Diversity

I work for a large American company (this wasn’t my choice – it bought the small UK company that I had joined). My limited experience of large American companies is that they worry about Diversity – note the capital letter and have directors dedicated to it, training courses for all staff and so on.

I’m sure that this is well-intentioned at least by some of the higher-ups, but sometimes – too often – comes across as lip service and window dressing. I know that Brits can be just as insensitive as Americans and any other group, so I’m not going to claim the moral high ground. The people from the German company we’re selling to at the moment say they have Diversity too, so maybe it’s all large companies these days.

Anyway, I was in Germany on business and got an excellent illustration of it done properly, i.e. with a small ‘d’. It reminded me that reading books on ecumenism is all well and good, but the proper way to be God’s family is to just chat and get on with people who go to different churches from you. Back to diversity. There were many of my US-based colleagues on the same trip, and so there was American, British and German in the mix. Actually one of the US-based people is really Venezuelan, and one of the Germany-based people is actually a Pole, but that just led to interesting accents.

So, I had an American colleague telling me where the rest rooms were in the office we were visiting (not the toilets or even Toiletten). We had Chinese takeaway for lunch (a bit random, but nice) and one of my US colleagues had stuff in a satay sauce for the first time (“peanut butter sauce”). One of the Americans was dying for some water that wasn’t Mineralwasser and so the satay eater said “Why not have some tap water?” which made me puzzled so I asked him what he called the thing it came out of. He said “spigot or faucet” – I had come across faucet before, but apparently a faucet gives out tap water, which was new to me. As was the fact that sandwiches in the US don’t usually have butter spread on the bread – you’re much more likely to have mustard, mayonaise or something else. I discovered that to get an outside line from a German switchboard you have to dial 0 rather than 9. I spread enlightenment by recommending (and describing) cream teas – this is apparently now on the list of things to do/eat when the Americans are next in the UK. Hurrah!

It also embarrassed me how poor my German has become, and my French. Then there’s Spanish, Russian, Mandarin and Hindi etc. – I suppose that’s the problem being a native speaker of the de facto international language – which foreign languages do you choose to learn?