Interpersonal x intercultural

Recently I was forced to retort bluntly to one of my colleagues when she improperly insisted on me answering her awkward questions while she was well aware I was preoccupied with my own thoughts. I hadn’t been able to relate to this person previously because her sense of humour is simply beyond me. Even so, immediately afterwards I started thinking whether it was an interpersonal or rather intercultural conflict. Andrew, as he witnessed the incident, suggested it was the former, yet I came to realize later on that it had a lot to do with the latter.

The reason to it is that my boss was chatting with this person as if they were the best friends under the sun even though he had confided in me that he would dismiss her on the grounds of her professional disloyalty and unpredictability. And that is, I learnt, very typical of the culture. People commonly use little affectations in order to keep their face-to-face contacts sweet but there is little sincerity. That’s why I perhaps overreacted. It wasn’t because of the questions, awkward or innocent though they might have been.