AITAH for not changing my language to appease an ignorant coworker?
I (34M) work in an office in a technical field with approximately 30 coworkers and higher ups. The problem is I have a coworker (28F) Sarah. The problem started before Christmas when I went into the breakroom to answer a call from family overseas.
We talked in my native language for about 10 minutes, about family and friends from back home, and we were wrapping up the call. When I hung up, I saw Sarah looking at me with an angry look on her face. I asked her what’s wrong and she accused me of being a racist.
I was very confused, and she then said I said the ‘N word’, which confused me even more. She ran off and in a few minutes the HR director walked to my desk and took me to her office. After a very confusing conversation, I finally figured it out.
One of the ways we say ‘You’ in my native language sounds like the N word. Like, barely, but eh. I explained this to the HR director who was at first disbelieving. After a bit of googling on my phone I showed her, and she relents that I am not a racist, just a fluent speaker of my native language.
Then, the HR director asked if there was any way I could not accept personal calls at work. I said “Sure, if you make it a directive that no one can.” She balked at that and tried to hem and haw her way to make it so only I couldn’t, but I kept gently nudging how prejudicial that sounded until she asked if there was any way I could not use ‘that word’ when speaking my native language.
I mused that it would be possible, but it would make sentence structure meandering and almost too formal and clunky, so I’d rather not. She said that if it was possible, maybe I should. I asked if maybe she should stop using a New England accent. She then thanked me for clearing up the misunderstanding and let me go back to work.
The HR director before the holiday break sent out an email explaining that there was a misunderstanding due to the use of a foreign language in the office and that we should respect everyone’s cultures. A very open-ended and vague email that solved nothing.
My family rarely calls me at work simply because it’s night time when I work, and they only call during my birthday and holidays so this is not really going to be an issue, and I would rather not try to find a way to dance around saying ‘You’ in a conversation. I told the story to my friends during a Christmas party and one person asked if it was really a hill worth dying on.
Am I the asshole here for not trying to compromise with HR?
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