As American As They Come…

9. Action/Work Orientation.

Americans are defined by their work. Here, my father is another perfect example. First though let me say that to the Europeans I meet, the first question is all too often regarding Americans’ work ethic and their sheer lack of vacation and the possibility that they don’t usually like to take the vacations they are entitled to. Europeans cannot generally believe it, after all the average worker here in Germany with a full-time position is allowed I something like nearly four weeks of paid vacation a year.

My father too, seems to have been defined by his work. He is a smart man, learning all he could soak up from his mentor about cars, owning and running a business, managing people, and building. He was able to parlay that into a sort of business very early on buying old, cheap homes and fixing them up to rent them out. With the money he saved he was able to buy the business he always wanted and worked at it six days a week until he was 45 (yes, forty-five) when he sold the business and retired officially. My parents chose to work six days a week and as my sister and I got older, they took trips, especially my mother. My father took my sister and I on trips when we were little…to Disneyland…to Hawaii, etc. Yet, whenever my father would go away for more than a day or two he would always come back to something major having broken down. So, in his mind it became easier just not to go away. My sister and I played sports and to save time and resources I went with my mother and my father went with my sister. She was four years older than me, so he was off the hook first.

When my parents retired, my mother was so excited. She was ready to travel the world. The story with my parents goes something like this: My parents weren’t supposed to meet, as my mother didn’t want to come to town with her sister and go on a blind date. My aunt liked one of my father’s friends and didn’t want to make the hour drive to the city, or home later, herself so she convinced my mother to come, somehow. My aunt, her guy and my mother had to stop and get my dad at his place. When my mother first saw my dad, he was carrying a brand new toilet into the house, his house he was fixing up. That blew her away and she said she was stuck on him all night. The abridged story is that my mother thought my father was amazing and would have followed him anywhere because of all the plans he had, along with the drive to make those plans happen. My father had planned to buy, fix up and then rent out homes to save money to then buy a business and then retire at 40 so he could travel and play with my mother after the kids were raised, off at college or simply out of the house and living their lives.

It all worked out pretty well, my parents saved money everywhere they could in the beginning and that hasn’t changed too much today. I’d say it is an old and good habit to keep, especially in this economy. The only problem with ‘the plan’, well, there were actually a few but, the main problem that is relevant to this list is that my father defined his life by his work. While he was happy to relax at first, he still would visit his old business, especially after the new owners struggled at times to make their payments on time. After a while, especially after moving down to the farm, my father went a little crazy, stir-crazy to be precise. After all, he tried traveling. My mother dragged him off to Bali and Thailand, which she absolutely fell in love with, but where my father just felt out-of-place and ended up getting food poisoning. I am sure if he was much younger, he would probably feel like being a little more adventurous but, that killed that dream pretty much on the spot. They have since also had bad experiences in New Zealand as well. So my father has reconnected with his love of cars and working on them while he leaves my mother to travel the world with her sisters. She has now been to more parts of the world then me, but I can’t help but think that maybe if there was a little bit more work/life balance early on, they would be a little happier today. Then again, from this side of things it is always easier to say what might have been better. The point is, for a rather long and frustrating time, my father was stuck without much to do once he was over the honeymoon period of retirement all because he defined much of his life by his work.

It would be hard to say that most Americans wouldn’t do the same. It is also hard to say if it is because of the general restrictions to vacations, social pressure/conditioning, familial conditioning or something else. I have always considered myself action oriented, because that is how I was raised, because that is how my parents are. All too often when I call (because, I don’t call my parents daily unlike my sister) my parents ask if everything is okay, then if I need anything, and if I have something I want to share, not actually receive advice on, they still want to help me fix it all. I have to tell them when I call that I am just calling to say hi, or that I just wanted to share with them but that I am not seeking advice. I will admit that when I first came to Europe I took full advantage of how free my schedule was but, since then there have been times when I have not felt as worth as much because of the lack of a full-time job to help define who I am. It is somewhat strange, since I have been studying for so long, with the idea that when I was done with my studies I would likely easily find a full-time job, never mind that I would find the different language a battle in and of itself. This issue has also come up in my relationship with my husband more often than I honestly care to admit. He has a full-time job, I do not, not technically. I often feel neglected and un(or under)appreciated because of the nature of my work. I have less paid working hours but generally work as much, if not more than he does and still generally make dinner and clean most of the house and tend to ‘home issues’ more often myself. We have gotten into fights in the past because I ask him to do more, even though he works all day and commutes two hours a day to that job, hmmmmfff.

10. Informality.

Germany is a much more formal society than America is and this is often a point of friction between Germans and Americans. Americans want to be friends with everyone, to the point that some people, like many Germans, see it as being false or fake. I care about you right now, but by the end of my dinner, or my coffee, or my commute, meeting or whatever, I will forget you. This has come up so many times that I can no longer count it on my hands, in fact I have lost count how often the issue of formality vs informality has been brought up.

This goes beyond clothing, even though the idea of an American going to the symphony in shorts and flip-flops (beach sandals) or jeans seems atrocious to some. They even like to call people they know, even in business situations where there is definite hierarchy, by their first names – even if they barely know the person. Germans have come to me asking what they should do with the American colleague who won’t stop calling them by their first name, even though they have never actually met and only speak via email, or that their American colleague continually asks personal questions, “How are you? How was your weekend? Do you have children? etc. Another point of frustration is also how Americans greet their colleagues on the phone too: “Hi, Jane how are you? How was your weekend? Oh, really? My weekend was fun (even though the respondent didn’t ask), my boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancé took me camping…oh yes, you would like the international feedback summary. Yes, I will send that to you in just a moment. Okay, have a great day.”

Whereas many Americans find it rude that Germans can come off as being ‘so cold’. When, in reality, they just don’t warm up to everybody. They have their close friends and family, which they highly value. They also have work colleagues, which are often NOT friends that they would spend time with outside of work. Then there is also the think layer of hierarchy. For formal business things amongst different departments, different companies or people with titles in their names “Professor Dr. Blah-blah” for example, you are expected to address them as Frau Blah-blah, Herr Blah-blah, or Mr. Smith, Miss Smith, Mrs. Smith. First names are reserved for friends and family and others who are given the special permission to use them, no one else. Even cashiers and shop attendants have name tags that read, “Fr. Schmidt”.

In spite of what is customary in your country, we mean no disrespect. We just might feel that comfortable, or at least would like to. On the flip side, it can be a sign of a fake ass-hat business person if they are pouring it on too strong, it happens. I just hope that one or two experiences with these fakers doesn’t ruin the opinion you have of the lot of us.

11. Directness, Openness & Honesty.

As is evident by this blog, Americans are open and honest. I think they would like to think of themselves as direct, but in my experience in general they are not. Germans are on the whole, more direct than Americans (and I love them for it). This open and honest nature, I think goes along with self-help, the “assertiveness training” that Kohls mentions in his paper are no joke. As Kohls continues, “Americans consider anything other than the most direct and open approach to be “dishonest” and “insincere” and will quickly lose confidence in and distrust anyone who hints at what is intended rather than saying it outright (10).” This is true, we have names to describe people who behave like this, “slimy…greasy…dishonest…like a used-car-salesman.”However, Americans do offend and are not as open or frank as they would like to be I think. Just watch any of the horrible modern reality shows America pumps out and delivers worldwide.

How many of these shows are fueled by “honesty”,”directness” and “openness” only to find that the participants actually don’t want to hear that “honesty” and thus begin fighting. At least it makes for easy, cheap television – while sucking away at one’s soul for watching. Real life isn’t much different (does life imitate are or vice versa?) in that, people might say hi to you on the street, even if you don’t know them but, even your friends might not tell you the truth, even if you beg them. Their response might resemble something like this…”um, well, um, yeah, okay…” or they might be honest with you and be completely catty and finish with, “…just kidding!” But, then again this is how many of the people I knew in Oregon would act/react. This is mainly females, but then men I knew wouldn’t fair much different. They just wouldn’t say anything, they would just fight each other, or just stop being friends with you.

12. Practicality & Efficiency.

“Americans have a reputation for being an extremely realistic, practical and efficient people. The practical consideration is likely to be given highest priority in making any important decision in the United States…This practical, pragmatic orientation has caused Americans to contribute more inventions to the world than any other country in human history. The love of “practicality” has also caused Americans to view some professions more favorably than others. Management and economics, for example, are much more popular in the United States than philosophy or anthropology, and law and medicine are valued more than the arts…The popular American “trial-and-error” approach to problem solving also reflects the practical approach. This problem-solving approach, actually invented in the United States, suggests listing several possible solutions to any given problem, then trying them out, one- by-one to see which would be most effective.” (Kohls, 11)

