[Closed] Working with Americans

What chakaping said in my rather limited experience
The god botherers were much more god botherery than the British variety in that they tried to convert you and preach to you.

Pretty limited experience based on work at a Uni

Not true on the food from Tom. They have quite a varied food culture. Louisiana is the best place I have been for food in the us and is up there with other places I have been internationally.

Food culture, as everything cultural, varies hugely across the country. Things look superficially similar on the coasts to the Mid West but it's really not.

I've found them to be grate fun and friendly as long as you stay off of health care, religion and guns.

I was out there for a few months with work and I found that they were fine even when you talked about those things, as long as you didn't try to tell them they were wrong, although I did get accused of being a socialist once for loving the NHS. Once I'd stopped laughing I explained myself and agreed that it is a 'difficult' issue...

If you want to entertain Americans go though a load of slang. They love it.

This is always a great bet. We have a group of Spams working just down the corridor from us now. We printed off a load of British slang and made up a translation guide for them. We now refuse to help them unless they ask for it 'correctly', for example "cor Bliley, Guv'nor, you couldn't nip out and lend us a hand could you? Cheers!"

In my experience, when in small groups they are usually great people to be around. When in large groups they can be very difficult; especially in a work context. Admittedly, my experience of Americans is primarily with Military types.

The other thing to remember is that we are exposed to a lot of their culture (film, tv, media, food, et cetera) but the only bits of our culture they get exposed to are Downton Abbey and Piers Morgan.

If you want to see a terrible work culture, try Hong Kong. Work every hour available (as it's better to be at work, in a nice airconned office than to be at home, 83 in a room without aircon!). Oh, and if you're ill? Put on a face mask and get to work!

In a previous life, I had a direct report who was in the US and thought he was the big tamale of the world. He wasn't. Not too bright at all, he would pick up on things others were saying and use them as if they were his shining intellect. We (the British, leading siding of the company) noticed this and began dropping Blackadderisms in to our speech. Contrafibularities, pericombobulations etc. We kept this up for some months before he was due to speak at a conference. His conference speech was littered with silly neologisms and we all laughed! 🙂

chakaping - Member
Bloody hell, there's a lot of big assumptions and crass generalisations here.

+ lots!

IME, from working for an American management consultancy, albeit around 25 years ago, the geographical size of the country leads to similarly big cultural attitudes towards work and professional life. I could call the New York or Boston offices at 6 or 7pm local time on a Friday and be absolutely sure that there would be someone there burning the midnight oil and pick up the phone. Conversely, if I made a call to the west coast offices any time from Thursday afternoon to Tuesday morning, I'd expect to hear the answer phone.

East Coast people appeared to have a live to work ethic and the west coast more of a work to live. Which is probably another massive generalisation, but made me want to live on the west coast!

This is very strange thread. American corporate culture is different but has it's positives and negatives. It just takes getting use to. Vacations seen as less important but people get personal days too, so they work a little more than us but not as much as you'd think. Also they get paid generally a little better than us and probably have a slightly better standard of housing and healthcare (if you have insurance obviously). Otherwise most Americans I work with have a good sense of humour too.

Food culture, as everything cultural, varies hugely across the country. Things look superficially similar on the coasts to the Mid West but it's really not.

So what you're saying is, is that they all look like burgers but they all taste a little bit different. 😛

Florida/Louisiana have some tasty looking food, I give you that. Probably the latino influence in the former.

Things look superficially similar on the coasts to the Mid West but it's really not.

True. The food in rural Montana is AWESOME!

We've adopted an American my wife works with.

The words 'pootle' and ''bimble' had her in stitches for days. 'Welly wanging*' nearly triggered a melt-down!

(*encountered at a village fete)

his guy for example has sent me a meeting request, and in the text of it he has referred to both me and himself in the third person

could it be as simple as having his PA send out his meeting requests on his behalf?

Try working for Canadians 😯

could it be as simple as having his PA send out his meeting requests on his behalf?

Maybe, but he has the same job as me so he'd better bloody well not have a PA!

'Welly wanging*' nearly triggered a melt-down!

Worked with a Chinese chap once, called Wai Li Huang (spl?). His choice of Anglicised name? Welly Wang. Utterly brilliant!

