The company I worked for recently went bankrupt and everyone was laid off. Later, my boss met with me privately (zoom call because this was a remote job with employees all over the US) to discuss how much she enjoyed working with me.
She commended me on many projects, then suddenly said “Oh and by the way, where are you from?” And I told her I was from Georgia (specifically, a rural/suburb city).
She then said “yeah I’d recommend working on changing that because at first I wasn’t even sure we hired the right person based on your accent. Everyone in the company had doubts as well about you. They would tell me ‘why and where did you hire this country boy from?’ but you proved us wrong – good job! You need to work on your accent though as many assumed you weren’t as smart as you are..”
For reference: I am a video editor/social media manager lol. I rarely ever gave presentations. I don’t use “y’all” while talking, typing or communicating anything during work related hours. I do have a “country twang” when I talk but that’s all it is. I am 100% understandable and I don’t use any southern slang or lingo when talking to anybody work related. I was kind of offended when I heard this because it felt like she essentially was trying to tell me to change who I was, and that I sounded unintelligent based off of how I naturally talked, which I disagree with.
I’ve never assumed someone was “dumb” for their accent, so for her to tell me that she (along with many other people at the company) thought this surprised me a lot. Funny how she also waited until the company went under to tell me. Why would I even want to work for a company that judges someone like this? I refuse to change who I am for a job.