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Comment by billfruit | Hacker News Reader

There are plenty of Indians fine with steak dinners. India is a pretty diverse country.

Only about one-quarter of Indians eat beef, so it's not at all safe to assume that any random group of Indians you encounter will be majority beef-eaters.

Well then they can get the pork chop

That reduces it to just over half Indians, the other is vegetarian.

Then maybe they should have used the extra five brain cycles to decide to offer a pork chop dinner instead.

Person A: Do you want to get tacos for lunch?

Person B: Sure

- goes to taco stand -

Person A: 3 tacos please

Person B: I'll take the enchiladas

Person A: Oh my god, we were supposed to be getting tacos for lunch. How could you do this to me?

The metaphor doesn't work. You wouldn't dangle a steak dinner as a reward to a group of people who you could reasonably assume were mostly vegan. The intended reward _is_ the steak, because steak is expensive and delicious when prepared well. Yes, you could order a nice salad, but don't you think it sort of misses the point? It's not on the employee to enjoy the reward they're being offered, it's on the management to pick a reward that's valued by the employee. And sometimes, that means having even a tiny bit of cultural sensitivity.

'Steak dinner' is an American English idiom for 'a nice meal'. And it isn't culturally sensitive to assume that a group of Indians are vegans.

That's debatable, I'm American and would take an offer of a "steak dinner" to literally mean steak. Even presupposing you're correct that it's generally understood by Americans as an idiom, assuming that non-Americans understand American idioms is a form of ignorance, if not deliberate arrogance.

No one's saying "assume they are vegans," we're saying "don't assume they eat meat." Big difference.

I'm American and if someone offered me "a steak dinner" I would expect to be taken to a steakhouse, where steak was pretty much the only item on the menu.

I'm American, and if someone told me they're taking me out for a steak dinner, I'd immediately assume we were going to a steakhouse. It couldn't be any less of an idiom. If they took me out for pork chops, I would be completely and utterly confused.

Pork isn’t popular amongst meat eating Indians either. Just look at your local Indian restaurant menu. You will see very few, if any, pork dishes.

I don't think I've ever been in an Indian restaurant that has pork or beef on the menu, but that's in my corner of the US. Pretty much universally, they have chicken, lamb, goat, seafood, and vegetarian versions.

Pork is probably even less popular than beef among Indians. At least a lot of the Muslims eat beef, but they don't eat pork. A majority of the Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs eat neither.

For real, any corporation employing a significant proportion of Indian people (hell, even non-Indian people too) should be culturally sensitive enough to know that any offer of a morale dinner must feature vegetarian options. This is basic cultural sensitivity and anyone who doesn't understand this has no business managing people.

one quarter? Who told you that?

Less than 1/10th percent Indians eat beef.

Sure, but that's not the point. The point is whether you're likely to find a group where everybody is fine with beef (or pork, or any meat at all).

Also, not all Indians are fine with the Indians who are fine with steak. Significant conflict over that sort of thing sometimes makes the news outside the country.

I know -- my colleagues were not though!

Some get around this by ordering bison - totally different species ...

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