Do I smell?

On my first day at work I was through personal experience introduced to one of the cultural differences.
Since the begging I have felt that getting to know new people has been a bit awkward. Normally people just say their name, smile and that’s it. No hugging, shaking hands or etc. But since I am not a big hugger myself, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to that.
And due to not paying too much attention to that, I had to find out the real reasons the hard way.

So my first day at work, I was introduced to one of the top people in the company and finance department. He was male. And as a girl with good manners from my society, always the youngest and female should offer the hand first, and that’s what I did. And then something happened that keeps on playing in my head in slow motion until today. The guy just stood there, his hands tightly to his body and gave me a look like I just did something really wrong.

It was just few seconds, then we just moved on with the conversation, of which I don’t remember anything. I was just trying to figure out what I did wrong. Did I smell? Is he afraid of the flue?

Later I was explained by my supervisor, that according to Islam costumes a male and female never shake hands or have any physical connection. And this guy was one of the 10% of very religious people in the company who still follow all the rules very strictly.

Now I am already smarter. I never offer my hand unless the other person does it before. And when I see a guy with beard, then I know that most probably they are more strictly religious.

So this is the reason why people normally don’t make any physical contact, just to avoid incidence like mine. Even if someone has birthday, people don’t go up and hug or shake hands. You just say happy birthday and that’s all.

So much about my first embarrassing moment as a foreign in my company.

With our company bran in top and compettors below:


Some random pics from Amman: