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I've heard that before, but never experienced it

It always seems to be the Canadians and Aussies making these claims, but I certainly haven't experienced anything like that.

I used to travel to the UK frequently for work, and lived there for a summer. I heard my share of lighthearted jokes about Americans and occasionally a snide remark about our politics or foreign policy, but I was never treated poorly and nobody ever had a hostile attitude.

When I was living in Australia, we had massive difficulty with a key supplier in the UK and I used to travel there to assess and make strategy recommendations to our company execs. Before my first trip, my coworkers all said similar things as RGA: you've got the wrong accent, you'll get no respect, etc. The opposite turned out to be true.

The problems got so bad we had huge meetings with CEO and CEO after weeks of trying to grind out solutions at the technical level. Through the whole thing, I got treated better by the Brits than my Aussie colleagues did. If one of my colleagues would make a recommendation, their first inclination would be to blow it off. If I made the same recommendation, they would more often that not take it seriously. It was weird.

On the other hand, I've spent some time in France for work and as soon as you get out of central Paris you will find some people who roll their eyes or reflexively bristle as soon as they hear your accent.



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