Cultural Miscommunication essays

Cultural Miscommunication essays America is a country that was founded on diversity. People from all over come to America and become part of the melting pot we call home. Unfortunately, with this blending there are often misunderstandings between cultures. One area that is often misunderstood between different cultures is humor. I have lived in Orange County for five years and over that entire span I have worked in restaurants. In every restaurant I have worked in or been a patron of there have been Mexican men working as the cooks. When I first started working in restaurants I found that the front of house staff (servers, managers) tended to keep to themselves and the back of the house staff (cooks, dishwashers) did as well. Well after awhile at the last place I worked, I began to try to start bridging the gap between the two cultures. I started trying to talk to the cooks at the restaurant because I knew that most of them knew a good deal of English. After a couple of weeks I started expressing my s! ense of humor by teasing them and others that we worked with. Im not sure if making fun of people you are fond of is an American trait or a universal one but we all laughed most of the time so I stuck with what worked. My friends and I would tease each other as one of our ways of entertaining ourselves. Humor in general, certainly is a universal connection-maker. Making those connections isnt always as easy as it seems. In trying to befriend the head cook Juan at my work one night I found out that what is socially acceptable for one to joke about is strongly defined by your culture. One night about three hours into my shift on a slow night myself and another Caucasian male server were in the kitchen at my work. We had been talking to some of the cooks all night and joking around with them. We tossed minor insults back and fourth trying to make each other laugh. Later into the night the cooks started to make jokes that were homosexual in...