Now, in animation! (flash)
A word about queues. If I see a scrum around a counter, then I know you’re just supposed to jump in, and I go native. But when I’m in someplace like, say, 7-Eleven, and there’s a fairly long line, and it should be more than obvious what the deal is, still I’ll see someone march up to the counter, and not just with one small item. Sometimes they’ll cut right in front of me as I get to the counter, possibly thinking the foreigner won’t mind, or maybe even screw the foreigner, and I’ll shove my way right back in front.
Cinemas, too. The wife and I have to sit way up front to get away from the cellphone users and chit-chatters. She’s Thai, and it annoys the hell out of her, too. In fact, we know a number of Thais who bewail the lack of common courtesy among the average Thai.
This society has a reputation worldwide for gentleness and politeness, but if you spend much time here, that begins to wear away. They can be super polite, if they’re consciously thinking of it, but Thais are such scofflaws anyway that they’re used to breaking any rule or law, up to and including murder, for their own personal convenience. Part of it is also that Thais react very differently to foreigners they know are here only temporarily and those of us who simply won’t go away.
As an impatient American, I’ve figured out how to deal with this. I plan two solid hours (so if people are parking their carts or asking the clerk to check the price of something, I’ve got a buffer). And, more importantly, I listen to an audiobook while I’m shopping.
You’d be amazed how many delays – and jerks – you can put up with…
… if your mind’s in Narnia.
… Or 221B Baker Street, or Moose County, or The Tannhauser Gate, or Dictionopolis, or Coast City, or The Shire, or The Ringworld, or Castle Rock, or Battle School, or Winesburg, or Little Whinging…
I’ve done that both as a fellow customer and a clerk.
Darn you! I was going to post that!
Yes, excellent point! I alluded to this in OP. The Thai customs may be less efficient but they are also often less stressful.
However some posters overlook that a more absolute common-sense sometimes applies. If one ethnic group, as a poster mentioned, insists on boarding a crowded car before passengers disembark, can be agree their common-sense/courtesy is sub-optimal?
I made the mistake of starting with a rather trivial example. My post in the earlier thread should be a better example of discourteous parking. (Indeed I posted it there because all the American parking erros in that thread were trivial compared with those we see here.)
In giving examples one needs to compromise between too few (“Oh those are just anecdotes, Septimus, you can find a few bad drivers anywhere.”) and filibusters! I have lots of stories about driving in rural Thailand which are amazing and amusing. That might be fodder for a fun thread, but I won’t start it; I seem to do a poor job of setting up the crucial thread title and OP.
Yes. To counter-paraphrase Alex Trebek, you’ll need to state your question in the form of a comment if you expect more than a one-word answer! 
One thing that is true is that outsiders often see some aspects more clearly. An interesting thread might be to review things about America that foreigners see more clearly than Americans.
This drives me nuts! People tell me “oh, the concept of a line is different here.” Bullshit! When I go to the train station I see all kinds of people in line. But maybe one out of ten people will stand in the line for a few minutes, and then think “Naw, why should this line apply to me?” and walk right up to the front like nobody’s business. They saw the line, they knew they are supposed to wait in it, but then they decided they would rather cut instead. That’s rude in any culture, and it’s only because people are raised to avoid conflict that they get away with it.
Anyway, there are some customs you can get used to, and some you can’t. I don’t blink an eye when someone hawks up a golf-ball sized loogie right onto a restaurant floor. But when the people sharing my seat on the miserable twenty hour overnight hard seat train decide three AM is the perfect time to play the “two people simultaneously yell random numbers at the top of their freaking lungs loud enough that they can be heard several blocks away” drinking game while everyone in the car is clearly trying to sleep, I’m going to end up in a seething rage. I could be here a thousand years and I’d never be okay with that situation.
I’ve always understood it here as a different sense of social obligation. In China, I get the impression you have near infinite social obligations to your in-group. You’d go to just about any length to help out your friends, family, classmates and coworkers. But this means you have little social obligations towards strangers. In America, I think we feel a sort of baseline social obligation to everyone and don’t give our social in-group a ton of special consideration. If our friend asks us to do something we don’t feel like doing, we’re likely to tell him no. But we feel a strong need to say “thank you” and “please” to strangers we interact with on a regular basis.
My students think it’s crazy that I’d volunteer working to make strangers’ lives better when my mother clearly misses me and I could be earning money to raise my family’s status. Many see my becoming a Peace Corps volunteer as a bizarre and slightly immoral decision. Meanwhile, they think my hesitance to push someone out of the way at a bus stop is inexplicable.
I see things that make me want to cry- people living in places they hate, marrying people they hate, etc. to please their parents. I get confused when people will spend a week’s wages just taking a friend out to dinner. Meanwhile, I think that people’s willingness to elbow an old lady out of the way at a bus stop is bizarre.
Some people do, some people don’t, and some people pick and choose what to adopt. It’s quite common to adopt the new courtesy rules but stick to “your food” as much as possible, for example.
Often, the reason a particular person doesn’t adopt a particular custom is because he hasn’t understood the logic behind it and doesn’t see no reason to accept what he doesn’t understand. “Back home” it’s done a certain way, they keep thinking “why the hell is everybody doing it wrong?” instead of accepting that it’s “the way it’s done in the new place”.
Audiobooks/podcasts only work if you’re aware of your surroundings enough to get out of other people’s way and interact with the cashier. Otherwise, you’re just another oblivious asshole with headphones on.
Trying to get on a bus or train in Italy is a battle of strength, guile and determination. The Italians have no shame when it comes to pushing to the front of a group of people who have previously been waiting. They queue like they drive.
