Example, I was an academic for a while and in conferences and workshops in America it’s fairly normal to provide refreshments, snacks and food to eat and drink while listening to presentations. I had some French and Swiss academics who mentioned to me that in Europe it would be very rude to eat while attending lectures. Are there any other common practices in the American workplace that would be surprising to non-Americans?
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Depends on the country and culture, and maybe they have their own versions, but I hate the American versions of “mandatory fun”
Ice breakers, social events, holiday parties, etc.
I love these events when I want to go with people I like and want to see, but in my experience it is absolutely miserable with coworkers. It’s all fake, sanitized, and I would much rather not have “fun” with my place of employment. Unfortunately a lot of places shame you for missing or make it mandatory.
I understand it’s important to be “liked” in the workplace and pleasant to be around, but I would rather limit that to my time on the clock and related to work and not at these fake “fun” events.
I think it really depends on which cultures you’re comparing? Like I’ve heard anecdotes about our directness and informal attitudes contrasted with Japanese business practices.
For us, we don’t take the food breaks other cultures do, so food at a meeting makes sense. When I lived in Spain, going to a cafe for a mid-morning snack was normal (or so it appeared, I wasn’t in an office) whereas when I worked in an American office, I ate a snack at my desk while working.
I’m American and I’ve always found it weird and rude to eat during the lectures. Snacks during a break, sure.
Some offices are more relaxed than others. In my office, we can dress basically however we want, within reason. On the days I know my boss won’t be in the office, I’ll wear sweatpants. That’s not possible at all offices, but some.
The refreshments would be either before the presentations start or during a coffee break time. It would be considered fairly rude here too to eat during a professional seminar, anything more than a bottle of water or cup of coffee. But conferences often do have food out beforehand for breakfast, or during coffee break times in mid morning or afternoon. Sometimes lunch is provided also.
I’ve lived and worked in France and it’s not really a thing to eat outside of established meal times. You’ll even see public service announcements saying snacking between meals is unhealthy.
As a teacher I found that my colleagues in France and Spain could be much harsher to students than what is acceptable in the US, like I’ve seen teachers call a student stupid to their face. That would lead to serious complaints in the US. Also reading test scores aloud to the entire class.
Your supervisor texting or calling after hours is pretty normal in the US (I swear my boss’s favorite time to text is Sunday night, wanting to plan what to do that week), and that is against labor laws in some countries.
I’m in software and a frequent clash when I worked with international clients/partners, especially European, is hours vs output.
Where I’ve worked as long as you’re not missing meetings or unavailable the schedule is very flexible as long as the work gets done. Output focused.
Whereas European partners were very much “these are the exact hours we work, the end.”
Not the end of the world, it’s usually fine, but it has resulted in things like ALWAYS being us who flexed to match their time zone instead of meeting in the middle or sometimes you just couldn’t get ahold of someone who needed to give a critical piece of feedback or approval before the project could continue and it would set everyone on the project back a week or more. That 5 minutes was worth a whole team (very expensively) twiddling their thumbs for ages. The Americans generally would have sent it and, if they were all that worried about the time, taken a long lunch or left early or whatever another day to balance things.
I lead faculty meetings and always have snacks and beverages. One of my mentors from ed school always said “feed people well” to keep them happy.
So, in America “lectures” are a more formal thing, like a university lecture. It is usually rude to eat during a formal lecture. But it sounds like you’re talking about conferences, and if you have attended many professional conferences in the US you’d know they’re pretty informal and it’s not uncommon to eat snacks during sessions.
>in conferences and workshops in America it’s fairly normal to provide refreshments, snacks and food to eat and drink while listening to presentations.
This probably depends on the academic field and society. This is not my experience.
In the US, it is common practice to call the CEO by his/her first name. My European colleagues mentioned that as very informal so I assume that may not be so common in other countries.
I think you can see from the comments, a lot of what is considered “normal” or “standard” really depends on location and industry. For example, I’ve worked at a hotel where meeting are weekly and formal. Everyone knows their contribution and wouldn’t even think of bringing food/drink to a meeting. But in an all day training, meals and snacks would be provided but only consumed during breaks. Leaving the hotel, I went to a financial institution. We had “lunch and learn” meetings where you literally eat lunch while participating in training. I currently work for a government organization and some meetings would be fine to eat/drink and some are more formal and no food or beverage would be out at all. (Side note, I am in the Northeast. When I have interacted with colleges at other locations around the country, they are different).
I’m guessing it depends on the area of the United States. You’re weird if you’re not eating something in south Louisiana.
In many US offices, its not unknown for people to eat lunch at their desk.
In some European countries, this would rude, since you’re forcing others to smell your food.
In some countries, students call their teachers by first name, which is almost never the case in the US. every once in a while, there will be an absolute legend that wants to be called by their first name (like Larry, my high school art teacher)
That we typically don’t (because we get heavily penalized if we get caught and it’s not a norm in many US cities) offer “gratuities” or “service fees” or “special consulting arrangements” to win business overseas.