Then there was a lovely, beautiful girl I used to work with in Singapore who chose a great Anglicised first name to go with her surname, which was pronounced "Chewah". Fanny. Fanny Chewah.

I met a guy called elton wong once 😀

I had a wee Ming kok, I declined deploying him to Glasgow...

The nearest to a universal truth that I've encountered in American corporate culture is the love of a pointless job title. People work their arses off to make the grade of 'Junior Vice President of Imports'. Then when you dig a bit deeper you find that 'Imports' consists of 4 people and two of those are more senior than the Junior vice President, who is basically an import clerk.

[i]According to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics, at one years service 75% of full-time workers in the US get between 5 and 14 paid vacation days a year, with a mean of 10 days.[/i]

Yes, but as I said 'vacation' and 'family days' are usually two different entitlements.

[img] [/img]

I work in a big-ish US company and spend a lot of time dealign with the US employees. Most are good people, some are idiots, but I class that as a pretty normal worldwide distribution, so I'm not convinced that they are more inclined to that than any other nation.

However, I do find that I become far more British when I spend any time in their company. Words and phrases like "spiffing" and "jolly good" do creep in and I start sounding like a jet-lagged Terry Thomas. I also try to test the limits of sarcasm and irony, but people are starting to catch on to it now so I have to be more subtle.

elton wong

Genuinely crying with laughter 😆

In my experience (a lot) of working with Americans, you have to be very careful how you ask questions in an email.
1 question - fine, 1 answer
2 questions - 1 answer
3 questions - 1 answer!

Drove me nuts until I worked it out: separate email for each question 🙂

Vacations seen as less important but people get personal days too, so they work a little more than us but not as much as you'd think. Also they get paid generally a little better than us and probably have a slightly better standard of housing and healthcare (if you have insurance obviously)

Americans work far more than Brits on average. 'Personal days' are to cover sickness, your own and your kids. Not many personal days in contracts either. Couple that with 10 days leave a year and few observed public holidays and you have almost no time off.
Housing? Bigger houses with more garden, but further apart and more reliance on cars, so there is a trade-off there.
Healthcare is not better. It's more available if you have insurance you can afford. It requires more paperwork, more worry, usually less waiting times, but don't think of transferring to another hospital for your woes. They don't share information so expect to take a multitude of pointless tests to make up for it.
Don't fall ill outside your state of residence. The paperwork will kill you even if the illness didn't.

Spent a lot of the 90's living and working in the States, as with any culture its different, same as with my time spent in Japan and now Hong Kong/Singapore.

They like to talk a good talk, some of them actually back this up, say 75%
Most from the East and West coasts get UK humour and sarcasm
They have corporate jargonists just like we do
They do work hard and have lousy holiday allowance (Asians pretend they do but have a ridiculous amount of national holidays)
There is a definite class system as pointed out above, your either doing well or really trying to do well

I should also add that in the States, and I feel this in Asia also, there is a sense that if you work hard and try you will succeed, something I have never felt in the UK.

I did find the one standout thing in general ~(back in my hotel days) about sceptics was they seemed to think you needed advance warning of any interactions e.g.

"Excuse me sir, I have 3 questions for you" A fairly standard response from the staff was "Sorry, but I'm limited to answering only 2 questions at a time" Some of them genuinely thought you were serious and would look very concerned.

I'll just leave this here:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/america

I think a lot of American working practice stems from the fact they can be sacked with no payout anyday anytime. This leads to crazy hours and a devotion to the corporate mission. Also they tend to be quite religious...what I hate most that as buyers they tend to seek huge amounts of info, engage in very lengthy discussions with no intention to actually buy....

However working with them seems quite odd at times based on the few encounters I've had with American colleagues. This guy for example has sent me a meeting request, and in the text of it he has referred to both me and himself in the third person. Rather odd thing to do given that no-one else is invited.

Even odder when his name is Kip.

Have you joined Winger?

what's odd about Kip?

Oh and a word of warning - if you work in an American drawing office, don't ask for a rubber.

Oh and a word of warning - if you work in an American drawing office, don't ask for a rubber.

What do you get?? Obviously not an eraser....

A Kip is 1000lbs force. An arcane unit used in structural calculations by American Civil Engineers

I worked with a bunch who insisted on using Slugs. ugh.

