"Do it in India and your boss would fire you, instantly." You must have worked for some really sick companies in India to be "instantly fired" for putting your

"Do it in India and your boss would fire you, instantly." You must have worked for some really sick companies in India to be "instantly fired" for putting your legs up on the desk. That kind of behaviour is appropriate(maybe) for some medieval feudal environment (lese majeste) but hardly in the 21st century. In any Indian company I worked for (and I've worked for a few), if a boss attempted to fire his subordinate just for putting his feet on the desk, the boss would be out of a job in record time. Now if you went to America and expected an American to act by Indian norms and did something (by your admission not offensive by American norms) and you felt all offended and huffy and "lost respect" for him on that basis, you are the idiot, not him. When you are in grad school, working etc in another country you should follow their norms as much as possible, not they yours. Why don't you come back to India (I am an Indian and live in India these days and so "come" instead of "go") where you can be surrounded by people who follow your norms to the letter. But then, norms vary widely across India as well (though obviously not as much as between India and America) so you might want to go back to the exact village or city you came from and never step out of it. That way you won't have to meet "fuckers" you "instantly lose respect for". You must be a pleasure to work with and just the type of person who'd be comfortable in an informal startup atmosphere or on a college project team ;-). With your hyper sensitivity to "insult", I assume you constantly researched all things potentially offensive to all nationalities you encountered (and in an American University you must have encountered a few dozen) and kept this data up to date on a continuous basis.