Ive been in my new job for just a few months now. I work in a mix nationalities company. Despite this, I can say with certainty that there is still a preference for westerners in higher positions.
A couple of days ago, a female colleague of mine (who is from the same nationality as me but has been with that company far longer than I have) told me that another colleague (male british) had asked her “What does he (referring to me) actually do here?” and “Why doesn’t he render overtime like you guys (referring to her and another colleague) do?” The thing is I do render overtime. Just not as much as my female colleagues do since we handle different accounts and my accounts are not as busy as theirs. My F colleague hinted that M colleague snoops around to report to my supervisor.
I work quite fast as well but during times that I finish my tasks early, i review them carefully so as not to miss crucial details. I also respect my break times and stop on the dot. Apparently, this has ruffled my brit colleague’s feathers so he’s been snooping around but not actually asking me directly. He also has some side comments on my personal phone usage during my break times.
After this incident, I intentionally work a bit slower than usual. Slow enough to give me less down times but not slow enough to not let me finish my daily tasks. Example is the three accounts I handle has same reference numbers (first eight characters are always the same) on their documents. Every time I enter a document to the system, I make sure to just the reference number letter by letter and number by number instead of copying and pasting the first eight characters (same across all documents)
Got anymore suggestions on how I can lessen my down times? I ain’t a confrontational person so asking him about it is out of the bag for now.