Anecdotally as a non-UK person, when British people complain about something, I think it means they're trying to make friends with you.<p>As a Canadian, I can reveal that when someone says "I'm sorry," what they tend to mean is, "I'm not going to pay."<p>Witticisms aside, manifestations of temprament across cultures are ridiculously diverse. If there were such a thing as a type-A-minus personality, I might fall into that category, where one presumes others take responsibility for their own words and actions. The excessive submissiveness in some cultures (calling people sir, inability to decline, etc) is difficult not to interpret as a form of perfidy and passive aggression, where if you aren't taking responsibility for the conversation, it implies I must. By some cultures I mean west of Nevada.<p>As an anglo, my interactions with people from France are predictably funny, and the effect of the intellectual sparring yields some amazing solutions, but resolving that we have the mutual dignity of peers tends to take a few rounds. If I were to characterize what people interpret as Canadian niceness, it's that we are typically raised to treat malice as an inferior sentiment. Even though it may be real and meaningful, mainly it means you're losing. As a result, we produce some uniquely insufferable pricks, but if you're wondering how someone can seem so oblivious to insult, this detail might provide some useful context.