Washington DC: An Indian man employed in the US took to Reddit to share an unfortunate experience. He claimed that he was asked not to speak in meetings because of his accent. He went on to share how humiliated he felt by the experience.
The 32-year-old man stated that he was the only Indian in his team. During a usual work meeting, he asked a team member for some updates. It was then that the 55-year-old American team member asked the man to stop speaking as he could not understand his accent. In the Reddit post, the Indian man stated that his question to the team member was a simple one. “My original request was simply for a progress update and accompanying pictures. Perhaps my question caught him off guard, given my position as a contractor and my relative age,” assumed the employee.
Indian man asked not to speak because of his accent
Stakeholder told me to stop talking in meetings because of my accent-is this normal?
byu/OkSpecial9640 inIndianWorkplace
Further, the young man described the aftermath of being told not to speak. He stated, “I felt dismissed and insulted. I’ve always made an effort to communicate clearly and professionally. No one else has said anything like this before. I have been with the same client for over a year now.” He then asked fellow Redditors if they had gone through similar experiences. Meanwhile, in the comments, he added that his manager asked him to communicate with the particular employee only through him.
Netizens on the social website were quick to comment. “That’s really rude, usually if they cannot understand you, they might ask you to speak slowly, but telling you to just stop speaking is very rude and not normal behaviour,” said one. Another stated, “That’s so rude and constitutes workplace bullying, I think. I would speak to my manager and file an HR complaint.” A third individual stated, “Most of the modern meeting platforms: Zoom/Teams/Meet have auto caption that can be enabled.”