The Israelis who run my company do not tend to thank people. It’s a cultural thing, just the way they all operate, but none of us Americans can get used to it and it really hurts people’s feelings sometimes. Well, we’ve been encouraging Israelis bosses to thank their American reports, and today I got copied on a glowing email from an Israeli Sales Manager who thanked our Customer Support department. As they say, you get more of what you praise, and so I wrote the Israeli back and thanked HIM for taking the time to thank them. He thought I was making fun of him, took offense, and set off a flurry of emails back and forth between all sorts of people, as I tried to explain and things continued to be misconstrued and I began to regret ever attempting this lark of forced gratitude.
Sigh. Seriously, though. Come on.