<story><title>Get Your Fucking Feet Off The Table</title><url>http://oppugn.us/posts/1270132724.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blizkreeg</author><text>I&apos;m Indian and I know this about many other cultures too - pointing your feet at someone is really an incredibly offensive gesture. And given how the workplace here in tech is a myriad mix of cultures, I&apos;d avoid it. While it clearly isn&apos;t considered offensive in the US, it&apos;s still a pretty rude gesture. You may think you&apos;re just being chill and laid back but the other person is thinking (unless you both have feet pointed at each other lol) you&apos;re a moron.&lt;p&gt;My first week in grad school I went to meet a professor and the fucker puts his feet up on his desk pointing them right at my face. Since I was a fob at the time, I wasn&apos;t quite sure how to take this. I lost respect for him that day. Unsurprisingly, he turned out to be an asshole of a professor too.&lt;p&gt;In a professional setting, most people wouldn&apos;t tell you to put them down, but it reflects badly on you. Do it in India and your boss would fire you, instantly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>steamboiler</author><text>&quot;While it clearly isn&apos;t considered offensive in the US, it&apos;s still a pretty rude gesture&quot;&lt;p&gt;There are a bunch of other gestures that meet the same criterion. I am Indian, so I&apos;ll list some I&apos;m familiar with:&lt;p&gt;1. Not addressing your teacher/professor as &quot;Sir/Madam&quot;. Addressing a teacher as Mr. X/Professor Y is verboten.&lt;p&gt;2. Displaying photos of your family at work (mild, but yes)&lt;p&gt;3. &quot;Disrespecting&quot; your elders/teachers/bosses with counterarguments.  
...&lt;p&gt;On the social front, you&apos;d be expected to&lt;p&gt;1. Not address your elders solely by their first name.&lt;p&gt;2. Not cohabit with the opposite sex before marriage.&lt;p&gt;3. Not smoke/drink.&lt;p&gt;4. Not eat pork/beef.&lt;p&gt;5. Not change your gender.&lt;p&gt;Which of these did you object to/are you going to object to? Will you refuse to work with someone trans-gendered, as would happen &quot;instantly&quot; in India?&lt;p&gt;The fact is, you were in the US &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; India. I would argue that the onus is on you to adjust yourself to the customs of your hosts rather than the other way around. Just as an Indian would expect any US (or otherwise foreign) visitors to keep in mind the Indian customs.&lt;p&gt;PS: you used two epithets to describe your teacher in the same paragraph. I find it amusing that your &quot;Indian&quot; sensibility (Guru! Respect!) is not offended by it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Get Your Fucking Feet Off The Table</title><url>http://oppugn.us/posts/1270132724.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blizkreeg</author><text>I&apos;m Indian and I know this about many other cultures too - pointing your feet at someone is really an incredibly offensive gesture. And given how the workplace here in tech is a myriad mix of cultures, I&apos;d avoid it. While it clearly isn&apos;t considered offensive in the US, it&apos;s still a pretty rude gesture. You may think you&apos;re just being chill and laid back but the other person is thinking (unless you both have feet pointed at each other lol) you&apos;re a moron.&lt;p&gt;My first week in grad school I went to meet a professor and the fucker puts his feet up on his desk pointing them right at my face. Since I was a fob at the time, I wasn&apos;t quite sure how to take this. I lost respect for him that day. Unsurprisingly, he turned out to be an asshole of a professor too.&lt;p&gt;In a professional setting, most people wouldn&apos;t tell you to put them down, but it reflects badly on you. Do it in India and your boss would fire you, instantly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>plinkplonk</author><text>&quot;Do it in India and your boss would fire you, instantly.&quot;&lt;p&gt;You must have worked for some really sick companies in India to be &quot;instantly fired&quot; for putting your legs up on the desk. That kind of behaviour is appropriate(maybe) for some medieval feudal environment (lese majeste) but hardly in the 21st century. In any Indian company I worked for (and I&apos;ve worked for a few), if a boss attempted to fire his subordinate just for putting his feet on the desk, the &lt;i&gt;boss&lt;/i&gt; would be out of a job in record time.&lt;p&gt;Now if you went to America and expected an American to act by Indian norms and did something (by your admission  &lt;i&gt;not
 offensive&lt;/i&gt; by &lt;i&gt;American&lt;/i&gt; norms)  and you felt all offended and huffy and &quot;lost respect&quot; for him on that basis, you are the idiot, not him. When you are in grad school, working etc in another country &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; should follow &lt;i&gt;their&lt;/i&gt; norms as much as possible, not they yours.&lt;p&gt;Why don&apos;t you come back to India (I am an Indian and live in India these days and so &quot;come&quot; instead of &quot;go&quot;) where you can be surrounded by people who follow your norms to the letter.&lt;p&gt;But then, norms vary widely across India as well (though obviously not as much as between India and America) so you might want to go back to the exact village or city you came from and never step out of it. That way you won&apos;t have to meet &quot;fuckers&quot; you &quot;instantly lose respect for&quot;.&lt;p&gt;You must be a pleasure to work with and just the type of person who&apos;d be comfortable in an informal startup atmosphere or on a college project team ;-). With your hyper sensitivity to &quot;insult&quot;, I assume you constantly researched all things potentially offensive to all nationalities you encountered (and in an American University you must have encountered a few dozen) and kept this data up to date on a continuous basis.</text></comment>