Mi sono imbattuto in un post davvero interessante su Twitter/X che mi ha ricordato il mio primo lavoro aziendale, dove lavoravo in team con colleghi tedeschi e olandesi. Un giorno un cliente mi chiamò sgridandomi perché la sua consegna non era arrivata in tempo. Ha chiesto di parlare con “qualcuno più competente”. Ho trasferito la chiamata al mio collega olandese, che gli ha detto esattamente la stessa cosa che avevo appena detto e all’improvviso il cliente è diventato calmo, amichevole e completamente comprensivo. Era come guardare un interruttore che girava.
Detto questo, preferisco ancora la cultura del lavoro occidentale e anche quella gentilezza un po’ artificiale rispetto al tipico stile “Januszex” che vedi spesso in Polonia. Naturalmente dipende sempre dalle persone e ovunque se ne possono incontrare di tutti i tipi.
Sono curioso di conoscere la tua esperienza con questa dinamica della “presunta competenza” e con il modo in cui vengono trattati i dipendenti dell’Europa centro-orientale. Ti sei imbattuto in qualcosa di simile o le tue osservazioni sono completamente diverse?
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1rmaiz5
di WineTerminator
21 commenti
Idk, as an IT professional and a Pole in Sweden I got nothing but respect and politeness:) okay, and an occasional joke about buying cheap vodka from Polish truck drivers
I am a Polish guy working in academia in the so called west (Europe) and I have never experienced this. In fact I feel like I was always very appreciated. My experience is limited to Germany and France though.
Dunno about academia, but Poles in IT have a pretty strong rep from my experience
One dude projecting his own insecurities. Not worth going much deeper into that.
>One day, a client called, shouting at me because his delivery hadn’t arrived on time. He demanded to speak with “someone more competent.” I transferred the call to my Dutch colleague, who told him exactly the same thing I had just said and suddenly the customer became calm, friendly and completely understanding. It was like watching a switch flip.
Was the conversation in English or Dutch? The customer’s bias could have more to do with your accent sounding generally foreign than with you being Polish specifically. Of course, that doesn’t make the situation any better, but xenophobia can easily be confused with xenophobia against a certain nationality.
In my field, poles are considered one of the most competent (automotive)
As someone who lived and worked in the scientific sector all over the world, I would say it is very difficult to work with Western Europeans, their arrogance and sense of superiority are all over the place. No place is perfect, every system has its own quirks, but ah… the Western European arrogance!
As was spoken centuries ago… For some we are still the “Blacks of Europe” 😞
I never felt overly discriminated as a Pole like this, working internationally. Plus, honestly, Japan may not be the best example here. It’s probably mostly an effect of distance. To the Japanese, a German, a Pole and an Englishman are all equally “foreign”. Japan is also generally known for being xenophobic (while polite), so it might be that to them, they all fall into a single “not-Japanese” category. The Japanese can also have stronger opinions on foreigners from countries they had more direct past dealings with, like the Chinese or South Koreans.
In other words – no shit, he went to a place that barely ever heard of Poland and was surprised to find they aren’t overly prejudiced.
As a Western German who lives in Czech Republic now (and before that in Görlitz/Zgorcelec), I can very much understand what he means. But the attitude issue is not only coming from Western Europeans, it’s even worse from Americans. You basically have people from trailer parks asking whether the “eastern euro trash” has even electrity or running water. I had to educate people a lot of the last 20 years.
It’s not presumed.
I’m not in academia but corporate science-adjacent positions in Pharma and I found the opposite – the west always sends shit our way when they don’t know how to get it done in budget.
I think he meant academia
I use to work in customer service. On UK and US line. I remember people usually where happy to talk with us. In few cases I remember someone saying “thank god your not from India”. What was very homophobic.
Yeah spot on. As an Irish man I’ve to admit it took me a long time to get over this and to get over myself if I’m honest.
Maybe stop caring about what others think about you instead of running away.
All depends on the career stage you’re at. IT specialists get a ton of recognition, pretty much all white collar workers with hard skills do (Ops, Data, Analytics, even Performance Marketing).
But as soon as you try to get to leadership positions, beyond middle management, suddenly you’re met a wall where your Eastern Europeaness is again a significant hindrance. Working in London, I once got feedback that while I’m technically stronger, have better experience, and my teams perform better, promotion was given to someone the C-suite had a better “vibe” with – obviously a British person.
Specifically for the UK, I heard of a colonial complex, where the upper class don’t mind workers from Poland (and other parts of the world) as they’re culturally used to foreign help, but it’s hard to stomach giving a non-Westerner a position of power.
As an immigrant in Poland this post made me laugh
Given that the head of Polish Studies at Cambridge is Australian… Yeah. It’s absolutely a thing.
I find it both iritating and kinda funny cause in a vast majority of the cases it’s the exact opposite – in my experience westerners are generally less competent and have substandard work ethics.
In the corporate world it’s a big chain of western europeans discriminating on central europeans discriminating on eastern europeans discriminating on indians discriminating on africans.
I’m not sure who the africans are going to get to discrimnate on.