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In Brazil, it is considered rude to be on time to a party

bbc.com

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Re: In Brazil, it is considered rude to be on time to a party

#311

Post by diminoten »

tchaffee wrote: post #268
coherentpony wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost everyone I meet with in SP is on time for work related meetings. Is 'almost everyone you met' a representative sample of the population of SP? Of Brazil? To say that Brazilians are late is a generalisation. To say they are on time is also a generalisation.

Can you show me I where said all Brazilians are on time? Or that even all people in SP are on time or that what I said was anything more than an opposing anecdote to the one presented in the article? I'm not a journalist and if I was I would certainly be looking for studies as opposed to anecdote. I'm simply pointing out bad journalism, and it doesn't require a representative sample in order to do that.

As you've written it, your desire to point out bad journalism is undermined by a lack of rigor on your part. You'd possibly be more effective if you didn't cite your personal experience.

Re: In Brazil, it is considered rude to be on time to a party

#312

Post by silveira »

In my experience, this particular generalization is almost always correct.

The many excuses as lack of reliable transportation does not really apply because I see the same behavior when Brazilians are in countries that have said infrastructure.

To be on time is a developed skill and as I Brazilian myself I surely had to develop that skill late in life. However being on time among Brazilians costed me dearly. I had many problems, fights, and arguments because I expect some degree of punctuality of others Brazilians. I have countless personal accounts of that. For someone not used to it, let me quantify it: I'm talking lateness from 30 minutes to 4 hours.

The root cause is that lateness is highly tolerated in Brazil, and is inherently contagious. If someone is always 10 minutes late to an appointment, someone else, who values their own time, will be not less than 10 minutes late. Next one will be not less than that, incrementally, each more late than the other. The more people, the worst, and we are more than 200 millions.

For people who think that being late is not a big deal, imagine being 10 minutes late for a meeting with 6 other people. That's 6 times 10 minutes, 60 minutes of people's time waiting you. Wasted time. Then there is the time lost due context switching, pinging you to see where you are, and being late to other appointments. It's disrespectful and selfish to be late. You are showing that you care only about yourself and not about other people's time.

Yes, I know that anyone can be late, but please without false symmetries. It's an endemic problem among Brazilians and we need to fix it. Please, if you know you have this problem, stop making excuses and do something about it. Buy a watch, use Google Calendar, it's not even that hard.

Re: In Brazil, it is considered rude to be on time to a party

#313

Post by mirimir »

rezeroed wrote: post #298
mirimir wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also seen this in Mexico. Sometimes, roads just end, into holes and large rocks and equipment. However, this is mainly an issue in rural areas. And even though there may be no signs, there's typically a line of small rocks, maybe 0.5 meter from the edge.

Yeah, sounds like Africa too. I don't think this has anything to do with Brazil, rather undeveloped countries. The usual story of first-worlders thinking they know how the rest of the world works.

So this one time, friends and I were driving through mountains, on a decent ~2 lane road. With even some guard rails. And then we came around a switchback, and the road was basically just gone. No signs, or other warnings. There had been a huge landslide. And there were many workers, from nearby towns, but all with just hand implements. So we had to backtrack ~200 km.

Re: In Brazil, it is considered rude to be on time to a party

#314

Post by OldSchoolJohnny »

ryandrake wrote: post #294
tchaffee wrote: post #191

São Paulo is a city of over 12 million people, the largest city in the southern hemisphere of our planet, and is almost 10% of the Brazilian population. Almost everyone I meet with in SP is on time for work related meetings. I haven't noticed a difference between SP, the UK, the USA, or many of the other places I've worked. Generalizing about an entire country when that generalization is wrong for its biggest city ma…

The article is more about Rio than the rest of Brasil, and more about social rather than business gatherings. When I first started dating my (Carioca) wife, and was planning a birthday party for her at a restaurant, she warned me to send out a start time of 6:00 if I wanted people to actually start rolling in around 7-7:30. Sure enough, first guest arrived around 8:00. Not hard to get used to, just treat it like a di…

Montreal is exactly the same way only you invite them for 10pm and the party only really starts at midnight.

