Cultural differences in complimenting

I read Diane K. Danielson’s post at The Women’s Dish about the cultural differences of compliments and instead of complimenting Diane of a great post on the spot, I realized I had too much to say for a blog comment and wanted to continue her post a little bit.

Her post idea came from a Wall Street Journal article where her co-author Lindsey Pollak was interviewed why Americans compliment so much. Watch the video of the interview.

When I came to the United States for the first time, I was in a culture shock.
This was ten years ago

One week after being here for the first time I was surrounded by Southern Hospitality in my husband’s family’s ranch in Texas. And I was horrified of the friendly and nice people!

Small talk is not small all over the world.

Small talk to me had been talking about political or environmental issues, and if it had been my own family gathering, my relatives would have been quizzing me about my engineering studies or my parent’s friends would have asked a younger generation’s opinion to national politics. In my future family-in-law gathering most aunties were commenting on my hair or asking about my beauty pageant years – I was almost offended on the comments of my fair skin, and not asking me about things I thought were important, like the business studies I had done or the work experience I had on public relations. What about my opinions about greenhouse gases or taxation?

I thought the waitresses in restaurants were so rude.

I wanted to have a romantic dinner with my fiance, and she would come all the time and ask if I wanted to have a refill -refill, what is that? In Europe there are no refills- or if my steak tasted good -you just slammed in the front of me- I haven’t even tasted, so how would I know- and again she would come and ask how the food was -“A little too salty, thanks for asking” – and I got a look like “what a rude b*tch – telling the food is too salty” and I would think “what a b*tch, why would you ask, if you really didn’t want to know”.

Customer service isn’t being polite and nice.

I had some questions of a product I was buying, and the sales person was super nice, but didn’t know anything about the product. I told Matt that was the worst customer service I had had in my life, and he didn’t understand “but she was so nice” he said “but she didn’t give me any information I needed” I answered.

You might think I was an arrogant snobby European. *

And I probably was.

See, things are different where I come from.

EXAMPLES OF FINNISH CULTURE:

- Parents never compliment their children “they might get too proud’.

- You don’t smile, if you don’t have anything to smile about. (Try entering a full bus smiling, and you will be treated like Forrest Gump). Unless you are drunk. Then Finnish people tolerate almost anything from you. It also gives them an excuse to do what they normally wouldn’t do.

- In a restaurant you are lucky if you can get a hold of your waitress when you want to pay your bill and leave – they consider it is rude to interrupt people who are eating and try to stay away.

- Good customer service = cold facts. Spare the smile, share the info.

- Don’t say it, if you don’t mean it. People are held to what they say. “Take a man by his word and a bull by its horn”, says the Finnish proverb.

- When you compliment on somebody’s clothing, you won’t get a “oh, thank you”, you’ll get a weird look and “oh, this old thing”.

- When a Finnish person compliments you – she/he really means it.

- Don’t say “let’s have a lunch sometime” to a Finn, if you don’t want her to call back on that.

- Silence is golden, it’s better not to say anything than small talk about nothing.

* People adjust

Now I swim in the American culture like a fish in a sea. I small talk, I compliment – but still it’s my honest cultural background that prohibits me from saying I like your outfit, if I think it’s all wrong.

What I have noticed that listening skills are the biggest compliment I can offer sometimes. I still don’t just expect the “everything is great” answer to my “how are you” and many people notice it, and are happy to share what’s really going on.

Read more about Finnish culture:
You Know You Have Been In Finland Too Long, When…

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