Different backgrounds can produce friction

Eastern Europeans may be put off by "Employee of the Month" programs because they are reminded of propaganda techniques employed by Communist regimes.

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- Sometimes deep animosities prove too deep for some workers to overcome. At a Marriott hotel in Atlanta, for example, a Vietnamese-speaking Cambodian supervisor appeared to be capably managing a staff composed mainly of Vietnamese immigrants -- until another Cambodian on the staff told top managers about problems in the department. "We found out the supervisor was purposefully misinterpreting personnel policies" to a Vietnamese employee to force her out of her job, said Donna Klein, Marriott's vice president of work force effectiveness. "We learned this supervisor had no forgiveness in her heart for Vietnamese based on her history. Vietnamese had killed her entire family." Klein said Marriott transferred the Cambodian supervisor to another department where she would have no control over Vietnamese employees. Cultural differences even force managers to find different ways to thank workers for a job well done, said Brendan M. Keegan, executive vice president of human resources for Marriott International Inc. Eastern Europeans, they've found, are sometimes put off by plaques and photographs billing people as "Employee of the Month," because they say it reminds them of the meaningless propaganda techniques employed by Communist regimes in the past. And Marriott has found that some workers from Asian and Latin American countries don't like to be singled out for praise or acknowledgment in front of an assembled group because they come from a cultural tradition where standing out is seen as boastful. Some of the immigrant workers need to be given specific instruction about things that seem ordinary or self-explanatory to native-born Americans, managers say. For example, at a Washington restaurant, a waiter from Ghana, unfamiliar with American condiments, was asked to bring mayonnaise for a customer's sandwich -- so he brought out a gallon tub and placed it on the table in front of her. These are among the challenges resulting from a surge in immigration over the last decades. A recent study of 1998 census data found that the number of immigrants living in the United States had almost tripled since 1970 to 26.3 million -- accounting for nearly one in 10 residents, the highest proportion in seven decades. And for all the potential pitfalls, several managers and workers interviewed said they learn to get along because they have to. Or as Francisco Peralta, 56, a banquet waiter from Nicaragua who works at the Hilton, explained, "It's like my wife and me," he said. "We're fighting every day, and then at night we sleep in the same bed."

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