Gilberts' Fridge

Working in England…

It’s a whole other world working in England vs. working in the U.S.—especially in this industry! It’s been quite a job, adjusting to the working environment here. In some respects it is so much more reserved, and in others it is much more informal.

For instance, back home we all talked about our home life at work. It didn’t absorb us completely, but we would chit chat about what we did over the weekend, mention it if our husbands had done something silly, gush over cute things that kids or pets had done, etc. Here we very rarely discuss our home lives. Even in the times when nothing much is going on it seems to be a taboo topic!

In my previous jobs we were never very formal. I always called people by their first names—even my superiors. Still, the casualness of things here is shocking. I have never been called so many pet names in my life! It’s always “love,” or “darling” or “chuck,” and it’s nice! Maybe it’s just that I am working in an industry that is mostly male, and the women tend to get pampered a little bit. Some people find it a bit condescending, but it’s quite nice to be treated like a lady.

It also seems that the further south you go the more American the working style becomes. I hear that northern men tend to be chauvinists, and I guess I can sort of see that. But maybe it’s not that they’re chauvinists—maybe they’re just more traditional in the way they see gender roles. When we call depots down in the London area, it seems to be business as usual.

Phone calls are a bit strange as well. Other than not knowing whether I’ll be able to understand people when I pick up the phone, the manners are completely different. For starters, when I pick up the phone and say hello, the person on the end of the line usually sounds surprised. How can they be surprised that someone is answering? They called me—they should be expecting to hear someone’s voice!

The niceties are usually done away with as well. Back home we always said “how are you,” or something like it. Here, they tend to jump straight into business.

In the U.S. the person who placed the call is usually the one to end it. It seems like common courtesy to me. Not only are they the one paying for the call, but they phoned you with a purpose. Once they have got the information they needed, they should signal that by ending the call. Here there seems to be this extreme reluctance to hang up first. So many times I feel like I’m hanging up on someone. They say thank you and then wait. There’s this moment of awkward silence—I usually end up asking if there’s anything else I can do for them, and that is even more awkward.

Someone should teach a course in telephone manners so we can standardise them! I’m sure I’m being rude a lot of the time and just don’t realize it.

All these differences aside, it’s amazing how many similarities there are. People are people, no matter where you are. We all tend to have the same needs, wants, fears, desires, and insecurities. We grow up so differently, but we end up pretty much the same.