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I am born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, and am very punctual. For business meetings most people don't come up late, but for social gatherings they almost always do. It's frustrating because it seems like I will never learn my lesson and always arrive punctually even if I don't intend to

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This. People are conflating social mores with business practices.

São Paulo is a much more globalized city than Rio, which is really navel-gazing. (Most families in Rio can trace their ancestry centuries back, while São Paulo is usually the largest $(nationality-descent) population outside $(homecountry). This makes for cultural differences.)

But: it's not like carioca customs bleed over to the workplace any more than, say, West Texan customs do. I mean, at my workplace we wear suits but not ties; whenever in São Paulo we tie up. That's most of it.

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