The German believes in a simple truth - scientific truth. There is a reason for the Spaniard’s lax adherence to punctuality. Germans and Swiss cannot swallow this, as it offends their sense of order, of tidiness, of planning.Ī Spaniard would take the side of the Italian. The business we have to do and our close relations are so important that it is irrelevant at what time we meet. “Then why don’t you write 9:30 and then we’ll both be happy?” is a logical Italian response.
“Because it says 9:00 in my diary,” says the German. “Why are you so angry because I came at 9:30?” he asks his German colleague. For an Italian, time considerations will usually be subjected to human feelings. For them, completing a human transaction is the best way they can invest their time. Spaniards, Italians and Arabs will ignore the passing of time if it means that conversations will be left unfinished. In their ordering of things, priority is given to the relative thrill or significance of each meeting. They pretend to observe them, especially if a linear-active partner or colleague insists on it, but they consider the present reality to be more important than appointments. Multi-active peoples are not very interested in schedules or punctuality. They organize their time (and lives) in an entirely different way from Americans, Germans and the Swiss. The more things they can do at the same time, the happier and the more fulfilled they feel. Southern Europeans are multi-active, rather than linear-active. In a society such as existed in the Soviet Union, one could postulate that those who achieved substantial remuneration by working little (or not at all) were the most successful of all.
This idea makes perfect sense to American ears, would carry less weight in class-conscious Britain, and would be viewed as entirely unrealistic in Southern European countries, where authority, privilege and birthright negate the theory at every turn. Furthermore, being imbued with the Protestant work ethic, they equate working time with success: the harder you work - the more hours, that is - the more successful you will be and the more money you will make. They think that in this way they get more things done - and more efficiently. These groups are also monochronic that is, they prefer to do only one thing at a time, to concentrate on it and do it within a fixed schedule. They suspect, like the Americans, that time is passing (being wasted) without decisions being made or actions being performed. These countries, along with Britain, the Anglo-Saxon world in general, the Netherlands, Austria and Scandinavia, have a linear vision of time and action. The Americans are not the only ones who sanctify timekeeping, for it is practically a religion in Switzerland and Germany, too. Has the Portuguese fisherman, who failed to hook a fish in two hours, wasted his time? Has the Sicilian priest, failing to make a convert on Thursday, lost ground? Have the German composer, the French poet, the Spanish painter, devoid of ideas last week, missed opportunities that can be qualified in monetary terms? This seems logical enough, until one begins to apply the idea to other cultures. Americans also talk about wasting, spending, budgeting and saving time. With this orientation Americans can say that their time costs $50 an hour. If you can achieve this in 250 working days, that comes to $400 a day or $50 an hour. If you have 40 years of earning capacity and you want to make $4 million, that means $100,000 per annum. you have to make money, otherwise you are nobody. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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