[bogomipz]

I have to question the perceptions and judgement from anyone that managed to live in SF and mentions one of the salient characteristics of its citizens is being an "Ayn Rand follower". Did he mistake the Giants logo for something else? Ditto for someone who equates San Francisco as a place where political and religious discussions are to be avoided. Both of these are just bizarre.

[gbin]

I think he meant in companies.

For example in France, you can openly express your political opinions at lunch with colleagues. By that, I mean you can totally disagree, yell at each other on touchy subjects and then resume your work as nothing happened in the afternoon. That will be the end of it. A political opinion is just that, an opinion and it is totally fun to argue, disagree bringing new points to the table etc.

Arguing on something else than a purely professional matter at your workplace is the last place you want to be here in San Francisco:

First it doesn't fit the local culture of non-confrontation; You'll have confused Californian eyes staring back at you: "You mean everything is NOT awesome ?!?"

Then, you cannot offend anybody, even slightly. Unfortunately it is really easy to do from a French culture where you make points at extremes as examples, use sarcasms or dark humor. You can be sure they'll be taken at face value on the receiver end and reported to HR instantly.

[jernfrost]

As a European I got to say most of us have this experience with the US. I don't know southern Europe so well but in much of Northern Europe we talk about religion and politics all the time. You can always count on your American colleagues getting really uncomfortable about that. There as so many cases of people coming from the US and having stories of how they put their foot in their mouth because they did not realize the social conventions in America does not allow politics and religion to be discussed freely.

I find that American very quickly get offended and visible angry if you aren't very careful about how you speak. As a nordic we are used to speaking quite bluntly and that is frequently interpreted as offensive by Americans.