[Mageia-discuss] Cultural difference: "Let your yes be yes" <---> "It is rude to say no"

Marja van Waes marja11 at xs4all.nl
Thu Jul 12 23:11:56 CEST 2012


On 12/07/2012 21:06, Johnny A. Solbu wrote:
> On Thursday 12 July 2012 18:20, Marja van Waes wrote:
>> Now that is hard, when you grow up in a "no is rude" area and then move
>> to "Holland". You continue to say "yes", because saying "no" feels like
>> a major sin, but now you're expected to *do* all those thing you said
>> you'd do. :-(
>
> But ofcorse you're expected to keep your promisses. If you know that you ain't goint to, or can't do it, why on earth do you promise to do it in the first place?

Excactly, that is what I thought, because I picked that up very fast. So 
what I got into, was that I said yes and did yes, even if I couldn't. So 
it could happen that I was doing the 100% tasks of 3 persons at the same 
time. No, that didn't go well.. one time I was continually answering the 
phone and the doorbell for an organisation, cooking for 35 people at the 
same time and looking after two very young children who were in a room 
that was dangerous to very young children. At one point I answered the 
phone and couldn't make words any more, what I said were senseless sounds

It took very many years before I learnt that saying "no" isn't the very 
evil thing I thought it was.

The reason I started this thread, is that I sometimes have the 
impression that we have some contributors in Mageia, who haven't really 
learnt to say "no" or "it is ready when it is ready"

Instead of telling them they are liars, I hope we'll have more 
compassion on them.
I hope we'll ask: "Hey, what happened? Were you ill? Did you have too 
much to do for your day time job? You said you'd finish this task before 
last week and it still isn't finished"



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