NORMAL LIFE: American Frustrations

I'm not having a good week as far as Americans are concerned. It all started with the refusal to honour some training in my Training Plan, which was signed earlier this year by my boss. I wanted to attend a Product Management training course in London, since getting English training in Helsinki is a bit problematic. In response to my request, my American boss (her Finnish subordinate - my line manager - left a couple of weeks ago) responded: this isn't a good use of resources at this moment in time! Truth be told, it never is!

In the meantime, in fact yesterday, I attended an in-house training session which, to my initial delight was being hosted by native English speakers. They may have been American and their drawls may have irritated the hell out of me, but it was nice to learn something for a change. Listening to the woman talk about bro-sures ('brochures' to those of us who can speak English properly) and the guy presenting powerpoint slides full of grammatical errors, I was left wondering how stupid are these people? To do something right, you must ensure, not insure! Americans should be given a dictionary at birth (preferably an 'Oxford' one), and it should be chained to them before they butcher the English language any further with their ignorance.

Getting back to the earlier refusal of my training, I sent an email to Human Resources asking them what I should do? I went so far as to explain that two American colleagues were flying all the way from the States to this training in the UK (isn't the US so great that, surely, they have some Product Management training on their own continent?) and that getting English professional training in Finland was quite difficult. My HR contact simply forwarded the email to the American boss which, as you can imagine, irritated her. My boss simply stated that there are better ways to handle situations like this, suggesting that 'in future, you phone your manager and have a discussion rather than reaching out to HR to find a workaround'. She, as my manager, had refused so what was left to be discussed? Or was she actually expecting me to beg?

Going back to the in-house training I had yesterday, I had lunch with the American duo; it's always nice to chat in a common language although, in all reality, I have nothing in common with them. American women smile too much and their fake politness is so see-through; American men never seem to splash out on a cotton shirt and insist on travelling across the Atlantic clad in cheap polyester that say: "Hey, look at me, I'm a pikey!"

During the lunch, I did most of the talking. Such was my joy at being able to revel in the English language. As I spoke, I watched the guy - already on the large side - tuck into three different meals (no one had told him you can only take one!), followed by a sweet bun and a bottle of diet coke. Meanwhile, the woman, petit in comparison, cut her potatoes up with her fork and licked the sauce off her knife. She had impressed me with her training skills, but her table manners left alot to be desired. How about throwing in a book about etiquette in with each newborn American?