Numerous situations over the years where it was obvious the bid would never be accepted without a little grease on the wheels, but nope.
How much we work. Lawyers here bill as much as 80 hours per week.
Not work. Bill.
Kissing.
I know im the weird one here, but I’m very uncomfortable with the cheek kiss greeting.
I once worked on the corporate side of an iconic American company with offices in Europe. Forget trying to get a hold of anyone there during July or August; they were all on a Spanish beach for a month.
Productivity, space/population density, standard of living.
American workers are extremely productive, a level of productivity that is unimaginable in most of Europe.
The most of US has extremely low population density compared to most of Europe. Everything is very spread out.
US standards of living are extremely high. Combine high productivity with low population density and you get an extremely high standard of living. US residences are huge and full of tons of stuff. American homes often are built on huge lots, with large yards (it is not uncommon for a regular American to live in a house that has a 1000 m^2 yard)
In leading business workshops in China, someone’s cell phone would ring and the person would dive underneath the table, answer the phone and hold the conversation in a normal tone of voice under the table. Not a quick “busy, can I call you back” but a full conversation.
And the Chinese and Japanese make no bones about how much they despise each other. It’s not like the light ribbing of Americans to Canadians for saying “eh” or anything. It’s mean, to the jugular.
I’m a paralegal working for an international pharma company. I have a lot of leeway when it comes to doing my job and am expected to just take care of a lot of it, but I find my German and Australian colleagues are hesitant and almost afraid to make any decision without a direct instruction from an attorney.
This is the other way around, but my ex worked in France for six months and their take on sexual harassment was definitely different than the US. It was ok and common for co-workers to comment on how people looked, like “that dress makes your ass look great” type of comments, at least where she was working at that time. That would not be ok in the US.
I’m in medicine, and the hours we work in the US make our European colleagues keel over.
Part of this is that we compress training, since medicine in the US is a four year graduate degree rather than a six to eight year degree with direct entry out of secondary school. A lot of it is because one of the fathers of American medical education was addicted to cocaine.
I’m in tech and my stakeholders especially in India always look very formal on calls. Meanwhile my American colleagues and I are in our literal pajamas.
Probably exacerbated by the fact that it’s 7pm for them and 8am for us.
One of my earlier office jobs had free apples oranges and bananas in the break room. When a new engineer from India was getting a tour from his colleague he was so excited/happy about it he walked away with his hands full of fruit while continuing his tour
Lunch is not always a thing. I used to work at a hospital in Korea as an American. I almost never had an hour lunch break, and sometimes no lunch break at all. The Koreans thought that was odd and would never stand for it. They all had hour lunch breaks.
I don’t know if there are other countries that find that odd because I’ve only worked in the U.S. and Korea.
I’ve worked all over the world, but am US based, and one of the biggest differences in business, is the freedom employees have.
Especially in office jobs, people really don’t track hours, or anything like that, it’s more about output. If you are on required meetings, and getting your work done, no one is typically worrying about how many hours you’re working. Also things like comp/flex days, where if you work late/early/weekend one day, you get to take an extra day off. With many companies doing unlimited PTO, everything feels more flexible and geared toward output.
Things like summer Fridays, where many companies do half days, or days off as a benefit to employees.
Flexible work locations/times too. Even before COVID, many companies were moving to hybrid work, where employees could be remote part time, or work 4 longer days instead of 5.
The other thing, is the ability to switch jobs/companies easily. In some European countries, it can take months to switch jobs, or move to another company. In the US, switching jobs inside the same company is easy, and moving companies typically requires just a 2 week notice.
That’s not to say the US system is perfect, or better, but the amount of autonomy and flexibility we have in most jobs seems to be shocking when I work with companies abroad.
Everyone seems to be comparing America to EU, which tends to make America look comparatively worse.
I’m Korean. Koreans are generally pleasantly surprised at how flexible, accommodating, and open minded American workplaces are. There’s not very rigid dress codes in many jobs in America that would have it in Korea. There’s much more equality and less rigid hierarchy in USA. Women are much more equal and respected than Korea.
There’s way more opportunity to find a wide variety of jobs for more people in USA – a good career isn’t highly contingent on your attendance from three very specific schools and only those schools, which are in turn contingent on your basically sacrificing your entire youth to studying every waking hour.
Long commutes to work. Many of my European colleagues are shocked to hear it isn’t uncommon to have a 1+ hour commute to work. It is especially common if we work in a major city with traffic.
I love the flexibility. My company was slow on uptake of some things but flexibility was not one of them. Once they realized if people could change their hours to accommodate kids, appts, etc. they got a much happier workforce and folks that would be more willing to jump in a call after-hours or be available for a roll out on a weekend.
