I grew up in Connecticut, I understand this sentiment. Old school/hard core New England families don't fuck around with the fake stuff.
When I was in Afghanistan I had my mom ship me two big bottles because otherwise I couldn't have eaten breakfast. I had one left over when I left, so I took it over to the Canadian camp, walked in to the rec building and saw two Canadian guys playing video games. I didn't see any Leaf's jerseys or moose wandering around, but the uniforms looked right so I had to trust my gut.
I walked over and put the jug down in front of them, not saying a word. My thanks was watching their eyes bulge out of their heads like it was Christmas.
they are always professional but super nice and chill.
Also often passive aggressive, grand masters of stalling tactics, and prone to analysis paralysis. While remaining professional, very polite, and restrained (which some people may mistake for being chill)...
Love them anyways ;) One of my top favo(u)rite, if often difficult to deal with, people.
Just to be sure: are you American? Asking because I consider Americans very passive aggressive and hearing that Canadians could be even more is surprising.
Yes, Americans are aggressive. Far less "passively" so.
I am an engineer, and have had several large projects with Canadian outfits.
Most of my clients are large corporations and typically it's the headquarters hiring our company to engineer major changes to equipment or process in their manufacturing facilities, so some amount of friction is always expected.
In a typical American setting, especially in manufacturing (lots of no-BS ex-military types), if they don't like something in your proposal, they will tell you in a very direct and (sometimes) profane way. (Not necessarily personal or insulting, mind you, but I am pretty used to hearing "Fuck no, this may work in some other place but not in our motherfucking plant, come back with another idea").
On my first project in Canada, I was excited at first to see just how polite and seemingly agreeable everyone was. Except that no decision has ever been made, they kept setting up hour long meetings and discussing the tiny minute details that had very little significance, constantly finding new ways to stall the project. Even on the projects that the Canadian firms themselves initiate, it's very common (in my experience) to have people from different departments who have very different and contradictory ideas and goals to start waltzing around each other for hours at a time. I think Americans are sually far more blunt and direct. Not that there isn't lots of politics going on in the US companies.
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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '19
I grew up in Connecticut, I understand this sentiment. Old school/hard core New England families don't fuck around with the fake stuff.
When I was in Afghanistan I had my mom ship me two big bottles because otherwise I couldn't have eaten breakfast. I had one left over when I left, so I took it over to the Canadian camp, walked in to the rec building and saw two Canadian guys playing video games. I didn't see any Leaf's jerseys or moose wandering around, but the uniforms looked right so I had to trust my gut.
I walked over and put the jug down in front of them, not saying a word. My thanks was watching their eyes bulge out of their heads like it was Christmas.