I was in Croatia a few years ago, which is a massive hotspot for Italian tourists. We took a daytrip to some small island in the Adriatic. I honestly thought somebody was going to be killed waiting for the boat back to shore. The crowd (filled with Italians) was surging; like a scene from Hillsborough. We were stood on the harbour wall, sea surrounding us on three sides, as the boat was maneuvering sideways to dock. Everybody was battling to be the first on the boat. If anybody had been knocked in to the sea between the harbour wall and boat, they’d surely have been killed.
Whenever I see a cart left in the middle of an aisle, I check to see if the shopper is watching. If not, I always take something from their cart and then place it in a different part of the store.
Just my way of saying, “Fuck You” to the asshole.
I wonder if I could get arrested for stealing?
Even if I could, I would keep on doing it.
Ah, but it isn’t stealing if you ADD something to their cart. I’d recommend something less noticable than a box of Cap’n Crunch (my kids used to try that one)… howzbout a package of extra-small condoms?
And, Robyn, I appreciate the advice. I should probably just keep one earbud in (same as when I’m doing household chores). That way I can hear people if I need to…
but then I’d just be an oblivious asshole without the excuse of headphones.
My husband supervises a couple of ladies who just can’t get along with each other. One day, as he was having yet another discussion with one of them about the problem, she told him that in her native language, there aren’t even words for please and thank you! If true, that blows my mind. Unfortunately, I don’t know what her native language is and haven’t thought of a smooth way to ask. I’d have guessed Hindi.
Or Chi-cahh-gah…
I wonder how much of these behaviors could be more the result of population density than nationality? In my experiences here in America, the way people behave toward each other alters markedly as population density increases. Sometimes the effect is quite dramatic – my wife and I have found, when driving long distances over the interstates, most drivers are polite, use their signals, let each other in, and so on…but as we approach the beltways of the great metropolises, driving courtesy rapidly breaks down. In some cases the same drivers who smiled and signaled and waited two hours ago now savagely cut in front of you with their brakes on.
This even works at night and with few cars around. The variable seems to be not so much “are there a lot of people around us right now” as “does this place look like a place where a lot of people live in high density, even if they’re not in sight at the moment?”
I have suspected that’s what it is. From my perspective, I don’t think they need to see a logic behind it; why do people coming into a new culture not just take it for granted that if a whole country is doing something one way and they’re doing it the opposite way, majority wins and they lose? My most obvious example for this is walking on the right side of the sidewalk - sure, you can keep walking on the left if you like, and that’s fine when there’s no one else around, but add in any other people, and you’re creating problems.
Or any number of other reasons. Sometimes it goes against your
personal values. I lived in an area where casual prostitution was
accepted. One night I was eating dinner and a restaurant owner I was
friendly with told me excitedly that her brother was in town- and
asked if I would sleep with him. I explained that I was interested,
but she assured me he’d buy me a few beers and it’d “only take fifteen
minutes.” Needless to say, I wasn’t sold on the idea! The restaurant
owner was kind of offended that I refused what to her seemed like a
reasonable favor to ask.
Sometimes it’s something that has just been drilled into you so long
you can’t stop it. After two years in a place where it’s really weird
to say “thank you” to store clerks, I still say it pretty much every
time I buy something. I can’t overcome how many years of socialization
growing up. I know I’m doing it wrong, but I just can’t bring myself
to do it differently. It’s too much a part of me. Same thing in
Cameroon, where you simply do not go outside if it is raining. Still,
I trudged through the rain to go to my empty classroom, because I if I
did call off classes for a drizzle I’d feel too damned guilty about
it, Protestant work ethic and all.
Sometimes you don’t get the same rewards out of the system that the
locals get. China has a bit of a tit-for-tat favor system, where
people will ask you to do stuff and you really shouldn’t refuse, but
in return you get to ask them for favors. However, in my experience I
found that I was paying into the system a lot and not getting a lot
out of it. Eventually I got sick of it and learned how to say “no”
even when it wasn’t culturally appropriate. I recognize how the system
works, but it wasn’t working for me and eventually enough is enough.
Sometimes you have different and legitimate concerns than than the
people around you. In Africa, I could get used to the “walk as slowly
as possible” thing because I also never had anywhere pressing to go.
In China, the “walk as slowly as possible thing” drives me nuts
because while most people’s jobs are fine if they show up a few
minutes late, my job requires me to be precisely on time.
Some stuff just gets you on a visceral level- things like personal
space, volume, hygiene, safety, etc.
Even Sven, why don’t people go outside in the rain in Cameroon? Is it a health thing - a concern about poorly-built sewers or latrines flowing into the street, or something like that? Or does it just really, really bum people out to get wet?
Heh - actually, I can see how that’d be the case. High humidity + no electric dryers means it could take a while for things to get dry again.
Also - the “walk as slowly as possible” custom sounds interesting. If you’ve asked, what reason do people give for doing that?
In Hindi, Bengali, and probably many other languages, it is not customary to use phrases that are equivalent to “please” and “thank you.” A common way to express politeness is to phrase a request as a question rather than as an instruction.
Example:
“Get me that file” v. “Would you get me that file?”
To be even more polite, you might say something like:
“Are you able to get me that file?” (probably better translated as “Would it be possible for you to get me that file?”
even more polite –
“Would it be possible for you to get me that file a little bit?” (This doesn’t translate very well.)
acsenray, thanks for fighting my ignorance. Your example seems to stand in for “please”, but if I get you the file, do you say anything in response?