We used to have absolute massive project implementations. Like 18 months in the making. Since moving to agile workflow it’s so much better. And WFH. My workplace has a variety of ways to work depending on your role. I only have to go in once a quarter. Others go in for a week every 5 weeks. Some have to be on site every day or majority of work week.
The only thing I miss about going into office is food days. I miss my co-worker’s lemon rice and biriani.
You can not tell a woman she can’t perform a job because she’s a woman. Can’t tell you how many bosses I’ve had from foreign countries (eh, the same foreign country) that gave the full blown middle finger to sex-discrimnation.
I worked at 7-Eleven when I was younger and I was told that I could do the cleaning, but I could not do the stocking because I’m a woman. So I had to stay on register while the guys got to stock shelves
In education (K-12), the ratio of student-facing time to planning/prep time can be really different. I’m only guaranteed 45 minutes of paid time per day to grade, plan lessons, prepare materials, contact parents, etc. I’ve talked to teachers in other countries who get multiple hours per day of planning time.
Feedback culture is very different. Americans are generally fairly free with their opinions, but they’re also a friendly culture.
Within American management training, the value of feedback is super emphasized. American managers are taught very early that feedback is valuable and a service that managers owe their employees and they’re owed by their own managers. There’s a presumption that all employees should want to grow, and it’s a manager’s job to help them do that.
Every manager is different but in general American feedback tends to be upfront but framed nicely, like “This slide deck is really coming along. I think the only thing it’s missing is all of your conclusions. And don’t forget to add all of the notes. But the first few slides are great!”
Rather than “This is bad. It needs a complete restructuring. And why didn’t you add the notes like I asked last week? Ugh, here, give it to me.” or on the other end of the spectrum: “Great, great, looking great. But it’s still a little weak. And it seems like there’s a slight issue with the notes. But definitely…good.”
As someone who has worked with a variety of international partners/orgs, I do think the American feedback style is a happy medium between blunt and opaque. But non-Americans might find it condescending/too direct/not direct enough/etc.
Letting women talk on the phone apparently. More foreign customers than you think ask to speak to a man. Usually from the Middle East. It’s nuts.
Layoffs: I was working on an international project, and corporate was pushing rounds of layoffs. Most the international teams were completely immune because of the justification needed to lay them off.
Challenging your superiors when you think they’re wrong. It doesn’t mean you should be an asshole about it, but it’s expected and welcomed by good managers because they know they aren’t experts in everything their team does.
That’s just not something you do in some countries. Asian countries in particular have a very “The boss is always right” mindset in my experience.
LOL, so much bad project planning on this thread.
I’ve worked in the US, The Netherlands, and Germany and we worked with Japan, Singapore and China. Very successfully, all companies still thriving. Even the European workers found ways to meet the timing and effort of world-wide communication.
When planning a project, non-working days should be among the first activities that are agreed-upon.
The lack of time off.
The strange way a lot of people act like overtime is a privilege when in actuality it’s really offensive that your boss gives you that much work and doesn’t pay you a fair enough wage that you feel 40 hours is enough per week.
Abuse from bosses is often considered “part of the job” rather than a problem that needs to be addressed.
Oh, I’ve had to explain Medicare, Medicaid, and gross-to-net accounting and forecasting in the pharmaceutical industry to the company’s European HQ, and that made heads spin.
More generally, Americans expect a stronger highlighting of one’s own accomplishments. It can make them seem like braggarts in other cultures. But if you aren’t willing to do that in the US, it can become very difficult to receive the support you need. Just a single annual review expects that. But, to support it, there’s much less tall poppy syndrome and sour grapes in the US.
I have some pretty limited experience working with Europeans, specifically the British, but my experience is that the approach to problem solving is very different.
In the UK, if the problem wasn’t in their specific scope, they did absolutely nothing about it. It was not THEIR problem. Versus with the American teams I’ve worked on, even if the problem wasn’t entirely theirs, people would almost instinctively work out ways to get around the problem with the tools they had under their control.
Also, the hours. It didn’t matter how important it was, they were NOT working a single minute more to finish it.
I have a couple international offices. The employees in India drive the American employees nuts because every Microsoft Teams conversation needs to start with 10 minutes of pleasantries. Instead of messaging someone with, “Hi Bill. Do you have those reports done yet?” it’s:
Them: Hi Bill.
Us: Hi Yuvraj. What’s up?
Them: How are you?
Us: I’m well. How are you? What do you need?
Them: What is the weather there?
Us: I have a conference call in 2 minutes, Yuvraj. Do you need something?
There are other differences, as well. They will never say they need help with anything. They’d rather submit a project 4 days after the deadline than admit they need help finishing it. We had one guy that was overloaded with work so we hired two more to help him. He quit because he thought he was being replaced, despite telling him that they were hired to help him and he’d be leading that group.
This is an engineering company and most of them have absolutely no critical thinking skills. They have engineering degrees but they are pretty much just drafters. They seem to just default to cutting + pasting things from old projects no matter how nonsensical it is.