Indian People are ALWAYS Late

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This pisses me off. I work with like 10 Indian people and they're always late ALL THE TIME. I did some research and figured out it's their entire culture. I thought people were supposed to follow the rules of the area they were in. You know, "when in Rome do as the Romans do." Nope. My co-workers are late to everything. Meetings, work, lunch, and even dinner reservations. I have plans to go get a beer with one to discuss something tonight at 7. I'll post up here to let you know when he gets here.

I also found tihs article where they're trying to say that being late is genetic. BULL s**t!

http://newsthatmattersnot.com/2012/09/i ... veals.html

I agree with the fact that being late is genetic with people is false. It's more of a cultural thing rather than anything else really, but the people that you work with probably identify themselves more as Indians than anything else. Which is why they often appear late for things, and personally I find it bizarre but the reverse could be said about me. " there is a term for it, but it escapes me right now "

I agree they Identify themselves as Indian. Most of them are from India and have only been in the country for a year or so. My point was as soon as they stepped off the plane and were working in America the expectation is that they will be on time. They're late to work. They're late to meetings. They've actually told me to slow down on my work because if I do it too fast then the expectation will be that we're fast workers and they will give us more to do. My boss told me that.

People who make a habit of being late are late because they want to make a statement or because they have other priorities rather than being late because of genetics or culture. That group is late because they don't care about having a good work ethic & think the fact that their foreigners gives them an excuse I had a principle who was Indian & she did not like anyone being late.

Hmmm, OK, we're talking about a Billion people here so perhaps that's a bit of a generalization.

However, you have two ways of dealing with this, the carrot or the stick.

Option one is to give out treats at the start of meetings, even if it's a box of donuts or some candies. When your Indian colleges arrive to see an empty box you can just tell them "shame you're late, you missed the donuts". After the first couple of times they'll get the message.

Option two is to get HR involved. Employees who are consistently late to meetings get a note on their permanent record and a lower salary increase the next time there's a review

wow, passive aggressive much?




one major thing I hate about capitalism and western culture is how it is so certain it is superior and therefore shames and destroys anyone that refuses to fit into it. gee sound like a problem the rest of us have with anything else?

I think you do not understand, that the problem might be, that according to them, they might be on time, so they simply dont get your problem at all.

I live in Austria, which is neighbor to Germany, both countries speak german languages, and there is lots of trade contact. The thing is: In Germany doing a meeting at 15:00 means that you actually start working on the meeting. While in Austria doing a meeting at 15:00 means that around that time people are gathering, and even therefore is an open time area of +/-5 minutes for gathering. So if you come to a german meeting at 15:10 you are shitty late and arrive in the middle of the discussion. If you come about 15:10 to an Austrian meeting, you will be one of the latest to arrive, and might be forced to skip coffee/toilette..., but will actually not be too late for the discussion. Due to that cultural differency, we even have a special shortcut for meetings/gathering, that is used to describe, if a meeting time goes according to typical german standard.

Simply try to explain explicitly, what you expect when giving a certain time. To say it in MMORPG terms: Raidstart 18:00 means that at 17:55 everyone is already at the actual boss place in the instance, so that buffing can be done and 18:00 the Boss can be pulled. Who is not there around 17:55 will be replaced on that evening. Nothing bad about that, even when it is according to german standard. I simply need to know or else 18:00 means for me "gathering about 18:00 +/- 10 minutes".

this is perfect, as I communicate with the people I know, I am early to exactly on time for everything, you tell me 12:00 I will be there before then and ready to go because that is when we SAID it is the arrangement.

if you wish a soft schedule tell me.

in my crowd there is even a saying "lesbian standard time" (basically give or take thirty minutes)

Me? Aggressive? Not a bit.

The original poster was prepared to tar a race of a Billion people with the same brush and I proposed solving the problem with a couple of boxes of donuts. Yep, it's a culture thing, and I know that if I'm in Germany and someone schedules a meeting for 15:00 I will be there and ready at 14:59, it's just good manners.

Anyway, I'm one of those people who is always there on time, perhaps it's the aspie in me.

I think it's the aspie in me that likes to be on time, too. I'm a clock watcher and I guess that's ingrained in my system.

I've witnessed this when I was working at the factory in the 1990s. They were always late and they also talked during working hours and took their own sweet time. There was one time that my finished work was building up on the long push trollies and there was one on each side of my table piled up with trimmed garments. The Indian woman who was filling in for a fast sewer was also taking her own sweet time. I couldn't wait until Sheila, the woman who usually sewed on the finishing stripping to come back from England. I also had boxes of taped zippers and flaps piling up on my other table with pieces of paper taped on them with the word, FINISHED written on them.

Since I'm Swiss, that automatically means that I'm on time for everything.

Why is considered racist to say African American culture is lazy but not racist to say people from India are late because of their culture

My sister is working in the suiss in an hospital. She got pretty early explained, that unlike Austria working begin, does not mean to enter the company at that time, but to be actually on your working place and ready to start. ^^ But they did it very friendly and with a joke, so I think they already knew from other austrian coworkers, about that rather typical misunderstanding. XD

@nick007 Because lazy involves negatives aspect. Being late simply involves, that just like Austria/Germany/Switzerland, there are misunderstandings and differencies, about what "being on time means". My sister was late according to Switzer standard, but on time according to Austrian standard. She did it not out of an bad purpose, but out of an misunderstanding. Once she got informed about the different meanings, it was absolutely no prob for her. Just as it was no prob for me to be "on time" for our german raid leaders raids. But being on time means different stuff in different cultures, so you simply need to communicate each other, about what standard you want to refer. In my MMORPG guild, this was done with a post in the forum, explaining on detail, what was meant with an given time.

I've worked with Indians who have been in this country for decades and some who have only been here a few months or years. The ones who had been here for decades were on time just like everybody else, and worked at the pace of everybody else. The ones who had been here only a short while were late a lot and worked much slower. This makes me believe it's cultural. Things may move slower over there and it's a lot looser, so they probably don't get that over here we expect folks to tighten up. When somebody moves to a country thats very different from theirs, they have to adjust to a lot of things at once. Maybe if you were to talk to them and explain that over here we have a different work environment and different expectations and suggest that for their own good they get on the ball, that might help.

This makes me think of one of my daughter's teachers who is late to class sometimes and jokes and says that she's on CPT, which is "Colored People's Time". It's a cultural joke but the teacher is black and she explains that in her culture, 10am usually means "somewhere between 930 and 1030" because anything can happen right when you are trying to leave to get there, and in her culture some things take precedence over others.

So, I wouldn't say Indian people are always late, I would say that recent Indian immigrants are late quite often. It's just something that needs to be pointed out to them, but not in a mean way.