Intercultural Incompetence Examples

In the Diversity Day episode of The Office, there are several examples of intercultural incompetence portrayed. Some of the notable encounters display multiple errors that can be analyzed within one scene. Overall, the incompetence occurs due to Michael Scott’s inadvertent degree of unfamiliarity.

When Dunder Mifflin’s corporate office sends a representative over to administer diversity training, Michael attempts to greet a Hispanic employee named Oscar casually in the presence of the corporate representative. He introduces the representative to Oscar and tells him that he doesn’t know Oscar’s last name because they are on a first name basis. In this scene, Michael tries to demonstrate how inclusive he is in the workplace through tokenism.

When she informs Michael, he tells her that if she leaves then they will only have two. Whether he means that there will only be two minorities left to participate or two women is unclear, but either way it was inappropriate. After this, he says “Namaste” and attempts to interpret an Indian accent. During this scene, Michael commits three offenses in his stereotype. For one, he creates a separation between the employees by categorizing them as perhaps “white” and “nonwhite”. Secondly, Michael’s remarks demonstrate the inaccuracy of outgroup homogeneity effect. The accent that he utilized while speaking to Kelly denotes the stereotype that all Indians have the same accent and say “thank you, come again”, when in fact, Kelly has no accent and does not work at a convenience store. This inaccuracy in itself leads to error number three, which is inappropriate exaggeration. As there are many Indians that do not have accents, and many individuals from all cultural backgrounds work in convenience stores, this stereotype of Kelly’s culture is inaccurate.

During the charade style diversity game, Michael asks the employees to speak to each other based on the race of the card that is on their forehead. When Pam and Stanley speak to each other without making generalizations or using accents, Michael is not pleased. This is because he wants the employees to use stereotypes. This is inappropriate because stereotypes