Re: In Brazil, it is considered rude to be on time to a party

#315

Post by lucantini »

As a Brazilian myself, I hate this. People are not late to work related stuff, but on a social setting this is ridiculous! I'm very punctual in everything that I do and always get to events on time. I hate the fact that being late is considered "cultural" and not a huge middle finger to other people's time.

Re: In Brazil, it is considered rude to be on time to a party

#317

Post by coldtea »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #280
coldtea wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Direct democracy is still pretty awful though, especially for anyone who falls into any kind of true numerical minority category That's a generalization its opponents make, but it isn't true. In most places where it was practiced (ancient Athens, short-lived anarchist areas in Spain, egalitarian communities, etc.) it was shown to be more benevolent and inclusive to "true numerical minorities" than most representati…

> it was shown to be more benevolent and inclusive to "true numerical minorities" than most representative democracies Source? Athenian direct democracy was only for males, legally sanctioned slaves and allowed for a simple majority to ostracize people. Sparta's direct democratic elements oversaw a large Helot slave population.

>Source? Athenian direct democracy was only for males, legally sanctioned slaves and allowed for a simple majority to ostracize people

That's irrelevant to the discussion though, as that was simply the norm then across regimes, not a special characteristic of Athenian direct democracy.

Not to mention that the US representative democracy was only for males until the 1920s, had slaves until 1865 and segregation until the 1970s. And that's 2.5 millennia later than that pesky Athenian direct democracy.

Re: In Brazil, it is considered rude to be on time to a party

#318

Post by kbutler »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #266
AlexB138 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many societies they mutilate the genitals of female children. In many others they carry out honor killings when a member of the family acts, as they see it, incorrectly. These are two examples of aspect of society that vary from culture to culture. Cultural relativism is largely nonsense. Leaving a giant pit in the road for people to drive into is objectively a dangerous and selfish thing to do. Whether the expect…

> Cultural relativism is largely nonsense There are multiple optima on the cultural space. Americans' individualistic and Scandinavians' committee-loving systems both work well, and optimize for a complimentary set of problems. Saying "ignore the students–go to the beach," on the other hand, is an objectively worse cultural tenet than "balance everyone's needs."

Is balancing needs really the best, though?

Balancing everyone's needs tends to result in something that doesn't make anyone really happy.

This leads to a least common denominator result (you can have any color you want, as long as it's black) which is objectively worse in aggregate than "optimize for some, and let someone else optimize for the others".

Re: In Brazil, it is considered rude to be on time to a party

#319

Post by moduspol »

OldSchoolJohnny wrote: post #303
moduspol wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel welcome to disagree--I just think you might feel differently with broader life experience or a more open mind.

I think with broader life experience and a more open mind you would think the exact opposite to what you are espousing.

Maybe you're right. What life experience(s) would help lead me to seeing it the other way?

Re: In Brazil, it is considered rude to be on time to a party

#320

Post by chris_wot »

senorjazz wrote: post #206
MadSudaca wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that #1 is a matter of lack of responsibility. In the US if you dig a hole and someone falls in it because there were no signs, I think you'd get sued to hell. The company, if it survices, would find who's responsible for the bad decision of not putting any signs, and punish that person accordingly for their lack of foresight. Next time that or another person, if they learned from the mistake, will be…

because it is your responsibility not to walk blindly into a hole. Why the US is so blame happy, rather than personal responsibility, that is the question. -------------------- Just different cultures

That’s interesting - you are actually blaming the one who walked into the hole.

This is a pretty dangerous way of looking at the world - it’s victim blaming and means nobody has to take responsibility.

Negligence is definitely a problem. Some time ago the Brazilian Samarco iron ore mine collapsed due to negligence. That had dire consequences. Did they blame the victims for not being careful enough? Of course not.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/bhp-billiton-samar...

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