Polish People Don’t Realize This

You have cheap alcohol, beautiful girls, more ‘urlopy’ and you don’t seem to appreciate this. Przestańcie narzekać!

Today was not such a good day. I had an argument with a subordinate at work and I was being unprofessional. Emotions kicked in at the end of the day. I finished replying to my emails and left the office. I was tired. The day before I was working for 14 hours straight.

I went to visit my friend Duncan. He’s a Taiwanese guy living in beautiful Poznan. He asked me how my day was, so I told him about the incident. After a few minutes we switched to him. He told me that his Taiwanese friend B. , who is a businessman setting up a company in Poland, is facing some issues with Polish people. Being a curious person, I’m always excited to learn about foreigners’ experiences in Poland. He’s been in Poland for over 6 years so he is very aware of cultural differences in this country.

• “B. often asks me if it is common for Polish people to act like this?”
• “Like what?”
• “Here are some of the doubts we’ve encountered”…

Emotions

White people seem more emotional compared to us. Perhaps this is because they choose not to hide how they feel. In Asia you express yourself differently: Due to the characters of people, education, culture and so on, Asian people don’t always say what they think at the first moment. In contrast, Polish people might be very straight forward, telling you directly what they feel, without considering whether or not it’s the appropriate moment to do so.

Suddenly I figured out that this must be connected to my unprofessional behavior earlier today.

Private things

People here bring private things to work. For example, something happened today and a person didn’t come to work, was late to work or just took an ‘urlop’ because it’s normal here. And what about the work? If you have private issues which would affect you at work, then that’s your own business. This should not affect the efficiency of your work. After all, work is work.

Punctuality

Polish people have different ideas of time. When you set up a meeting with someone, if it’s not “super” important, this person might just come late, and even change the time of the meeting.

Accountability

Talking about meetings, it’s very often that B. sets up a meeting and it’s cancelled very easily one day before, sometimes even a few hours before. Polish people seems to change their priorities without considering the effect on the other party.

The same day I met Nathan, a New Zealander who has been based in Poznan for about 6 months. Nathan thinks there are, of course, many positive aspects of Polish culture, particularly when compared with other broadly European cultures.

Literature

Young Polish people tend to actually take literature the arts seriously. This is something that matters here. In New Zealand, Australia and to some extent even Britain, literature is considered the realm of the old and the elite. Here it’s something that has value to everyone.

History

Of course Poland has had a tumultuous history. Perhaps because of this Polish people seem to have a real sense of their place in the world, what it means to be Polish, and understand this within the content of European and world history.

Ambition

Gone are the days when Poland was kicked around by bullying neighbors. The younger generation in this country are smart; they have ideas, and the work ethic to make these ideas into reality. In a decade or two this country will be a place to envy.

Curiosity

Wherever I end up in the world, I always meet Polish people. Poles are great travelers; curious about the world and courageous enough to step out into it.

Later that day I crafted a quick post based on the insights and published it on Facebook. This attracted the attention of my friends. Some of them shared their view on ‘the Polish mindset’ and provided additional insights in the comments.

Aga, service designer, working and living in Warsaw. Before she lived for 12 years in The Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland.

Your rant got me thinking about my Dutch experiences. As Poles we have some difficulty to at least admit that someone’s perspective made us think. Let alone say that we might see a fault in ourselves. Maybe this is an unjust opinion but I sense that we are not trained to work towards win-win situations. We tend to treat every such comment as a criticism rather that just another perspective. I wish we (including myself) had more such a perspective.

Klaudia, polish fashion management student studying in the UK (6 years). Lived previously in Germany and Spain

I have lived most of my adult life in the UK, spend some time living in Germany and Spain. And I must say, that we are very rude people, especially when it comes to our employees. We do not realise it, that we are being rude, inconsiderate and that the working environment we create is kind of sick. I spoke to my Polish friends living in Aberdeen recently, we all felt, that working conditions in Poland are ridiculous. No respect towards you and your work from employers, constant stress and apparently constant ‘underperformance’. If you make a mistake or are underperforming, your employer takes the blame and work with you to improve it. You get constant training to be a better employee.

But what Duncan is saying is also true. Polish people are very regarded in UK as hard workers. We are considered smart and wise and quite often can tackle problems British people have trouble with solving. If you are working in Poland all your life, you won’t see the difference, you might not even realise that there is something wrong, as you spend you whole life in this culture and you may consider it natural.”

Mick, 7 years working and living in Trojmiasto. Originally from Manchester, UK

I love Poland. It took time and even hard work to understand the culture. But now after 7 years I feel Poland’s benefits. Poles are patriotic not at the expense of belittling other countries. They value small and local business and community. They have an underlying sense of responsibility to one another. Qualities the UK for example I feel has lost.

Poland I feel is tied down by unwritten rules. The perception of things that no longer exist. The expectant of the worst case scenario. This is the life of the last generation of Poland, and the current are still trying to overcome this feeling.

I want poland to be more optimistic and not just planning to stay safe. Move from asking ‘why do it’, to ‘why not’. I want poles to dream more and aim higher. Failing will not hurt them as much as they think. To quote Mark Zuckerberg. ‘If you are not breaking things, you are not trying hard enough.

Two Polands?

It’s interesting how outsiders can help you realize things about your own country that perhaps you already knew. Thinking about my dispute the other day with my employee I can see in myself some of the ‘typically Polish’ traits that Duncan pointed out. But I also see in myself some of the aspects that Nathan observed, I like many of my friends am ambitious, am curious and am excited about the future of this country that we will create.

As young Polish people, we have the opportunity to craft a future that is independent of the wounds of history. The legacies of the past few centuries are deeply ingrained in all of us, but we should not use this as an excuse to shy away from ambition, to compromise on our future.

There are two Polands; the one that was handed to us by history (Duncan’s), and the one that we may choose to create (Nathan’s). In the end, Poland is what we choose to make it.

Disclaimer: Duncan loves Poland, I just ‘used’ him as a vehicle for this discussion.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/polish-people-dont-realize-bartosz-mozyrko