Do you know that people’s ideas of time varies from culture to culture? Do you know that misunderstandings may arise between people who treat time differently? Read the following passage and you will learn much about people’s different points of view on time in different cultures and about the American idea of time in particular.

    Time talks. It speaks more plainly than words. Time communicates in many ways. Consider the different parts of the day, for example. The time of the day when something is done can give a special meaning to the event. Factory managers in the United States fully realize the importance of an announcement made during the middle of the morning or afternoon that takes everyone away from his work.¹ Whenever they want to make an important announcement, they ask: “When shall we let them know?”
     In the United States, it is not customary to telephone someone very early in the morning. If you telephone him early in the day, while he is shaving or having breakfast, the time of the call shows that the matter is very important and requires immediate attention. The same meaning is attached to telephone calls made after 10:00 or 11:00 P.M. If someone receives a call during sleeping hours, he assumes it is a matter of life or death. The time chosen for the call communicates its importance.
     If a late telephone call is regarded in the United States as a cause for concern, imagine the excitement and fear caused by a crowd of people arriving at the door at 2:00 A.M. On an island in the South Pacific, a plant manager from the United States had just such an experience. The natives of the island met one night to discuss a problem. When they arrived at a solution, they went to see the plant manager and woke him up to tell him what had been decided. Unfortunately, it was after two o’clock in the morning. They did not know that it is a very serious matter to wake up Americans at this hour. The plant manager, who did not understand the local culture, thought there was a fight and called out the military.² It never occurred to him (or to the natives) that parts of the day have different meanings in different cultures.³
     In social life, time plays a very important part. In the United States, guests tend to feel they are not highly regarded if the invitation to a dinner party is extended only three or four days before the party date. But this is not true in all countries. In other areas of the world, it may be considered foolish to make an appointment too far in advance because plans which are made for a date more than a week away tend to be forgotten or changed.⁴
      The meanings of time differ in different parts of the world. Thus, misunderstandings arise between people from cultures that treat time differently. Promptness is valued highly in American life, for example. If people are not prompt, they may be regarded as impolite or not fully responsible. In the U.S., no one would think of keeping a business associate waiting for an hour; it would be too impolite. When equals meet, a person who is five minutes late is expected to make a short apology. If he is less than five minutes late, he will say a few words of explanation, though perhaps he will not complete the sentence.⁵
     This way of treating time is quite different from that of several other cultures. This helps to explain the unfortunate experience of a certain agriculturist from the United States, assigned to duty in another country. After what seemed to him a suitable waiting period, he announced that he would like to call on the minister of agriculture. For various reasons the suggested time did not suit the minister; there were indirect indications that the time was not yet suitable. The American, however, pressed for an appointment, which was finally granted.⁶
     Arriving a little before the appointed hour (according to the American way of showing respect), the agriculturist waited. The hour came and passed: five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. At this point he suggested to the secretary that perhaps the minister did not know he was waiting in the outer office. This gave him the feeling of having done something to solve the problem, but he had not. Twenty minutes passed, then thirty, then forty-five. To an American, that is the beginning of the “insult period.”⁷ No matter what is said in apology, there is little that can remove the damage done by an hour’s wait in an outer office. Yet in the country where this story took place, a forty-five-minute waiting period was not unusual. Instead of being the very end of the allowable waiting scale, it was just the beginning.⁸ Thus, when the American agriculturist left the office (after giving the secretary an angry message for the minister), his action seemed as unreasonable as it was impolite.
     In the Western world, particularly in the United States, people tend to think of time as something fixed in nature, something from which one cannot escape. As a rule, Americans think of time as a road or a ribbon stretching into the future, along which one progresses. The road has many sections, which are to be kept separate — “one thing at a time.”⁹ People who cannot plan events are not highly regarded. Thus, an American may feel angry when he has made an appointment with someone and then finds a lot of other things happening at the same time.
     Americans look ahead and are highly concerned with the future. ¹⁰ The American idea of the future is limited, however. It is the foreseeable future and not the future of the South Asian, which may involve centuries. Someone has said of the South Asian idea of time: “Time is like a museum with endless halls and rooms. You, the viewer, are walking through the museum in the dark, holding a light to each scene as you pass it. God is in charge of the museum, and only He knows all that is in it. One lifetime represents one room.”
     Since time has such different meanings in different cultures, communication is often difficult. We will understand each other a little better if we can keep this fact in mind.

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