Critical Incident - WAIT, WHAT TIME IS IT?

By Unknown -
Wait, what time is it?

During the time I was in Italy I noticed that punctuality there was perceived differently than in Spain. It took me a few days to realize that so the first day we had to meet someone at a certain time I was pretty surprised. What happened was that we had to meet some of my classmates and their Italian partners; by the time we were supposed to set off from my partner’s house I was ready to leave but she wasn’t. I was starting to get worried that we were going to be too late so I asked if they had changed the meeting time or something. The answer was no, the meeting time was still the same, I decided to wait and hope we weren’t too late but when we got to the restaurant we were almost the first people to be there. As the situation got repeated more than once I started thinking this could be because:
  1. It was mere coincidence that during the week we were there people were unusually late.
  2. The concept of punctuality changes depending on the country you are at.
  3. The only difference on the concept of punctuality was between me and my partner.
Answer:
As I thought depending on the country you are in you are expected to arrive at a certain time to meetings. This scheduling scale has been different depending on the countries because of historical events which have also shaped the way people think, live or work. For instance, being late in most northern countries it is highly impolite. This was proved when we were about to leave for a trip, two of the people who had to come were really late because they woke up late, the Italian teachers weren’t too angry but the rest were much more upset. However, in other countries like Italy you can be up to about 15 minutes late without many consequences. In Spain you can also be late but the most usual thing to happen is to get to the place on time or even early and expect the rest of the people to be late. This makes me think that the answer is:
  1. It could have been a coincidence if it had just happened a certain day but the fact that the meetings took place later than expected almost every time makes me think that this isn’t the only cause.
  2. As research has shown this is the most likely cause.
  3. Although punctuality is a social construct it is also a personal thing too, this means that although punctuality depends on the country maybe I’m personally very punctual.


In order to get to this conclusion I did some research. Here I leave some links to the most useful websites I found:


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Critical Incident - IS ITALY A GREEN COUNTRY?

By Unknown -
Is Italy a green country? in November I travelled to Italy and one of the things I noticed is that they do not recycle at all. They only have one bin in the whole house –my travel companions noticed that too- and the streets were really dirty. I tried to come to some hypothesis of what could be the reason this was so shocking even though we are such similar countries in other aspects. My first thought is that they did not recycle but when I asked my partner she answered that they indeed have been recycling since 2014. Actually, I did some research and in a Swedish guy blog I found out that they even get a tax relief calculated by the quality of their recycling for the ones that do recycle, which is an amazing way to get people to start doing it. So maybe it was me that only saw one bin and they did have several for different products. In my country for example the average Spanish  home has at least four different bins: the organic one for food and kitchen paper, the trash, the
Read more

Opinon about the crirtical incidents

By Unknown -
Image
I have read all the critical incidents and I have to tell that they're perfect! Well, not that perfect because they are critical incidents. But now is the time where i realize that they're so important to learn new things that are such a little things for ones and such a big ones for others. It teaches us a lot of things I thing we could use in our entire life. Like, if I ever go to Italy, I already know that if I met some italians there and they arrive late I'm not going to get that angry with them. And I already have experienced the swedish life for a week, and I feel like I know them very well. So, in my opinion, now is the moment when I see how useful critical incident are for everyone, and how funny too!   Angie
Read more

April 1st -Saturday

By Unknown -
Image
      We knew that the returning day would be tiring because we would have to get up very early; but surprisingly, getting up before 5am was not as difficult as we thought, maybe because of the nerves of travelling by plane or seeing our family. During the night and Saturday’s morning I was a bit worried because on Friday’s afternoon my body hurt and all the teachers and I were paying attention if this pain would get better or worse. But I could sleep well, so it was not a difficulty at all.   I woke up at 4:20am and then I took a shower that made me feel relaxed. After that, I had breakfast and so, the last meal I would enjoy in Sweden. As I did during the whole week, I ate milk with cereal. Then I put some more things into the luggage and Povel gave me some presents. It was such a beautiful moment!  At a quarter past five I had to say goodbye to Povel and his mother. I told them I had been very grateful during the stay. Povel’s mother, Ingela, was also happy about my
Read more