
Co-worker used inappropriate photo during company wide presentation - legalhelpnow
A few months ago, we had a company wide meeting. During the course of event, a co-worker whom I have been running into some disagreements, inserted a racially insensitive and homophobic image into his powerpoint slide (which I have a video recording of) that he claimed &quot;randomly found on the internet&quot; but it was more than a coincidence as it clearly resembled my face and my ethnicity. Why would he intentionally scour the internet for this specific ethnicity, gender and resembling face? I felt humiliated because the whole company started laughing (video recording clearly shows this).<p>Now I&#x27;m being asked for &quot;anonymous&quot; feedback, yet the last time I gave a low score for diversity (as a result of my co-worker&#x27;s actions), the team was put into a room and me being the only minority there, it was extremely awkward and I could tell that people were avoiding looking at me. My interactions with the C-level executives began to feel off as if they were avoiding&#x2F;ignoring me.
After that I noticed the tension increasing with other members of the team to the point that this co-worker will not even acknowledge me and the tension made it hard to work with this person.
Now I&#x27;m being asked to submit a feedback but I&#x27;m afraid to as I don&#x27;t feel like they respect privacy at all. I feel depressed and suicidal since I need this job but the environment is becoming far too hostile as it seems this person has been going around speaking ill about me from the sudden shift in my daily interactions with people.<p>I&#x27;m panicking and I don&#x27;t know what to do. This is a relatively well known local startup in Canada btw.
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bradknowles
With respect, the HR department is there to protect the company, and not you.

If you give them reason to believe that they need to protect the company
against you, then your remaining time there is likely to be short and fraught.
And when you do leave, they will make sure you have no ground to stand on for
complaints regarding diversity, etc....

If you can find or make friends there outside of this guy, you can potentially
help them learn to lead by example, and thus he would become the outlier.

But everything depends on you and your personality, and them and their
personality. How willing and able are you to gently lead them down the right
path? How willing are they to learn what the right path is, and follow you?

At some point, you may have to decide whether it is worth your effort and pain
to try to stay there, versus leaving and going somewhere else. So, I would
encourage you to try and avoid burning any bridges if you can help it.

But sometimes there is just nothing you can do to save the situation, and so
you may need to extract yourself.

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edimaudo
Just my two cents. If you have an HR department. This is something you should
discuss with them. Second, you should take your buddy out for a beer and both
of you should clear the air in an amicable fashion. Cultural issues are a
problem but they can always be resolved in a level headed manner. Should post
on ask hacker news for this to get more traction.

