TODAY'S CULTURE QUIZ: BRAZIL!
Today is Carnival in Brazil! Plan to samba the night away in Rio at Carnival tonight? Or do some business over your Caipirinha? Don’t until you can answer the following five Culture Quiz questions!
Today is probably not a good time to do business in Brazil. Save that meeting until next week. But when your Brazilian colleagues are ready to do business, will you be? See if you can correctly answer the five Brazilian Culture Quiz questions below…(you can find the correct answers right at the end of the Culture Quiz!, where you can also subscribe - if you haven’t yet - and get access to all the right cultural questions all the time no matter where in the world you work!) Good luck!
You are pleased to be in Rio, on your first business trip there. Just to show your enthusiasm, you wear a special tie that you bought for the occasion, that is green and yellow, the national colors. However, when you greet your colleagues, they seem less enthusiastic, and actually chuckle at your new tie. How could your intent be so misunderstood?
2. You run into an old friend in Rio, having been there several times, and he is very pleased to see you. He runs up to you, gives you a grand “abraco”, laughs heartily at seeing you, and pinches your tummy. “My, you’ve gained a little weight, my friend”, he comments, as he embraces you again. You are not exactly pleased to be greeted this way in public, and you are certainly not sure that his remarks about your weight were really meant as the compliment he seems to want you to believe it was meant to be.
3. You are disappointed that you won’t be able to celebrate the December holidays in Sao Paolo as you had planned, being kept at home in the States on business. So instead of being able to see your friends in Brazil, you send them a beautiful holiday card. Several days into January, after not hearing back from them, you give them a call, and are surprised to learn on the phone that they were disappointed with the card you sent,and thought that perhaps you were not happy with them. How did such a misunderstanding develop over a simple holiday card?
4. You are attempting to reach the decision-maker in your client’s office in Sao Paolo, but despite all your efforts and research, they simply won’t return your call, and now you aren’t even sure if you are reaching the right person. Is there anything you can do to move things along to get to the right decision-maker there?
5. You are parking your car at a tough-to-find parking spot on a street in Rio just a few blocks from the beach, and are relieved to have finally found a free parking spot. “What a night! How do the Cariocas do it, driving in the dark without their headlights on?”, you wonder to yourself, as a young man steps up to you and asks for some money to watch your car for you. You are sure you do not want to pay anyone for a free parking spot and you leave, only to return later that night to four flat tires. What should you have done?
CultureQuiz ANSWERS:
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