> I live and work in France, and oh boy... It's just cultural. Every email is like a letter to the King. "Would you be so kind enough to consider my humble request that is described hereafter in next three paragraphs".

Ha! When I was in grad school, we had a brilliant French student in our team. He did his MS, and decided halfway he hated the US (understandable at the time) and would return to Europe for the PhD.

When he started applying for positions, he would just keep cursing. When I asked what was wrong, he said he'd gotten used to the (more) direct American approach, and was finding it burdensome to write formal, sycophantic emails to people in France.