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Comment by applejacks | Hacker News Reader

> they're the kind of person who deeply analyzes this sort of question

Clearly they didn't deeply analyze the question in the relevant context. Answering "yes" to this is high school level "edginess".

One needn't condescend, as there are equivalent questions at all levels of hiring, all with equally obvious (in)correct answers. No, you shouldn't answer "what is your biggest challenge" with "not showing up to work drunk", even if it is indeed your biggest challenge, and one that you work hard to successfully overcome every day.

Another commenter refers to this as "walking the corporate walk" but I think it's more "having an understanding of context and appropriate levels of sharing" and it applies at all times in life.

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Some cultures, and strongly correlated thus nationalities, are more brutally honest than others. So it may just be a test to see if you're an apple pie white American, which could be unlawful discrimination.

I think you have this backwards - Apparently, Americans are considered more brutally honest and direct in negotiations than other cultures:

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-negotiate-around-the-...

That doesn't mean that Americans are more brutally honest in social interactions. In my experience, Americans commonly (admittedly, not always) avoid topics and observations which they think a listening party would find uncomfortable.

This actually reminds me of something I've been thinking about lately. What we call honesty is actually two different things: truthfulness and openness. Americans are probably truthful and not open.

Like Canadians are polite but not friendly

That's right.

They literally ask “How are you doing?” and expect a meaningless answer as a matter of course.

To me this sounds like an invitation to unload my worries.

No s**t, my g*d these Americans are really *****

(who would have thought it is so difficult to beep out words in HN, I had to escape each *)

Reminds me of the time I said the fuck word kinda loudly in public in Provo, Utah. Had people looking at me like I'd just grown a second head.

That's kinda why I always say "the fuck word" instead of "the eff word". I've had too many interactions where somebody felt comfortable correcting my word choice for me to be polite about it. ("Fuckin' heck!" is pretty fun too; people just don't know how to respond.)

I am French and we are quite liberal with our swear words. This is interesting because the ones that are used in everyday conversation, due to the intonation, are not rude. Not poetry, but not vulgarity either.

For instance the word "merde" ("shit"). When you say "ET. MERDE." clearly breaking the words apart and emphasizing them - everyone will think "something definitely bad happened" but nobody would be offended. This is only one of the zillion examples.

Now, there is a very, very fine line between being "appropriately, cleverly vulgar" and "vulgar". You do not want to be the latter.

You can say a whole daisy chain and still be fine: "oh putain de merde, quel enfoiré de Word, ma thèse sur Paul Sartre a disparu" ("fucking shitty bastard of Word, my PhD thesis about Paul Sartre has just vanished").

When I go to the US, I always forget to switch on the puritanian-s**t-filter and people look at me really sternly. I even had one older lady coming to my table where I was seated with my teenager boys when she somehow head the word "merde" (as in "et. merde." when I broke something) to tell me that the children should not hear such words.

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