To be uncomfortable after my manager went on a rant about how much she hates Meghan Markle during a team meeting?

[AlertBird]

So, today, in our team meeting, my manager went on a full-on rant about how much she hates Meghan Markle. It seemed completely out of place and unnecessary, especially considering the meeting was meant to be about work. It got a bit awkward and no one really knew how to react.

I get that people have opinions but I just felt like it was unprofessional to bring something like that up during a work meeting. It felt like a personal issue being projected onto everyone else.

AIBU to feel uncomfortable about this or is it just me being overly sensitive?

If you knew this why did you ask?

I mean, it's completely unprofessional, but if it is out of character for her to be like this I'd wonder if she wasn't having some kind of breakdown or is under a lot of stress.

Lots of female celebrities make people irate. Taylor Swift gets a lot of criticism, Blake lively as well (particularly recently but also before that). JK Rowling makes a lot of people irate. All the Kardashians.

I'm not saying there's never racism but I find it odd that you think other female celebrities don't also come in for a lot of criticism, a lot of the time for simply daring to exist.

And let’s fa wit nobody knew she was mixed race until she told us. And very few people cared anyway. The RF certainly didn’t!

I don't like MM I think she's highly narcissistic but I couldn't be bothered to rant about her. Nobody has to watch or take any notice of anything she does - so I just don't.

On MN though if you don't like someone who's not white then you must be racist, it's peak MN.

Your manager sounds very strange though.

No one is bothered about people who don't like her. It's the people who have a real hatred for her and rant about her who seem absolutely deranged. I suspect a few of them are on this thread and realising how unhinged they appear and not liking it.

Everyone also “hates” someone they criticise. I think most people truly hate very few people, if anybody. But “hates” is a word that’s thrown round when people just mean “don’t love” or “dislike”

We were discussing a work-related topic, and somehow she segued into talking about MM out of nowhere. It wasn’t just a passing comment either, she went on for a while about how much she dislikes her, how ‘manipulative’ she thinks she is, and how she’s ‘ruined’ Prince Harry.

I don't even understand how she'd make a segue into that. I'm not surprised everyone just sat there, I can't imagine people's reactions if someone I worked with just brought up MM (or any random celeb) in a meeting and had a rant. What a completely bizarre thing to do!

I can never understand how some people get so emotionally invested in somebody they have never met. If they haven't committed some sort of heinous crime why are they so concerned?

Or won't shut up about her.

This. The world has gone made entirely. No-one seems to be able to regulate their mouth or their emotions so I would ignore this, file it away as a brain fart and crack on.

How absolutely right that you post this in AIBU, OP. Must have been terribly distressing for you.

I hope it's helping you process things to post a selection of the misogynistic standard BS comments that she definitely made. I'm sure a few more of 'her comments' will spring to mind as the thread gathers a bit more pace.

For the love of God 🙄

Exactly, nothing wrong with not liking her, if you don't, you don't.
Some come across as deranged though.

We don't know she lied about people being racist. I'm wouldn't be at all surprised if members of the royal family have made racist remarks. Prince Philip was quite blatant about it. I don't know what she said to a judge. If she bullied people that's awful.
However, I still don't understand the level of vitriol. Loads of celebs are supposedly mean and not very pleasant to people but they don't evoke the same passionate hatred that Meghan Markle does. If she's a bully then OK. It's not nice but I couldn't be bothered to feel the level of rage and hatred that many people seem to. She's just not very interesting to me.

Not liking her is one thing but to have a rant about her in a work meeting is weird and unprofessional.

Has she ever when on a rant about Prince Andrew or a white woman before?

I’ve just spat my tea out laughing 😆

Not that I’ve noticed. This was the first time something like this came up and it was quite out of character for her. It did make me wonder if there were any underlying reasons for this but it definitely felt awkward given the setting.

Unprofessional and unhinged. YANBU @AlertBird.

I don’t like her. Nothing to do race and it’s ridiculous to suggest anyone that doesn’t like her is racist. I liked her at first. Her behaviour made me dislike her!

Nobody has suggested that though, have they 🙄

I couldn't bring myself to care about this one way or the other tbh. I think the concept of "being unprofessional" is a bit silly, given that most of us probably do quite ordinary jobs. If the woman in question is a simultaneous interpreter at the peace talks in Jeddah and suddenly abandoned what she should have been doing/saying to rant about Meghan Markle you might have a point. Everyone sitting around looking embarrassed strikes me as silly too. Why not react? I think I would probably have laughed and asked her what MM had done to shit on her cornflakes this morning. But then I'm probably quite unprofessional too.

So many people are missing the point, probably deliberately, and using this thread to tell us why they hate MM. This is about a manager behaving inappropriately in a work meeting.

Harry has backpedaled on his claim the RF made racist comments

She put herself down as caucasian on her CV apparently - though this does not mean white, of course. She played her background down to get parts - which in the racist US doesn't seem that venal. Her race/colour was never an issue in the UK anyway, quite the contrary: she was welcomed as a breath of fresh air.

The duchess is not mega popular in the UK, given that her behaviour caused the late Queen visible distress and that by her demand to go to Balmoral on the day HMQ died she delayed the plane taking the then Duke of Cambridge and HMQ's other sons. The delay was probably not the cause of their arrival after HMQ's death, but the lack of empathy leaves a bad taste.
And why do we never see her children? We see Harry's brother's children all the time.