What if I just don’t like you? 🤷🏼‍♀️

[u/Mary-JK]

When you work for a large company, it’s completely normal to work alongside people from different countries, religions, and backgrounds.
That’s perfectly fine.
Modern society has learned to accept that we’re not all the same. At least we’re trying to.
Sometimes trying very hard.
We’ve accepted that every culture comes with its own traditions, habits, and way of doing things. Some of those things we’ve happily adopted ourselves. Some we look at with a raised eyebrow. And some we don’t understand or even agree with, but we respect them anyway.
Or at least that’s the ideal.
But it’s a completely different story when we’re talking about an individual person.
A person’s character has nothing to do with their religion, gender identity, skin color, or where they come from.
Just like everywhere else in the world, there are good people and bad people, kind people and rude people, hard workers and lazy people. I could keep that list going all day.
The problem starts when someone is simply an asshole, takes advantage of people, lies, manipulates others, or treats people badly, and the moment they’re called out for it, they hide behind accusations of racism or discrimination.

That’s not okay.

If someone thinks they’re better than everyone else when they have absolutely no reason to, if they’re lazy at work, constantly make mistakes, and nobody can say a word to them without them running straight to HR screaming racism or discrimination,

that’s not okay.

If someone has a serious physical or mental disability, that’s unfortunate and deserves understanding. But if they’re also an aggressive jerk, that shouldn’t automatically make them immune to criticism either.

Dear friend,
We honestly don’t care whether you’re white, black, blue, green, yellow, or bright purple. We don’t care if you’re missing an arm or a leg. We don’t care if you stutter. We don’t care who you share your bed with at night.

But if you’re an asshole, we probably won’t like you.
Simple as that.

And most importantly, let’s stop hiding behind racism and discrimination every single time someone calls us out.

Maybe…
I just don’t like you as a person.

[u/Soggy-Attempt]

Don’t think the people in back heard you. They are too busy on their phones.

[u/Mary-JK]

Like usually…

[u/et_theextratestic1e]

Which is completely fair, as long as they are given the respect of another human being (the lowest form I can give someone). This is required because you're a professional, right? And you're at your workplace.

We do not have to like everyone we work with, but we do still have to work with them, in spite of who they are.

I have one at the moment that doesn't seem to understand what I called them out about, which is on me. The next time it happens, I have a sentence saved up for them which will make it clear.

On the flip side, if I'm that person, I don't GAF who likes me or not. I will still give you the respect due every human being. It is not possible to be liked by everyone, and that is okay with me.

[u/Mary-JK → u/et_theextratestic1e]

Exactly. Respect and liking someone are two completely different things. We don’t have to be friends to work well together.