AIBU to suspect a colleague’s behaviour may relate to my nationality?

[oneofthems]

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?

Valid to think this may be the case. Anything about your country of birth that would seem to have caused this- for example is it a place where people often go on holiday? Not that it is acceptable.

It is a country that's in the news quite a lot, so there's some general exposure to it. But he goes waaaay beyond that, deep into the conspiratorial rabbit hole shit.

It's likely that her partners views are her views too or surely she couldn't stand to be in a relationship with him.
Record every incident and inform HR, her bigotry needs flagging. Stop trying to be friends with her, you're worth more than that.

I know what you are getting at and I think it’s a systematic pattern of discrimination. I think you should log all instances, speak to your boss and speak to HR.

Is it actually an out and out racism thing?

I think that you probably assume correctly, I’m sorry that this is happening to you.

Puppy monkey - if you swap Argentina with say Israel?…you can see how it could be anti-Semitic?

Keep your powder dry. Make a list of all the incidents so that you can see them on paper and work out if there’s an obvious pattern before going to HR.

Everyone involved here is white. But yes, some of what he reposts would probably qualify as 19th century level racism if you took the skin colour out of the picture.

I agree about keeping a record, you can't go to HR or your boss without a 3 month long list of examples. So make a start on that for sure.

Are you very obviously Argentinian and everyone knows it, or could you do an experiment and tell her how funny it is that everyone thinks you're Argentinian when in fact you are <insert random country here>. And see if it makes any difference?!

Not necessarily. Anti Israeli Government policy views and Anti Semitism are not the same thing.

Imagine if you were on the receiving end of a pattern due to anti-government views which you may not share?

Call her out every single time.
why did you miss me off this/why am I not invited to that.
keep a record of everything. Sadly I think you need to trust your gut here.

I am very visibly Argentinian, Argentinian appearance, accent, surname and, say, openly supporting Argentina in the World Cup. So it's not something she could plausibly be unaware of.

I have been a British citizen for quite some (long) time though.

i think you should block her and her dh on social media in the first place
and keep a log of incidences and report

I think you should stop looking at her social media and if you want to tackle this, tackle it within the work place on a professional level. So note down each time you have been not included in an email, or not invited to a meeting, or not given info that you needed to do your job. When you have documented 10; go to your line manager and ask them why you are being kept out of the loop and get them to do something about it.

Sorry I meant to add - call her out in writing so you have that record if possible.

Ex union rep, keep a diary though I’m interested in what you class as a micro aggression.

Oh I didn't add any of them on social media, they both have public profiles. By now I started feeling a bit weird towards her too, so partly out of nosiness and partly hoping to find some human common ground. I don't know, hoping we'd both like gardening, have large dogs, or something equally mundane.

For example, fresh off the fire. A client emailed mid week asking for something by the end of the week, something specifically delivered by my team, say a piece of research. The email was forwarded to me at 1pm on Friday with, "oh, apologies, I didn't notice there was something for you in here, pls send directly to the client"

Technically? Yes, I received it before the end of the week.

Practically? I'm working today to get it done.

Have I ever made that sort of mistake myself? Of course, who hasn't during busy times. Have I made that same sort of mistake twenty times with one particular colleague, while somehow managing not to do it with anyone else? No.

I am pretty sure I am not imagining it by this point.

Leaving aside the nationality issue, is the leaving you out of meetings and e mails impinging on your ability to do your job? If so then perhaps take it up with your boss.

Hi, OP -

I am in a similar position to you and have had a couple of colleagues treat me the same way. I think direct confrontation one to one is a big mistake: the whole thing is, at least in the eyes of the culprit, deniable. Alerting them may only make things worse.

What finally worked for me was when one of the worst people increased to the level of harassment and made a fictitious, easily rebuttable charge they cc’ed to our mutual manager and others. It was so ridiculous that after I refuted it people came asking about my side of the story.

Obviously I don’t advise waiting for things to get this bad. I agree with those who say you need excellent data, best presented to HR. Because you have no idea what kind of relationships this woman may have with the local power structure.

Keep impeccable records. In the meantime I would make it known to the relevant parties when I was missed out on something, and by whom, but be careful not to phrase these instances as complaints. OTOH I would not discourage any observations from others on who is doing this. But don’t be drawn. You can’t go making (likely correct) accusations that might get around.

Good luck with this.

It certainly makes my job more difficult. She is actually very highly regarded within the company and, professionally, she is very strong. I hope the same is true of me.

I imagine that if I raised it at this stage, the initial response would be to tell two fairly senior adults to go away, have a conversation and sort out their working relationship between themselves, which is probably reasonable.

This is why you need records, records, records.

When did she receive the email?

Wednesday morning. It was of course accompanied by an exquisitely flowery AI generated apology when forwarded.