Paul Jennings: Caceres, Spain

I didn't know what to expect the first time I walked into RGD Solutions.  The building was quite typical for Spain: a 6-floor combination of residential apartments and commercial office spaces. 

The work area itself was divided into three large offices, shared by two or three people each, and one large multipurpose room.  Since I was only there for a short time, they put me in the multipurpose room.  As it turned out, this was actually the best place to learn about the similarities and differences in working in a different culture.

RGD Solutions is a software company.  Their main product is a comprehensive system that allows the owners of bed-and-breakfasts in Spain to computerize their reservations and put their establishments on the internet.  While the advantages of such a system may be obvious to most Americans, most bed-and-breakfast owners in Spain probably don't even have computers, let alone internet access.  My co-workers not only had to create software that worked; they had to convince their customers that they needed it.

This is just one example of the state of technology in Spain.  The people have varying states of awareness that they need technology in order to survive in a globalizing world.  Most of them realize that education is the key to the future, but it seems that there isn't much direction.  English is the language of technology, and students learn it almost from the start of the school system, but the end results are sporadic at best.  The best that anyone I worked with could do was a simple, ?Hello, how are you?  I am fine.?  In what was perhaps the ultimate irony in this language gap, they had to ask me how to pronounce the name of their company.

What was most interesting to me was the juxtaposition of a modern occupation in a traditional society.  In many ways, the office felt just like the offices where I have worked in the United States. 

However, everyone went home for the siesta at 2:00 in the afternoon, and then came back at 5:00 to work another three hours.  Traditionally the siesta is taken at this time because it is the hottest part of the day, but it becomes less and less necessary as modern conveniences such as air conditioning become widely available.  Will they keep this vestige of their culture as time goes on?

My favorite memories from RGD Solutions are the times that we spent at the more or less mandatory coffee breaks in the afternoons.  We shared and compared stories of growing up, school, working, and life in disparate backgrounds.  In the end, there were more similarities than differences.  Maybe it was that our cultures weren't that far apart to start with.  Maybe it was that the world is already small and getting smaller.  But it speaks to a truth that I think is all too often forgotten today: We aren't that different after all.