Fostering Intercultural Communication

I recently had the chance to talk to a norweigian professor regarding my SEP to Norway. He had some insight to share which I thought might be appropriate for this post. He told me that in Norway, the people may come across as unfriendly as they do not say hello to strangers. He cautioned that if people did not approach foreigners, it was not because they are racist, but rather because they do not approach strangers (even locals) in general. Saying hello is strictly reserved for friends. Perhaps due to the more open spaces in Norway, norweigians do not have much contact with other people, and hence their culture results in this general sense of unfriendliness. This is quite unlike people from say, the US or Canada. In the Americas, people are very friendly, even when they do not like you, because, being friendly is customary to their culture.

I don't mean that in a negative way. Let me give an example of an encounter I had on my recent trip to Toronto. We were eating at a restaurant with a local Canadian. After we had placed our orders, the waiter took a while to serve our food and cutlery (actually just my cutlery. The rest were served pretty quick. Eventually, I went to take my own as this was the fastest). To me, this standard of service seemed pretty standard from a Singaporean point of view. But apparently to the canadian, it was sub par. And she let the waiter know it, in a friendly way. To the gist of it, she told the waiter curtly, "Sir, we have been waiting for our food for quite some time, and this is not acceptable." The waiter was of course apologetic and rushed off, knowing that a smaller tip would be in store. Note, I did not find the time they took to be exceedingly long, and even so, if it was in Singapore, ask yourself how would we react? I think we would be the apologetic one and start of by saying along the lines of, "I'm sorry but my food isn't here yet... etc." The waiter would then go off to search for the missing food, we would grin and bare it and perhaps vow not to come back to the same restaurant again.

It all boils down to a difference in our cultures. In our confucian based society we are trained to be respectful and courteous even to the brink of ridiculousness. (Saying sorry when we aren't the ones at fault, or saying thank you when we are the ones doing the favour.) Canadians on the other hand, have been brought up to know their rights and to demand it, albeit politely. Perhaps this may account for the difference in service standards of our retailers and service providers, not so much the lack of training in good service, but the way our culture works in general.