http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/tags.php?tag=cultimultural The NewsBiscuit Community en-US Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/search.php http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=460#post-1346 Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:25:31 +0000 andhrimnir 1346@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>I have just blackberried your chief exec with "I think there is a chink in your corporate plan".</p> <p>I doubt I'll get a response. </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=460#post-1322 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:58:00 +0000 rikkor 1322@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>It has been scientifically proven that foreign people are funny. Your meeting sounds to die for. </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=460#post-1314 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:10:13 +0000 brownpaperreporter 1314@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>Phil the Greek has no marbles ... nor sensitivity </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=460#post-1310 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:55:13 +0000 malgor 1310@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p><blockquote>The Basil Fawlty Award for Intercultural Sensitivity</blockquote></p> <p>...patron, HRH you-know-who </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=460#post-1309 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:49:56 +0000 The All New Jeni B 1309@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>I once worked for a department which maintained that to be "culturally sensitive", we should not ask for white or black coffee, but instead coffe with or without milk. We could only ask for chocolate, not milk, white, or dark chocolate and which insisted that we all undertake "Diversity Training" to ensure that we were sympathetic to ethnic minorities. </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=460#post-1306 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:40:07 +0000 sauce 1306@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>The Basil Fawlty Award for Intercultural Sensitivity. </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=460#post-1297 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:58:21 +0000 bang2rights 1297@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>Excellent. In the same vein, may I refer you to the toe-curlingly embarrassing 'When Rover met BMW' TV documentary that aired on the BBC around the time of the German company's acquisition of the British car-maker and some time before a severely chastened BMW finally disposed of the marque to the lowest bidder for £10 and a multi-million pound dowry.</p> <p>Needless to say, the plainly batty old retainers who were in charge of international hospitality at Rover greeted the incoming VIPs with a trestle table decorated with little German flags and groaning under the weight of German-style sausages on cocktail sticks specially brought in from the deli section at Tesco's. Sadly, they couldn't immediately lay their hands on a 78rpm copy of 'Deutschland uber Alles' to play as background music. Shame.</p> <p>NEWSFLASH: The five agonising episodes of 'When Rover met BMW' (1996) are currently available on state-of-the-art VHS cassettes from BBC Active - the Corporation's Provisional Educational Wing - for the staggering sum of £625. Don't all rush. </p> http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=460#post-1288 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:46:00 +0000 John Square 1288@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p><strong>Friends- I have just come from my quarterly corporate lunch briefing, and I have this to share with you. As background, I work in the public sector, so none of what follows is because people were being deliberately insensitive. It was all done with the best possible intentions. Also none of this is lies. It all really happened. It is a homegrown truebiscuit, if you like, and I am your frontline reporter.</strong></p> <p>Anyway:</p> <p>It was Chinese-themed (we like to align ourselves with dictatorial regimes that invade countries, brutally repress free speech and run people over with tanks) so we had low-quality fake Chinese food- (that famed Chinese guy Uncle Ben provided the Sweet and sour Chicken), Kung-Fu Panda was playing on the big screen, some Chinese-style Cornish pasties (my mind and mouth conjured up a hearty “wtf?” at that one), and sausage rolls (eh? shurely some mistake?)</p> <p>For decoration, we had some random Chinese characters printed out and put up on the walls (best one read “love horse, wet tiger”). God knows why we just googled some Chinese characters- we have at least one staff member who speaks three dialects of Chinese and can write full and simplified forms nicely, but no- actually asking someone who is familiar with the customs and language was deemed unnecessary.</p> <p>Did I mention the Balinese (yes- <em>balinese</em>, because all oriental peoples and cultures are the somehow the same)statues? No? Well, we had those too.</p> <p>I’m surprised we didn’t get someone to come in and play the “diddy diddy did did did did daaa!” tune on a piano, whilst wearing a coolie hat, so authentic was the breadth of our cultural embrace.</p> <p>God knows what our next corporate lunch will be themed as- they did Wimbledon last year, so that’s out. Terrifyingly, the Chinese thing was because we are near Chinese new year (well, February 14th wasn’t that long ago). The next one is in June, which ties in handily with the 2009 apology for slavery in the US Senate, so maybe our chief exec can black up, wear an Afro wig, deliver her address in jive (“When people ask me how we are pushing service excellence in social housing forward, I shall say '<em>Yo’ kno’ ah git soooooul, mofo!</em>”). Maybe we could then tuck into grits and fried chicken, before shaking our booty to some authentic P-Funk. Or spirituals, if you want a more sombre feel.</p> <p>Oh, and finally: we are listing this as an <em>achievement</em> in our corporate plan, and counting it as evidence of our progression in our Equality and Diversity brief.</p> <p>I am slightly more aware of the culture of the far east than most, as I lived there for a decade and speak (and write) a fair bit of Mandarin myself, but I am sharing this in the hope of some of you mob joining in with the least appropriate (but well meaning) epic failures in the work place. </p>