Things that would get you fired in the US

Since both the companies I've been working with for this past year in India are MNCs based out of Houston, I don't get the full feel of working in India. There's always the awareness of US time zones, the constant communication with the US offices and dependence on them for progress in the work here. What I'm also aware of is the behavior of the people in the company. It's one thing for the Indians here to behave "foolishly", to say un-PC things and act in an unprofessional manner. I'm quite amazed when the foreigners (not just the Americans, but some Europeans and Australians as well) do and say things that I'm sure are contrary to the work environment in those countries.

The head of one of the divisions here is a Scottish man, about 50 years old. The office here is in the process of hiring a new HR manager and the current HR was chatting with me about the process. She gave a half-smile while remarking that we'd have more female blood in the office so all the males should feel happy (it was as if millions of feminist voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced!) While her remark itself would have gotten her into trouble in the US, the following was even more disturbing. I asked her why she was so sure that the next HR manager would be female, what if a male ended up getting the job. She said that the Scottish head doesn't like males to do HR work, so they're only hiring females! Wow!!! If that happened in the US he'd be fired so fast his head would spin! As if that wasn't enough, today we had a presentation for all the new employees. At the end of the presentation, the Scottish guy was bidding us all goodbye and then turned to the new HR (a lady obviously!) and asked, "What about lunch?" She said, "OK, let's ask everyone for suggestions." The Scottish guy responded, "Oh, I was just talking about you and me, and a couple of the other girls who just joined." Geez! Just the girls? The icing on this particular cake of course was my wise (not!) manager telling us, "Did you guys know that the new HR is single? Well, I'm just saying. I find it odd that she's single. I think HR managers should be married. See our current HR, she's married, that's why she does a good job."

And all of those were incidents just related to the new HR manager. We have tons of incidents like that every day. It's a fun game I play on certain days with myself  - if this scene happened in the US, how many harassment lawsuits would be filed just for this conversation and how many would be fired.