Slashdot Mirror
German IT Outfit Bans Whining
theodp writes "German IT outfit Nutzwerk Ltd has come up with the perfect solution to whining in the workplace - it's made cheerfulness a contractual obligation, advising those who don't measure up to the prescribed level of jollity in the morning to stay at home until they cheer up. The plan was prompted by a female employee whose constant complaining prompted the other staff to complain about her complaining."
What if people start complaining that they don't have the basic right of complaining?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Let me complain for a minute and point out that it was the Reg, not "theodp" who wrote that blob of text, contrary to what the post suggests.
I know a company with an SLA that states something to the effect that a smile must be given in a face to face meeting before any work is to be performed.
Click here or here.
But /.ers don't go around reading those. The article if you take a look at it was written (or at least posted) on the register on Thursday of last week, so you can't blame /. for it.
Germans love to complain about things -- it is part of their culture.
I saw this in Germany, when I worked their for years as an expat.
The fact that they had to put it in the contract, rather than just a management directive, is typically German too: it has to be in the contract, so that they can have something to point to when they need to discipline someone.
As should be clear from their inflexible style, and their lack of focus on the needs of the customer, German customer service is pretty bad. It has gotten a lot better in the last decade though.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
I'm reminded (only offhandedly) of an australian study of men & women in various work & social situations, where the participants were brought together and recorded, then afterwards asked to estimate the amount that other people spoke, or spoke over them. The results were quite curious. When speaking in social situations, men spoke 40% of the words women the rest - but the men estimated the women to speak up to four times as often as the men, and women also estimated women spoke more often than their measured percentages showed, guessing that other women spoke up to three times more often than men.
In work situations, the amount of speaking (by time and words) was much closer to 50/50, but the perceived percentages were similar. Men and women spoke an almost equal number of words for an equal amount of time, but all employees still perceived women to be talking four times more often than men.
Sam's Club/ Wal-Mart fired a woman who would not smile at customers as she handed out free samples of food.
The reason she did not smile?
Her face is partially paralyzed and is no longer physically capable smiling at anyone for any reason.
The problem is actually a serious issue in Germany.
:-)
The transition occured in the early nineties in the USA, when the last of real manufacturing went tits up for IT/service jobs (Of course that's tits up too, but that's another issue). In the US, the last of the lifetime jobs went out in the 70's, in Germany, these transitions are just now arriving. And engineering and manufacturing is part of the German image of self-worth, so it hits home particularly hard.
The problem in German culture is that it is a change in the economy which no one wants to acknowledge, but are being forced to. The last 50 years of a boom economy after the war has now more or less come to a grinding halt. Germany is now evolving, but its eating into peoples morale. The whole country is bitching and moaning, and that in itself is pulling the economy down, not to mention an individual business as is mentioned in this report.
I know you can't regulate someone's mood but at least they are pointing to where the country should try to go (and if anyone would try to regulate someone's mood, it would be in Germany). I applaud the idea, and laugh at the fact they are trying to regulate instead of inspire. Typcal German (and now I'm starting to "meckern").
"To Meckern" means to bleat or baa like a goat. This is the term used to describe what Germans do when they bitch and moan. They "blaaaaa" (you need to skip on the gutoral to really get the effect). Anyway, it fits, and its a problem. Really...
While I will agree that when a normally pleasant employee is angry/whiny that there is a reason. It's not always true. Unfortunately, I've dealt with cow-orkers who seem to have complaining as their #1 task.
A couple of years ago I was at a concert with my cousin and a friend of hers (male). The concert itself was in a pretty out of the way location, surrounded for a few miles by wooods and fields and whatnot. When we arrived at the concert the line to get in was pretty long, and he had to pee. Near the parking area there were some woods, so he went into the woods to releive himself. Apparently a police officer followed him for some reason (The cop said he thought he had gone back there to do drugs before the concert), but anyway he went in far enough that standing at the car right at the edge of the woods, and having seen the general direction that he walked, I couldn't see him. A few minutes later the police officer was leading him out in handcuffs. He was charged with and conviced for a sex crime. He was forced to sell his house and move because he could not live within so many feet of a school, and is also now for the rest of his life a registered sex offender. Has to register with any county he moves into, alert the neighbors, etc. This was his first conviction for anything too btw (never even had a parking ticket AFAIK), so it's not like he was a habitual offender.
So yes, I know someone who was caught peeing and is now branded a sex offender and had his life ruined because of it.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Back in the mid 70s, I knew one guy who was arrested by the same cop two Saturday nights in a row for taking a leak on the same telephone pole outside a bar.
I've wondered whether or not he has to register as a sex offender now.
Another guy I knew was arrested once for taking a leak at a road side park. His brother, a lawyer, requested a jury trial. The charges were eventually dropped because the prosecuting attorney knew that around here, most of the people who might be selected for the jury would think he had lost his marbles for putting the guy on trial for such a ridiculous charge.