Polish people are so polite.
Today we had an online meeting with a Polish colleague. (We use Google Hangouts for that.) She was the organiser, and she started the meeting by asking cheerfully (the other three participants in the call, including me, were Malaysians), "Before we start, how was your holiday?"
I responded with a quiet "Oh, it was fine..." because I'm not good at small talk anyway. And there was no reply from the others. Quite an anti-climax. It was rather awkward for a moment, before she said "Okay, let's continue..." (I'm paraphrasing).
This Polish colleague is really quite friendly, but somehow most of us Malaysians in this team can't seem to fall into chit-chat so easily. It isn't just us though... we are also working with people from China (Chengdu, to be precise), and they don't do much small talk either.
And talking about small talk... Previously I used IM to ask another Polish colleague some questions regarding work. This was quite long ago, and for a short period of time I needed to message him quite often to discuss how to fix some issues. Usually when I start an IM conversation, I would say "hi", and proceed with my question. But if he was around when I typed my first "hi [his name]", he would immediately reply with "hi WP" and "how are you?"
It made me feel rather bad because I was not planning to ask him how he was... :P
So the "how are you"s would go both ways and then we would both reply "fine" or something to that effect, and then he would ask "how can I help you?"
Oh...my...goodness..... could you be a little less polite? You're making me feel bad...
Well, I still haven't learned this aspect of politeness very well. If I think of it, I will start with a "how are you" if that person has a history of asking "how are you". But otherwise... it's just not my style to make small talk. The best I usually do is to ask people, "Are you free now? Could you help me with something?"
Today we had an online meeting with a Polish colleague. (We use Google Hangouts for that.) She was the organiser, and she started the meeting by asking cheerfully (the other three participants in the call, including me, were Malaysians), "Before we start, how was your holiday?"
I responded with a quiet "Oh, it was fine..." because I'm not good at small talk anyway. And there was no reply from the others. Quite an anti-climax. It was rather awkward for a moment, before she said "Okay, let's continue..." (I'm paraphrasing).
This Polish colleague is really quite friendly, but somehow most of us Malaysians in this team can't seem to fall into chit-chat so easily. It isn't just us though... we are also working with people from China (Chengdu, to be precise), and they don't do much small talk either.
And talking about small talk... Previously I used IM to ask another Polish colleague some questions regarding work. This was quite long ago, and for a short period of time I needed to message him quite often to discuss how to fix some issues. Usually when I start an IM conversation, I would say "hi", and proceed with my question. But if he was around when I typed my first "hi [his name]", he would immediately reply with "hi WP" and "how are you?"
It made me feel rather bad because I was not planning to ask him how he was... :P
So the "how are you"s would go both ways and then we would both reply "fine" or something to that effect, and then he would ask "how can I help you?"
Oh...my...goodness..... could you be a little less polite? You're making me feel bad...
Well, I still haven't learned this aspect of politeness very well. If I think of it, I will start with a "how are you" if that person has a history of asking "how are you". But otherwise... it's just not my style to make small talk. The best I usually do is to ask people, "Are you free now? Could you help me with something?"
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