Contents

Copyright

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without written permission from the author, except by a…

Preface

I am an Arab immigrant, who lives in Canada. I came here, with the same tools that millions of immigrants come with: A language, a system of values, a manner of dealing with…

The Guest Is on Our Head

A customer came into the coffee shop with his children and ordered a single main course for himself. The children asked for something extra, a child’s meal, and he refused,…

Fourteen People

Fourteen Arab migrants came from eight different Arab countries. Their ages ranged from 22 to 50. Demographics were not the only factor in selecting participants. The study…

Why I Was Both Inside and Outside the Story

I am a first-generation Egyptian Arab immigrant to Canada. I am fluent in Arabic, in several dialects, and in English. I have lived inside both the Arab and the Canadian…

When a Customer Becomes a Guest

“I think hospitality is extremely important. It comes from my Arab culture, where if someone is in your home, you make them feel like the most important person, you offer them…

Respect Has a Different Language

Elias took a request from his manager before a request from his coworker, and his coworker was furious.

When Nobody Tells You the Rules

“The training program had a very technical content. Like, this is how you do a latte, this is how you clean the steam wand. They didn’t teach me how to talk to the customer,…

Saying Goodbye to Inshallah

“Yes, I needed to be more direct with customers. I needed to tell customers the exact wait time before they could receive their chicken instead of vague expressions. In my…

What We Keep and What We Change

Rachid was asked what separated him from his Canadian colleagues. His answer was one item long.

Culture Is Not a Country

Everything in this book so far has leaned on a set of numbers. It is time to look at them properly, and then to be honest about what they cannot do.

What Managers Need to See

Bassam’s manager had a choice to make, and probably never knew it was a choice.

Teach the Unwritten Rules

Elias asked a fair question of his employee handbook: There’s a policy about providing excellent customer service — but just what does that mean?

The First Six Months

Haider gave a number: five or six months before everything stopped feeling strange. So did most of the others, in their own words.

Adapt Without Disappearing

This chapter is addressed to the workers themselves, because they are the ones doing the hardest part of the work described in this book, usually without help.

Now We Can See the Whole System

Each preceding chapter has isolated one dimension: warmth, hierarchy, structure, adaptation. That is a useful way to explain a phenomenon and a false way to describe a shift.…

The Machine Learned Someone Else's Manners

Everything in this book so far describes a human problem: a manager reads a gesture wrong, a coworker takes offence at a delay, a customer hears evasion in a word that meant…

Teaching Machines to Recognize Difference

Reducing cultural bias in AI-driven recruitment and performance evaluation has to happen across the whole machine-learning process. Research on algorithmic fairness is clear…

Why Culture Still Wins

There is a serious argument that all of this is dissolving anyway.

Notes

Full publication details for every source appear in Sources and Further Reading.

Sources and Further Reading

Works consulted in the research behind this book, listed alphabetically. Ailon, G. (2008). Mirror, mirror on the wall: Culture’s consequences in a value test of its own design.…

A Note on the Research

This book is drawn from a doctoral study of how the cultural values of first-generation Arab immigrants shape service delivery in Canada. What follows is the technical account…

The Interview Questions

Each interview opened with the same introduction: an explanation that the conversation formed part of an academic research project in business, concerned with how Arab…