What do you get?? Obviously not an eraser....

They didn't understand "dropped a bollock" either. Weirdos.

Americans and long hours.

In my (limited) experience of working with our American cousins, they'll never get something done in half an hour if they can spend two hours talking about doing it instead.

They didn't understand "dropped a bollock" either. Weirdos.

Funny thing, language. "Smoking a fag" is always good for a laugh too. In the UK, having a cigarette; in the US, homosexual homicide.

Oh and a word of warning - if you work in an American drawing office, don't ask for a rubber.

An American exchange teacher who worked alongside my dad still found it funny, even after 12 months, every time a pupil asked to borrow a rubber.

If Americans get so little holiday, how do they spend so much time doing cool 'lifestyle' activities and driving around in RVs!?

For all this, they never seemed to get any more than us done. In fact, given the hours they worked, considerably less.

When I worked for a few weeks in our San Francisco office, this was exactly the situation. They'd be in the office from 7am til 9pm, and could often be heard slagging off the lazy UK staff who 'only did 8 hours'. The difference of course was that in SF, they'd go to Starbucks at least twice during the day, go to one of the many pop up restaurants or street food stalls for lunch, and generally swan around the office all day chatting up the girls.

I work for a huge American corporation here in the UK.

+1 for the Corporate culture being like a crazy death cult - the corporate video messages put out by the leadership are met with muted apathy and sarcasm in the UK, but with cheering and grown men high fiving each other in the US.
They also attend weekend 'cook outs' and family events where they get the change to talk to the leadership outside work. Very odd.

+1 for them working long hours but not actually achieving any more than we do.

+1 for everyone in the USA being VP of something or other, they do love a job title out there.

Ah yes, corporate cynicism. Alive and well in any UK branch of a US company. It's just not the done thing, dontchaknow.

> According to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics, at one years service 75% of full-time workers in the US get between 5 and 14 paid vacation days a year, with a mean of 10 days.

Yes, but as I said 'vacation' and 'family days' are usually two different entitlements.

Granted I'm not sure how the US Family Day entitlements work or how many they get.

But in the UK the entitlement is 4 weeks "Parental Leave" per child per year (totally a maximum of 18 weeks before their 18th birthday). That's unpaid leave and additional to the normal statutory 28 days paid vacation.

https://www.gov.uk/parental-leave/entitlement

the corporate video messages put out by the leadership are met with muted apathy and sarcasm in the UK, but with cheering and grown men high fiving each other in the US.

I found that really, really weird. Actually surreal. Like I'd dissapeared into some alternative universe. The first time I witnessed some vile Gordon Gekko-a-like giving it the big motivational speech to the department, and the 'mericans responded with whoops and high fives, I burst out laughing as I thought they were taking the piss. I don't know who was then more horrified. Them - at me clearly finding this absolutely hilarious, or me, when I realised that this was for real. 😯

I didn't stay there long. I genuinelly felt that, in the words of Mozza, it was corroding my soul

what I hate most that as buyers they tend to seek huge amounts of info, engage in very lengthy discussions with no intention to actually buy....

Must be quite a few using the classifieds on here and pretending to be British then.

Try working for Canadians

This.

I even started to question my own sanity at the length of time it took to not get anything done. Or the lack of ownership of any particular problem that occurred.

I was bollocked once for sending an email detailing what was needed, when and using what. Needless to say it wasn't done

Absolute bunch of racist workshy corporate bollocks ****ers

Binners, my experience was the same, every missive was greeted as if it was the dead sea scrolls, every presentation was an excuse for a bit of a back slap and hollerin'

The belief that their corp was the best, served their best interests, was to be revered was tangible, and the biggest difference between the UK and US staff.

(that and the swearing)

Having worked for a big American corp for nearly 8 years, I think it's more the corp culture rather than the nationality.

Also, they are very good at blowing their own trumpets and saying the right things publicly whilst doing **** all and slagging the company off behind closed doors.

The 7am to 8pm thing is presenteeism, the minions copying leadership and being scared of getting sacked and losing benefits like Health Insurance.

That being said, I have got to know some good people who do like a beer or 8. But they are fro Baaaaaastan, which makes them "Irish" and therefore borderline alcoholic.