Culture Conflict

This summer I experienced an issue that was caused by two different cultures. I worked at a summer camp, and each cabin had a separate small room for the staff members. There was a bunk bed and a cot, and the cot was where the oldest counselor would sleep (there were two counselors and one specialist in each cabin) and it was a sign of respect to the oldest counselor, or a kind of privilege.

The problem here was that our specialist was from Israel, and he didn't really care about or understand the culture we had at our camp. He was the oldest out of us three, and thought that because he was the oldest, he should get the cot. (Note: I was the youngest and a first year counselor. There was no way I was getting the cot.)

So these two went on and on, arguing about how they thought things should be. In the end, they made a compromise- they would switch after half of the summer was over, so they'd get even amount of time on the cot.

In the end though, the oldest counselor got the cot for the whole time because the specialist didn't seem to care after that fight. This was a firsthand experience of two conflicting cultures, the camp culture vs. Israeli standards. It's a good thing that this argument was over something really stupid like a cot, and not something serious, because they both were stubborn and weren't going to change their minds.