Thursday, July 20, 2006
Der Ordnungsdienst (Tidying Service)
As I strolled bleary eyed to my desk this morning I was in for a little shock. All of my notes, broshures and papers, in fact, everything on my desk had been placed in large blue bin bag which sat next to my chair. It is not often I am flummoxed but this was odd. Had I been fired? Why on earth would someone do that without asking. Thankfully, on seeing the besmirched look on my face my colleague Katrin explained to me that I had been a victim of 'Der Ordnungsdienst', which means tidying service. There is a drive to make the office tidier in which any really messy desk gets cleared in the hope that you will sift through the bag and finally discard stuff which you dont need. Some warning would have been nice though methinks! (It wasn't messy anyway, it was just organised in way in which the Germans are obviously not familiar).
The weirdest thing is that this is not carried out by a cleaning lady or someone whose job it is to ensure order, it is done by the head of our entire department: my boss's boss! She must earn around €100,000 a year and yet she is putting my stuff in a bin bag after hours. To put it into context she is the only person in the office whom I am not allowed to address by their first name, I must call her Frau Geisler. Germany is backwards sometimes.
The weirdest thing is that this is not carried out by a cleaning lady or someone whose job it is to ensure order, it is done by the head of our entire department: my boss's boss! She must earn around €100,000 a year and yet she is putting my stuff in a bin bag after hours. To put it into context she is the only person in the office whom I am not allowed to address by their first name, I must call her Frau Geisler. Germany is backwards sometimes.
