首页
登录
职称英语
Advance notice is often referred to in America as "lead time," an expression
Advance notice is often referred to in America as "lead time," an expression
游客
2023-10-19
19
管理
问题
Advance notice is often referred to in America as "lead time," an expression which is significant in a culture where schedules are important. While it is learned informally, most of us are familiar with how it works in our own culture, even though we cannot state the rules technically. The rules for lead time in other cultures, however, have rarely been analyzed. At the most they are known by experience to those who lived abroad for some time. Yet think how important it is to know how much time is required to prepare people, or for things to come. Sometimes lead time would seem to be very extended. At other times, in the Middle East, any period longer than a week may be too long.
How troublesome differing ways of handling time can be is well illustrated by the case of an American agriculturalist assigned to duty as an attachê of our embassy in a Latin country, After what seemed to him a suitable period he let it be known that he would like to call on the minister who was his counterpart. For various reasons, the suggested time was not suitable; all sorts of cues came back to the effect that the time was not yet ripe to visit the minister. Our friend, however, persisted and forced an appointment, which was reluctantly granted. Arriving a little before the hour (the American respect pattern), he waited. The hour came and passed; five minutes--ten minutes--fifteen minutes. At this point he suggested to the secretary that perhaps the minister did not know he was waiting in the outer office. This gave him the feeling he had done something concrete and also helped to overcome the great anxiety that was stirring inside him. Twenty minutes--twenty-five minutes--thirty minutes--forty-five minutes (the insult period)!
He jumped up and told the secretary that he had been "cooling his heels" in an outer office for forty-five minutes and he was "damned sick and tired" of this type of treatment. This message was relayed to the minister, who said, in effect, "let him cool his heels." The attachê stay in the country was not a happy one.
The principal source of misunderstanding lay in the fact that in the country in question the five-minute delay interval was not significant. Forty-five minutes, on the other hand, instead of being at the tail end of the waiting scale, was just barely at the beginning. To suggest to an American’s secretary that perhaps her boss didn’t know you were there after waiting sixty seconds would seem absurd, as would raising a storm about "cooling your heels" for five minutes. Yet this is precisely the way the minister registered the complaints of the American in his outer office! He felt, as usual, that Americans were being totally unreasonably.
Throughout this unfortunate episode the attach6 was acting according to the way he had been brought up. At home in the United States his response would have been normal ones and his behavior correct. Yet even if he had been told before he left home that this sort of thing would happen, he would have had difficulty not feeling insulted after he had been kept waiting for forty-five minutes. If, on the other hand, he had been taught the details of the local time system just as he should have been taught the local spoken language, it would have been possible for him to adjust himself accordingly. [br] In that particular Latin American country, letting people wait for 45 minutes is considered ______.
选项
A、unreasonable
B、impolite
C、objectionable
D、quite normal
答案
D
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3111069.html
相关试题推荐
From2007to2010,Americanhouseholdslost$11trillioninrealestate,sav
(1)TheearliestsettlerscametotheNorthAmericancontinenttoestablish
(1)Inspiteof"endlesstalkofdifference,"Americansocietyisanamazing
(1)(a)Asidefromperpetuatingitself,thesolepurposeoftheAmericanAca
(1)(a)Asidefromperpetuatingitself,thesolepurposeoftheAmericanAca
(1)(a)Asidefromperpetuatingitself,thesolepurposeoftheAmericanAca
【T1】________.InLatinAmerica,peopleexpresstheirhopesthroughthecolor
【T1】________.InLatinAmerica,peopleexpresstheirhopesthroughthecolor
【T1】________.InLatinAmerica,peopleexpresstheirhopesthroughthecolor
【T1】________.InLatinAmerica,peopleexpresstheirhopesthroughthecolor
随机试题
StatesExperimentwithOut-of-ClassroomLearning[A]Attheendo
图示结构BC杆轴力为( )。
骨膜、肌腱、韧带均属于( )。A.致密结缔组织 B.疏松结缔组织 C.纤维
关于中国证券投资基金业协会为私募基金管理人办理私募基金备案,以下说法正确的是(
主要用于控制症状的抗疟药有() A.氯喹 B.伯氨喹 C.奎宁 D.
下列关于药物的保管原则的叙述,正确的是A:药柜应放在有阳光照射的地方,保证光线明
申请领取施工许可证时,提供建设工程有关安全施工措施资料的单位应是()。A
学生的受教育权包括受完法定教育年限权、()权和公正评价权。
"夫医者,非仁爱之士不可托也;非聪明理达不可任也;非廉洁淳良不可信也。"此语出自
中短波广播发射机测试项目中,三大电声指标包括非线性失真、频率响应、()。
最新回复
(
0
)