301–310 of 381 posts
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is part of the cause is also that Brazilians are more “in the moment” with whoever they are currently with. It’s ok (expected) that you may be late for a future meeting because you never want to be rude or short with the people that you’re currently with.
This is also why many non-Brazilian politicians are perpetually late.
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>not dumb >never understood why they couldn't just take a test two hours late. I see a contradiction here.
It's a cultural thing. If that's the way the world has always worked for you, wouldn't it be surprising, at least for a while, to see that other people do things differently?
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> Honestly it's difficult to imagine having the opposing view with any experience at all managing anything. Or even considering what it might be like to do so. Yeah, how dare people disagree.
Feel welcome to disagree--I just think you might feel differently with broader life experience or a more open mind.
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Demand of punctuality is a demand on other people's time. Punctuality is a virtue of slaves -- to other people and to the clock in general.
I understand your point, but you're wrong. Working with other people towards a common goal does not equal becoming a slave to them. It does mean however, that if you don't respect their time then your actions serve against that goal.
Being honest about it sets people’s expectations better. And you have to tolerate it from others as well.
It also correlates with higher creativity and success:
As a Brazilian, don't take this as a reliable source of information. Where I was raised, "Estou chegando" (I'm arriving) means exactly that. Arriving late is kind of expected in parties/bbqs but not at work, meetings, appointments etc. As for Rio culture, no idea since I've never been there.
As a Carioca, my pet theory is that we are always late due to the lack of a decent public transport, specially trains. British trains are famous for being on time to the minute. Brazil is a really unequal society, public transport is really for the poor and terrible.
One thing that struck me about Brazil compared to the U.S. is the huge number of people standing around doing nothing. You will never see that in the U.S.: if someone is loitering here, they are a teenager or homeless. But it was huge in Brazil. I am assuming this is because of the extreme unemployment and lack of opportunity.
Unfortunately, seeing so much despondency is likely to affect everyone in the society. You tend to change your outlook on things. I have heard there is an "everyone does it" attitude with regard to paying bribes, stealing services like electricity, etc. This also drags down society.
My wife is Brazilian and she is a very timely person, living in the U.S. Partly due to acculturation but also because of the "I wasn't born here but got here as fast as I could" effect.
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That’s fascinating! Does the book have any insight into how Japan made the complete 180° in I guess a few decades? The Meiji Restoration was already incredible but I thought the work ethic was there throughout and helped make it possible. I had no idea there was also a revolution of work ethic.
I think the larger question, which has haunted me for a long time, is: how do you change culture on mass scale? Singapore is an example where brute force top-down was used. Maybe that’s the only way?
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Efficiency in terms of not wasting people's time. The ability in business for people to complete tasks in-line with when they were expected allows for better scheduling. I'm not suggesting that everything in business benefits from being regimented but that meeting expectations allows for others to plan their time effectively. Time where people are waiting for others to do work which should have been completed can oft…
> Efficiency in terms of not wasting people's time. Then you must first consider the need to have the business or meeting in the first place. In fact, people's time is only "wasted" because it has been made precious -- i.e. because it was stolen and/or sold. That's way more wasted time (they'll never get again) there, than in "wasting time" by not being punctual. Societies studied by ethnologists had little care for…