Blaming boorishness on culture is nonsense. I am, I have to say, appalled.In a recent post (“A hostile work environment in a foreign country,” Advice Line, 7/14/2008) a correspondent describes her experience in an Asian organization. Her colleagues and boss are Western, not Asian, and make frequent humiliating jokes at her expense, in particular about her weight and religion.She asked for advice about her best course of action — a reasonable request — and I did my best. Then came the comments. The best way I can explain the prevailing attitude seems to be this: Someone from Nigeria takes a job in the Old South in the 1950s. He is subjected to a barrage of humiliating remarks from his white co-workers, and boss. He asks for advice on how to improve his situation, and the advice he gets is, “How dare you complain about the local culture! How can you be so arrogant!”Come now, folks, you can do better than this. These are Western co-workers, not local participants in the culture. Beyond that … what about “The local culture says it’s okay to treat you like vermin; how dare you want to be treated better?” is remotely sensible?Calling it “culture” depersonalizes what, in the end, are still person-to-person interactions. Even if every co-worker was locally born and raised, it’s entirely reasonable for someone in a bad situation to want to find ways to improve it. Just because it’s put me in a bad mood, let me raise the stakes. It’s now you. You’re a tourist in a foreign country. Unbeknown to you, the village you wander into has, as part of its “culture,” the quaint custom of selecting foreign visitors at random and subjecting them to a public flogging – the cat ‘o nine tails kind of flogging that removes skin from flesh.Do you really say to yourself and your fellow travelers, “Don’t worry about it, and make sure to take good pictures. It’s just part of the local culture — I have nothing to complain about.”Or do you punch the guy holding the cat o’ nine tails in the nose? – Bob Technology Industry