Comment by yetanotherasian

It's never as simple as "asians are guess, westerns are ask". If that was actually true there would be no bosses, no company presidents, no politicians, no entrepreneurs in asian countries.

Separately, I once read a book that suggested to guess people that it was good to ask because their is a benefit to the giver. In other words, if you ask someone to help you move, most of the time they'll feel good about themselves for helping you. If you don't ask then you're not giving them the opportunity to feel good about helping. That doesn't mean I ask as much as I probably should but it did at least make me some small percentage more likely to be okay with asking.