"Any fool can know. The point is to understand" - Albert Einstein
After the peer teaching topic on intercultural behavior I am reminded of an incident which happened last year.
This
incident happened at my workplace as I was working with two colleagues. To help
you guys visualize the situation better, one of my colleagues is Malay and the
other is Chinese. For simplicity, I will call the Malay college M and the Chinese college C.
It
was a crowded late afternoon and there was a queue waiting to see the doctor.
Not long after, an elderly woman came into the clinic wearing her tudung (
Malay scarf wrapped around her head). M immediately
went towards her, greeted and attended to her.
After
a while, M escorted her to the
chairs in an empty room and poured a cup of water for her. Initially I did not
think much of it, thinking that perhaps the patient requested it.
However,
as soon as the patient inside the doctor’s room came out, M immediately went into the room bringing a patient card. C gave me a questioning look as the
next patient’s card, following the queue order, was still on the reception
table.
M came out and proceeds to
the room where the elderly patient was and brought her into the doctor’s room.
Witnessing
all this, C turned to me and asked,”
did she just let the Malay aunty cut the queue?”
As
M came out, C immediately accused her and said that she should not have done
that because it was unfair to the rest of the patients who had been waiting for
their turn. M and C then proceeds with arguing as they
both have different viewpoints on the situation.
M’s point of view is that
she felt that the elderly woman should see the doctor first because she needed
the rest and it was natural for her to let the elderly patient go first.
C’s point of view is that no
matter what is the situation, unless the patient is on a life or death
emergency, no queue cutting should be allowed because if other patients found
out they would be furious.
In
my opinion, as I look at that situation at this current moment I would say that
it’s due to a conflicting beliefs. M
did what she did perhaps because she was raised with the belief that she is
expected to help the elder generations of her community. She respect her
elderly and thus go all out to help her.
While
for C, perhaps she was surrounded
with the emphasis on moral beliefs so she did not approve of cutting queues.
This
would be due to the difference in culture which directly affected the way both
of them react to a situation however small.
