in their native tongue. It’s beyond ridiculous to suggest otherwise and that they can only speak English to one another.

Anways, op, I’m sorry but I think you have misunderstood, as did bob. I am from an Italian family and it would be beyond bizzare to call someone a brothel. I suspect he was making a comment about daft corporate rules and regulations. I also suspect you may owe this man an apology at some point going forward and have caused yourself some embarrassment.

Did the fact you thought he basically called you a building not in any way alert you to the fact you might have this wrong?