Charlie's Thoughts

This is a tad belated, but I still wanted to share it with everyone. After working in Germany for 3 months this summer I noticed a lot of differences between my previous positions in America.

Shaking Hands
I was surprised about how often people shook hands. It wasn't so much about the hand-shaking itself, but rather the daily greetings. Everyday when you arrive in the office for the first time, etiquette dictates that you walk around to every co-worker in the department and greet them. Eventually I got more comfortable with the idea. Only a few people actually shook hands with everyone, lots of others did a mix of handshakes and greetings, so I settled into a comfortable mix.

This whole process was often repeated on the way to/from lunch with the Bavarian greeting "Mahlzeit". There's no direct translation, but it's basically a fit-all greeting which is usable around any meal. Awesome. Sidebar, two favorite Bavarian treats: Kaiserschmarrn (Basically mixed pancakes) and Dampfnudel. They eat those as main dishes!!!

Expletives (expect some)
I was a little surprised at the level of profanity in the workplace. There was a lot of shit going down. Sometimes a few other things were slipped in, but seemed like s*** was very commonplace especially in referring to anything that wasn't going terribly well. My feeling from the American workplace was that language like that would generally be restricted to 1-on-1 conversations with very intimate co-workers. Although perhaps I didn't get a good read on the context abroad.

Just to underscore the cultural differences, I felt like I had to spice up my slang with a few choice words there. In contrast, I had a visitor from Germany during high school and was surprised at how much they attempted to swear in English. It got to the point where I couldn't tell if they were actually angry or just trying to accentuate the slang with my friends and I. Swearing, like comedy, just seems to be one of those very nuanced cultural things. I suppose I'm lucky I was on the cautious side!

Work Ethic
Not just ethic, but environment as a whole. I walked in to my office before starting work, and wanted to clarify what the dress code was. They told me there wasn't one. Naturally, I was 90% sure I hadn't understood, but after further questioning, I was sure. OK, so there was no explicit dress code, but I figured I should still wear slacks and a polo. Nope. People were there in shorts, jeans, t-shirts, all kinds of things. Naturally that really sucked, because I had already lugged my entire dress wardrobe across the ocean.

Work hours were also totally lax. I did a pretty standard 8:30 - 5:30. But some people showed up around lunch, and other left around 2pm. There were a couple Fridays where I was literally the only person in the office from 2pm - 6pm. I had a fixed 35 hour work week, but with flex hours. So I often worked late so that I could skip days and go on 5-day trips to other countries.

I never counted anyone else's hours, and of course they get actual vacation days, but I swear only half of the office was there on any given day. This isn't just because of time off though. A large percentage of the people there were either part-time, or work students. I think there were about 6 work-study students, and usually only 2 came in per day (They are restricted to 20 hour weeks during school).

Unfortunately, work-study students made a good deal more cash than I did...which was weird. They also had hourly rates instead of a fixed-hour week, which would have been nice for flexibility. So know that if you go to do an "Internship" in Germany, that means "Praktikum"...you should check and see if they can hire you as a work student!

Anyways, just some office observation I made. Sorry it's been so long since my last post. School has been incredibly busy, but I'm hoping to at least sneak a few posts in every now and then. Happy Autumn!