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

Soupforbrains - sorry I read it wrong! I don't think you did anything wrong complaining but I do think you got the wrong end of the stick.

I think whore is "putta".

He might have been referring to a topic they were discussing previously. However, you'll soon find out.

FWIW I hear the equivalent term in French (bordel) about ten times a day to mean, depending on circumstances, either "bloody hell" or "chaos".

I can't remember ever having heard it used to mean a brothel and I'm sure quite a few people don't know that is the literal meaning .

If he meant the office, etc, then at least the complaint will make sure he understands that gesturing at someone and making a comment in a language they don't speak can be misconstrued and will bother them.

I worked in an Italian kitchen, swearing was pretty much the first thing I learned in Italian.

There are many other ways to say whore, puttana being most likely. In all the swearing and the sexual harassment I heard, I never ever heard bordello to mean brothel.

This situation could have been avoided by them not speaking a language that you don’t in front of you. But it would also have been fine for you to challenge that. Jumping to conclusions has led you to the incorrect one I suspect.

I did once catch my manager referring to one of the other staff as ‘the blonde bitch’ (la stronza bionda) . I told him he shouldn’t describe his staff that way, he said I shouldn’t listen to other people’s conversations . He learned not to bitch about people in Italian though...

Words which if you hear are actually swears:

Puta
Stronza
Puttana
(All basically female insults, but puta can be an exclamation)
Cazzo - dick

There’s more but I don’t want to make you think you’re hearing swears wherever you go ;)

I also got a gcse in Italian which supported what I picked up in the kitchen. I recommend getting more of the language if it’s often spoken at work, it can be a real advantage (and help to avoid misunderstandings)

Those people trying to say it meant something else and wasn't offensive - Ben, Mario, and various other people who work there all think it was used rudely to imply that OP is a whore.

I'd accept her version of events.

I worked in an Italian kitchen, swearing was pretty much the first thing I learned in Italian.

Good for you. The OP doesn't work in an Italian kitchen.

@kickassangel that’s not confirmed. The security guard ‘bob’ raised his eyebrows but that could have been because Luigi spoke to him in Italian and implied op’s role was creating mess/disturbance (che bordello). Mario’s not commented. Other colleagues have said it’s just a word. The op has put the interpretation.

It WAS rude of Luigi and he shouldn’t have said something potentially disparaging in another language to the security guard that the op does not speak. But I seriously doubt there was the meaning that the op drew from it.

He didn’t say anything to the security guard, it was said to Mario.

@rhiannonohara the op does work with Italians. She made a complaint about someone making a comment in Italian as she understood that he was calling her a whore. My specific experience of swearing and use of ‘locker room’ Italian is relevant. Bit myself as to why you can’t make that connection. Which i helpfully made for you, in the second paragraph.

@bluntness100 oh so it was!

Where is the description of mario making any kind of reaction? It seems to be bob the security guard who raises his eyebrows.

This is the stupidest conversation I have yet had on mumsnet

This is the stupidest conversation I’ve had on mumsnet as well.

As said, I come from an Italian family, I work with a lot of Italian men, I understand a lot of the language and this is overwhelmingly she has misunderstood and made an erroneous, serious and deeply offensive accusation against A male employee.

Thanks for the condescension, reet.

Point is really that the OP doesn't work in an Italian kitchen; she works in an Anglophone company.

This seems to me rather absurd. Luigi was presumably commenting on the crazy mess that is health and safety and the checking of fire extinguishers, like bureaucrats gone rampant. This the use of the word 'bordello' in this instance it seems to me. It's a silly road to go down presuming meaning in words of a language you don't speak. Why not bring it up with Mario? Why complain to HR?

she works in an Anglophone company

She works for an Italian company where it will be acceptable for them to speak Italian when communicating personally to another employee. I’m guessing you’ve never ever worked for a company other than a British one.

"As said, I come from an Italian family, I work with a lot of Italian men, I understand a lot of the language ..."

It was the OP's Italian colleague who said she was "shocked" and recommended she go to HR...

He may have meant the following:

nationsofns.wikia.com/wiki/Corporate_Bordello

Bluntness, you can guess away, and I'm not at all sure why you're so hung up on the idea of this being a British thing.

I'm just shouting into the wind here, I feel, but anyway: they weren't 'communicating personally to another employee' if they gestured to/looked at the OP when they were having their communication; they were clearly talking about her in some capacity. Exactly the same as someone whispering in a colleague's ear to avoid being heard by another colleague.

Angela, very good point. I hadn't picked up on that.

Ok, He did not mean Corporate Bordello. He was also not referring to 'HSE gone mad' because he a) doesn't know what my job is and b) couldn't tell from what I was doing (reading a plan on a piece of paper in order to decided where to look for the Fire Extinguishers).

Thank you to everyone who has explained the alternative meaning, I agree that if this was his meaning it makes it a non-event, which will hopefully be established and I will if necessary apologise to Luigi for the misunderstanding. However as I mentioned I did run the incident past my Italian colleague prior to speaking to HR precisely to check if there was another meaning. It seems she was unaware of this meaning so sadly my running it past her may not have had the usefulness I had hoped.

As a note to those asking why I didn't ask Mario. Mario is Luigi's boss and is also the HR Manager for their company. Going to Mario would have been more serious than taking it to my own HR, as it would have meant a compulsory disciplinary process.

That said Bluntness is correct about the language being acceptable. The Official language of the office and the company is English, because of the industry in which we operate. But it is an Italian company and employs a large number of Italian staff. Italian is often spoken in the building. I have no problem with the fact Luigi spoke in Italian it was the very obvious gesture to me and the translation I understood which caused offense. As already established I may be mistaken in the meaning, but i still await an explanation regarding what was meant by both the word and the gesture.

I imagine the word is similar to Shambles, which originally meant slaughter house in English.

But as someone who speaks very little other than my own language, I would be surprised that someone saying one word briefly in another language you don't understand you would be able to pick up the word confidently enough to he able to translate it. I know I wouldn't.
So it could well be that they said something totally different. I've certainly been in the situation where some one has misheard a single word in their own language let alone one they don't speak.

That's what I think has probably happened too Witchend

As I said previously, I think the OP and Bob misheard. There are a number of Italian words that sound like bordello, some of which would make more sense than bordello. For example, bidello means caretaker or janitor.

As I said previously, I think the OP and Bob misheard. There are a number of Italian words that sound like bordello, some of which would make more sense than bordello. For example, bidello means caretaker or janitor.

Interesting. Maybe OP should've spoken to the other guy before reporting, then. If it turns out he was pointing out the caretaker (because why the hell would he randomly insult the OP whose job he apparently doesn't know) then the OP is going to look like a bit of an idiot. I could no way confidently say someone had said a particular word to me in Italian, despite being fluent in several other European languages.