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I feel guilty for not standing up for my coworker when another coworker was loudly complaining about him in a language he may or may not understand.
He recently moved here from Ukraine and he doesn't speak the language very well (understandably), though he seems to know some phrases. We mostly talk to him in English, so I'm surprised every time he says something in my language, especially considering it hasn't been that long since he started working here. He's not the fastest worker, considering he's new at this job and also new to this country. I'm not sure how old he is, but I think somewhere around 15-16 (I'm bad at guessing ages so I could be wrong). The situation must be difficult for him. Today, one of my other coworkers (also around 15?) that I'd recently started to become friendly acquaintances with was loudly complaining about him and calling him nasty things while he was in the same room. I quietly told him it was rude and he tried to justify it by saying he couldn't understand us anyway. He kept complaining and I kind of grumbled to him and tried to get him to stop by just being unresponsive, but I didn't really tell him off. When we were almost finished with work, the rude guy asked the new guy to do something (I'm not sure what, I think it had to do with cleaning something off a shelf?) and the new guy ended up not doing it and once again, rude guy complained to me and some other coworkers about how he didn't do what he'd asked, so I told him that maybe he just didn't understand what was being asked (most of the people who work here are pretty young and are not fluent in English, and I don't think the new guy is either, though I admit I've barely spoken to him since I'm very shy about speaking English, especially to people I don't know very well). When we were done working, I kind of awkwardly hung around our supervisor (who I am quite close with, so it wasn't weird) until I was sure everyone was gone. I was debating reporting the incident. As selfish as it sounds, I didn't really want to get the rude guy in trouble at first, since he was always really friendly to me, but I decided I hate bullies and told my team leader everything. The supervisor said that if this ever happens again, I should come directly to him. I think I did the right thing telling him, but I still feel a bit guilty about the rude guy probably getting yelled at tomorrow, though I do believe he needs to be confronted about his behaviour. I also feel guilty about not going to the supervisor right away, or stopping the behaviour when it was happening.
I think I still have some leftover social anxiety from being bullied all throughout elementary and high school, but it's no excuse to let that shit happen to other people. I'm worried that the new guy realised that he was being gossiped about, but I don't want to tell him in case he didn't know and it makes him feel bad.
This situation is keeping me awake and I thought it would clear my head if I wrote it all down.
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