“I made a huge mistake”

20 July 2010 - Dieuwke van Turenhout (32) lives in Delhi, India, where she works as HR Consultant Marketing and Sales. “The first day at work, I made a HUGE mistake”, Dieuwke confesses. Her error: taking lunch before her superiors had had any.

“I took some food from the buffet shortly after it arrived at 12.30. It only occurred to me later, that more senior people eat first”, explains Dieuwke. “Then the rest of the workforce follows, in a very subtle order. Drivers and cleaners are last – they’re lucky if there’s anything left at all.”

The unwritten lunchtime rules were the first of many cultural differences Dieuwke has since encountered as part of the Indian workforce. She’s also been baffled by the need to endlessly elaborate when making a point.

Dieuwke: “I had to convince people of a certain, rather obvious point of view. So, I had prepared a power point slide with a concise, precise explanation. Just a few words, no straying from the core-issue. To my great surprise, the HR manager told me to ‘flesh it out’. He explained that I needed to elaborate, simply because no Indian would ever accept such a short message. I had to tell them the same in different words at least three times in order for people to agree with me…”