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?

Can you suggest a team email for projects, or reminder for her to add you to the distribution list?

Try being South African back in the 90s.
My work colleague hooked on to Black Lives Matter during its hayday and after 19 years of working along side them, they turned on me, forensically went through my FB account and gleefully reported me to HR for a posting in Afrikaans and Xhosa which they could not translate because it was typically Pidgin chatter and decided I was racist.
I was found 100% blameless but had to go through a humiliating interview with HR.
I never returned to work. Took a redundancy package and left.
To this day I feel sick when thinking about it.
My heart goes out to you.
It's an awful position to be in.
But you sound highly sorted and well in control, so I would as PP have said, just keep proof.
But watch your back. I hope this all works out for you.
People can just be ghastly.....

Thank you. No, she doesn't regularly like or comment on those particular posts, although she does sometimes engage with other things he posts. There's ONE comment, something along the lines of "and of course we'll pay for this with our taxes", but that was on a news story he'd shared vaguely involving "Argentina" but some other stuff too, rather than on any of the more lurid stuff he posts.

I didn't excavate much further because it's not particularly pleasant reading for me.

I would agree with those views?
I mean as a foreigner who regularly hears ‘comments’ about my birth country, I know very well that
1- it’s not about me but usually about the speaker
2- I’m very happy to say ‘yes it’s rigut’ when the criticism is warranted
3- I don’t tend to take things personaLly. I’m not the government of my birth country, just like no Brit will agree to all the decisions taken by the British government

Keep records as the first step.

Do you blame every person from the United States for Donald Trump? Or every British person for Brexit? Of course not.

No one should assume you support the current Argentinian regime or treat you differently at work because of your nationality.

Unfortunately you can't prove your colleague is being racist. So why don't you have a clear the air chat and then you will get an idea of what's behind the behaviour. I see though you've assumed she shares her partner's views and other posters have done the same. That's not helpful to your situation at all but you proceed as you see fit.

What if I actually support the current "Argentinian" regime? I keep my political views strictly out of the workplace, obviously, but if someone asked me directly, I wouldn't shy away from explaining or defending them. It's not something I consider shameful or feel any need to conceal.

That doesn't mean I support everything unquestioningly or with some sort of blind zealotry, obviously.

I'm guessing Russian

We haven't been asked

This. Especially stuff like missing you off emails. Raise it straight away with your boss, stating as many cases as you can where she has done this before. This is an example of her at the very least being incompetent.

I couldn’t be in a relationship with someone who regularly posted racist sentiments on Facebook (or regularly spouted privately racist sentiments in our home). So I think she must agree or at least she doesn’t wholeheartedly disagree with what he says. It probably is the reason she is the way she is with you. I find it hard to believe all the other people that are having to give you information she should have given you or invite you to meetings or calls haven’t noticed that she doesn’t do the same with others.

There's very few professions where you can't be in a union, you might not have the benefit of collective bargaining but you would have support for individual issues such as this

Regardless of her motive (which would be extremely difficult to prove) it seems like she might be bullying you in a slightly pathetic underhand way. When people have done this at work, I have always drawn attention to it in front of others and in a casual way. For example, saying 'I can't believe you didn't send that until just now. Think of me over the weekend. I owe you one!' or something similar. It usually freaks them out and they back off. You could confront them in a more professional way but then you could end up getting into a passive aggressive battle of formal emails.

Bear in mind, people who behave like her usually do it to others as well because they are bitter pathetic people who don't really need much of a reason. Take note of how she treats other people as well. It is a lot easier raising concerns about someone when it is a general concern and not just personal to you.

Is there a reason why you couldn’t have an actual conversation with her about this rather than trawling through her social media, and that of her partner? That’s very intrusive behaviour.
If you truly believe she is behaving in a certain way as a personal slur against you then you need to report it to your line manager following your works grievance policy.

Why can’t you say where you are actually from?

Presumptuous and potentially problematic

So deal with it professionally.

As difficult as it may be you need to ignore what you know about her DP and suspect about her.

Professional all the way.

Common ground where you canm
Call her out each time so she has to make the excuses
Mention to manager informally so they are aware of the barriers you are facing with silly errors meaning you are cut out/given work last minute
Keep doing an amazing job.

Longer term one of you needs to leave, unless you are going down a formal route once you have records.

Good luck and I'm sorry this is happening.

I really would like to preserve some anonymity here, and I suspect naming the actual nationality would immediately derail the thread into a completely different argument. I could be Israeli, Ukrainian, Iranian, American, Hungarian, Palestinian, Kosovan, whatever. The specific nationality isn't really the point.

I have one of these colleagues. In my case because I think because she was v large and I am not and we are the same age.

Honestly nothing you can do. She’s never going to cross the line. The only defense is to make friends with everyone else to try to mitigate her behavior. Assume that she is a bad actor and it’s her issue and dealing with her is part of the job. Maybe try to treat her like a forgetful ditz and she might move on to a new victim?

you could try asking every Monday if there is anything you should know about….

yeah, sucks.

fuck know what goes on in these people’s head. Just be glad you aren’t her. Try not to think about her too much as it is. Waste of your time and energy

OP - I think your instinct is correct, but because all the behaviour is so micro, you would struggle to prove it. It sounds as though any accusation would be met with a wide eyed "are you alight??"

Document, track, challenge and evidence is the way to go. Pretend you haven't seen her partner's socials and act accordingly. If you were on the receiving end of what you thought were deliberate mini-sabotages and had no idea why, how would you behave? Do that.

For every 'late request' - send a reply challenging the lateness until it becomes impossible for them to delay requests without it raising suspicion.

For every exclusion - send an email along the lines of "I've just learned that XXX. Please CC me in future" until it becomes impossible for them to exclude you without raising suspicion, and so on.

In the meantime, keep a micro-aggression diary. Note every single instance and if things don't improve dramatically and quickly - you'll have to escalate.

Russian?

American?

I think if you are noticing it, then I imagine that you are right . I would trust your gut instinct and keeop notes. Forwarding work on a Friday afternoon that they had known about since Weds is not acceptable. I would say that people have no tolerance for those who have different views these days and almost seem to want to destroy the individuals involved.

Why do you judge him speaking Russian, can I ask? Unless he's being very loud etc. Do you judge e.g. French colleagues speaking French?