Germany: Public Behaviour - Part 3
From ExecutivePlanet.com
Acceptable public conduct
Be prepared to move yourself and your goods fast through the checkout line at the supermarket. This is where visitors from cultures with “rubber time” can get a good look at how “time-dominated” cultures work. Pitching your groceries into your bag or shop-cart, digging out your money and pocketing the change, and getting out of there as fast as you can before the cashier starts swiping the next customer's stuff through, is some mean feat of dexterity and co-ordination! If you're staying in Germany for a longer period, you will find yourself developing little anti-stress coping mechanisms to streamline the flow, like giving just bills [in which case you are weighed down by the coinage that quickly accumulates!], going shopping in twos so one pitches the goods while the other pays. Some older folks simply hand their wallets over to the cashier and have her count out the change. Or simply do as we often do, just shove everything back into the cart and sort everything out later at a safe distance. If, however, you decide to take your sweet time, be prepared for some sour looks!
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Having made this point, be aware that the liberty taken with lines at a bakery doesn't translate to lines at any bureaucratic institution. On a recent trip to Istanbul, Turkey, it was our turn at one of the windows at the general post office. While gluing stamps on our stack of postcards, the clerk managed to finish processing the package from the previous customer, fielded two “short questions” from heads that popped in from the sides of her window and took one phone call that required her to sift through some paperwork. We watched the kind of multi-tasking so typical of the Mediterranean cultures with great amusement, reflecting on how in Germany you only have to look like you might have a request before the clerk will tell you in no uncertain terms that a person “can't possibly do two things at once!”
Visitors coming from “multi-active”, polychronic cultures, which include in various degrees most of the cultures around the world other than Northern Europe and North America and Australia/New Zealand, will have to adapt quickly to a “linear-active”, monochronic order of doing things within a scheduled timescale, or suffer the wrath of the formidable German “Beamter” [public administrative or municipal clerks] that they will not soon forget!
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