All the Friendliness, None of the Small Talk

I've got a funny story from this week.

A few weeks ago, I joined a periodontology society in a European country. As a member, you automatically get access to the EFP—the European Federation of Periodontology—as well, so I was waiting for my EFP activation email. But it never came, so I contacted the society.

You might wonder why a dentist in Japan would join a European society in the first place. The answer is simple: it's the cheapest way to access two of the top journals in periodontology—the Journal of Clinical Periodontology and Periodontology 2000. Subscribing to them individually would cost a small fortune every year.

(I get another top journal, the Journal of Periodontology, through my AAP membership instead—same logic.)

The next day, a staff member from the society emailed her counterpart at the EFP—and copied me on the email. That was my first surprise: I could actually see their internal conversation.

It wasn't just a bare request, either. There was some casual back-and-forth first—"I hope you are doing well," "I'm pleased to hear from you"—before she got to the actual point: "Could you help this member gain access to the EFP website?" It was a Friday, so they even exchanged wishes for a good weekend. It sounded so warm and friendly. I almost felt like I was watching two colleagues chatting across the office. I remember thinking, "Wow... they seem to know each other really well."

Then the EFP staff member sent me my EFP invitation, and that's when I noticed something hilarious. After all those warm, friendly emails between the two of them, the email I received was basically: here's your ID, here's your password. That's it. Mission accomplished. No small talk, no emojis, no "have a great day." Just the login details. The contrast made me laugh. I thought, "Apparently all the friendliness is reserved for colleagues!"

Of course, she solved my problem immediately, so I was genuinely grateful, and I sent her a thank-you email. Almost instantly, I got an automatic reply saying she was away until late July. Then I noticed something else: her summer office hours were 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

At that point, my imagination completely took over. I pictured one of them somewhere in the UK, the other somewhere in southern Europe, everyone calling each other by their first names, working efficiently all morning. Come three o'clock, one of them was probably sipping a cup of tea, while the other had already disappeared into the Mediterranean sunshine.

I have absolutely no idea whether that's true—I probably made the whole story up in my head. But it completely changed the way I picture international academic societies.

Before this, I imagined them as huge, formal organizations. Now I imagine a small group of people who all know each other, who just say "Hi," "Could you help this new member?"—and somehow everything gets sorted out.

So now I'm wondering: was that a very European experience, or was it just her?