Sorry for the triple-post, but I only just opened this thread and I like to respond to posts as I run across them.
Anyway, when I was in New Orleans for work last week, I met a woman from Australia and a man from New Zealand who both work in London for a British financial company. They both said that Americans are more casual at work. Americans ask about each other’s weekends, talk about their kids and basically try to get to know each other at work. Brits are very formal at work, nose-to-the-grindstone, that sort of thing. But “all bets are off,” they said, at the pub or the Christmas party. Americans are still in work mode at social gatherings of cow-orkers… It is seriously frowned upon when someone gets sloppy drunk at a work function or in front of cow-orkers.