Practice 跨文化交际入门 (2).pdf

Culture ShockPunctuality I guess we all believe that time is pretty constant. But around the world attitudes to it differ greatly While you can set your watch by Swiss trains, not all cultures break the day down into minutes and seconds. For other cultures punctuality is a very different matter. A German sales executive trying to open doors in a number of African countries schedule two meetings a day. For him quite easygoing. His first meeting didn’t even take place till a day later. By the end of his trip he was so stressed out he could hardly operate. He mistakenly thought his hosts would look at time like he did. In Africa, like in the Middle East or South America, there they work in blocks of time, half a day maybe, certainly not in minutes. As long as they can achieve what they need in that block of time, then exactly when is less important. That’s not to say that they’re less efficient or effective. It’s just that they work at their own pace. If you work in seconds then you need to adapt. Otherwise you’re going to set yourself up for a lot of resistance from your hosts, and you’re gonna get constant disappointment. And then there are cultural anomalies. In French society absolute punctuality is not the highest priority, but if you arrive late at a French restaurant, don’t expect a warm welcome. The French take their food very seriously and consider lateness a sign of disrespect for their culinary efforts. You’d better pay some serious compliments to the waiters if you want to get back in their good books. The American expression time is money can be taken very literally in the U.S. A chatty bank teller whose lines moving slowly will cause customers to become impatient and you’ll also get an earful if the line has to wait because you haven’t filled out your forms ahead of time. The sub-continent. Time can seem pretty cheap here. Everything else may be late but as a visitor your punctuality is expected. Patience is key as with much