I don’t think I could have said it any better. In my family ‘street smarts’ and logical thought was valued over truly academic pursuits. When I was in high school, it was apparent that I was supposed to go to college, because that is what your ‘supposed’ to do. Yet, I think that my parents wanted me to get in, get a degree I could use, then get out and “start my life”. In reality, it took me nearly a decade to get my Bachelor of Science, and that is after paying my own way through community college (the basic first two years). I had no idea what I wanted to ‘do’ and I surely didn’t want to pay or have my parents pay for some four year college experience so that I could just graduate and be as clueless as ever. Plus, I happened to fall in love with traveling at about 17 after a trip to New York City for New Years. Then at age 19, I spent nearly seven months in London (and traveling around Europe by rail). At 21, I spent four months in Australia and at 24, I joined AmeriCorps and spent the year traveling, working and living on the East Coast. A year into my masters program I traveled to South Korea to teach English for five weeks and then finally, in 2009 I was supposed to spend a year in Germany but, never left.

Throughout all that traveling, I was attending school as I said. In my opinion, my approach to higher education was a nice compromise and perfect for me since, as I have said I had no clue what I wanted to do, that is until the end of 2004. Even when I wasn’t traveling I was volunteering or working and/or attending school. My thought was that by the time I actually received my degree I would have no problem finding a job because of all the experience I had picked up traveling, volunteering, working and learning. Yet, my parents (my father really) always just said, “just get your degree” thinking I was going to be a student for all the rest of my life. He was always quick to point out how far removed professors and academics are from the rest of society in their “Ivory Towers”. In his mind, time spent too long in academia didn’t have much value in everyday life.

13. Materialism/Acquisitiveness.

Kohl’s explains that, “Foreigners generally consider Americans much more materialistic than Americans are likely to consider themselves (11).” This means that no matter what Americans collect more ‘stuff’ than people in other countries. This is possibly done, in part because of our lack of another outlet, like vacations and collecting ‘stuff’ is physical proof (read: practicality) that our hard work is paying off in one way or another. We might also use materialism in place of real relationships because we are a more mobile nation, meaning we are more likely to relocate for a job thus uprooting our entire family for better opportunity. More things might make feel a little more comfortable when we move half-way across the country and have left our friends or family behind.

When my husband and I officially moved to Germany after our wedding, it was important for both of us to make our home feel like ‘home’, so we bought a couch (named: The Couch) and filled up the walls with pictures from our wedding and kitschy things from home. This might have made us seem very American and materialist but, with only a few very close friends, nothing like the network we have back in Oregon, and mainly each other to lean on being comfortable at home was very important to us. Growing up, we didn’t have much, except for two televisions, because my mother and father liked to watch different programs at the same time and that was their idea of compromise – today they have two coffee pots because my father likes Folgers brand and my mother likes the fresh roasted and ground specialty stuff. We had to beg my father to buy a new computer,since the first one, brought home in the early 90’s and never connected to the internet, its multiple instructions booklets only I read and attempted to understand and in the end I was the only on to use it. Yet, that first computer had been left to collect dust in the basement, a relic of an excess not seen since it’s purchase. Funny thing though, when my father did agree to buy a new computer he bought a top of the line (at the time, of course) Mac with all the premium accoutrements.

Assessment

I would love to hear if people agree or disagree with me about these points. One of my colleagues refuses to use this list of values in their teaching of American Culture because the students, this teacher says, assume that these are hard and fast rules (meaning concrete). I like this list because it can be used as an introduction to American culture to begin the discussion about culture and stereotypes and then referred back to later as the students learn about the different aspects of culture and actually question if they are true or not. Hell, I think it can also be useful for Americans to read this and also reflect on the different aspects of their life and culture and then either agree or disagree with Kohls’ findings, of course with proof (please).

The funny thing about culture is that we see what we want to see, because we see through the filter of our own culture and the filters of many other things that help us individually and collectively create value. These other filters include our family, our friends, our teachers, who we work for, and grow exponentially from there. These can be called ‘perceptual filters’ that influence how we see various situations and influence how we respond or react to them. This is actually a really important point that is very often easily overlooked because it is so simple to assume that others automatically have the same value sets as we do.

For more on differences between cultures and general understanding, Dr. Jeffery Fish, Ph.D has a blog on http://www.psychologytoday.com, titled “Looking Through the Cultural Mirror” and touches on this point well in two posts (at least) using Germany and America as the examples. You can find the link to the first article here.

Thank you for reading this, I know it was no special feat. I appreciate it and fully welcome your comments.