From a German perspective: Of course nobody will prevent you from making friends at work. But there isn’t the expectation that your collegues are the center of your social life. If you want to have a beer with your collegues after work, just have it! But there is no pressure to do so. Everybody has his own private life.
In the US you have to find your friends among your co workers, because they are virtually the only people you meet. In Europe the world is so much bigger outside the workplace, it's easier to find people with the same interests as you anywhere else. There is just a bigger pool to fish in.
yesss definitely! this video makes it sound more strict than it actually is i think. of course, if there is natural chemistry that either develops while working together or is there from the start, you’re free to form a more personal relationship. also important to note: you can still have fun working with your coworkers, it’s not serious all the time. the main thing is that especially personal topics don’t really have a place at work, unless your work is affected by it (e.g. „sorry i’m not giving my all atm, i’m going through a breakup“). you’re expected to tolerate your coworkers so you can be productive working with them. if there is space and time for you to make friends, great. if not, doesn’t matter, as long as the work gets done
Agreed. The problem with hanging out with friends from work is that work is often the topic of discussion. I hate talking about work topics when I am on break or in my private free time. I stop thinking about anything work related the second I leave the office. My free time is my free time and my workplace does not deserve to live rent free in my head.
I left the USA and have been living in Germany for a long time. I must admit I cannot Understand, why people still live and work in the USA. Not only did I get a free education (PhD) in Germany, but also affordable health care and good public transportation. At work I get 30 days (6 weeks) of paid vaccation yearly plus at least 10 national holidays (with full pay), my employer pays 50% of my health insurance, my unemployment Insurance and my retirement fund, all compulsory national benefits. I can take off work at full pay, if I am sick and a Doctor says I cannot work. For at least 6 weeks a year my employer will continue my salary if I am ill. I got hurt in an accident at my office and was not able to work for 3 months...I had no charges from the hospital or doctor and my employer along with the national health Insurance continued my full salary. My employer does not expect me to work more than the 38 hour week and will only calls me during my leisure time, if things are really neccessary...which has not happened in over 20 years. I know that most Americans call this "socialism" or even "communism", which of course is not true, but I definitely see no disadvantage in this form of social responsibility.
" I know that most Americans call this "socialism" or even "communism" " That´s the craziest part. But a good method to prevent them from demanding these rights.
@@samuelsamenstrang6069 I think the problem is due to the lack of Information the adverage American has about the rest of the world. They learn "the USA is the best country in the world" and do not want to investigate if this is true. The big industries also do not want the American workers to be well informed and especially the Republican Party uses "socialism" as a threat and purposely gives false Information, for example saying that in the German medical System you cannot choose your medical doctor, but rather one is assigned to just one Doctor and if you do not go to this Doctor, you get no help. This of course is a lie but that does not bother the Republicans. The main thing is, that everything remains as it is, so that only a few can become milliarders and the rest just häng on.
All those compusary insurances (health insurance, unemployment and retirement) have been implemented in Germany by Otto von Bismarck OVER 150 years ago from 1883 to 1891. Dude was a conservative monarchist.
@Aussie Pom The main problems with the US model of privatized health care is that it is incredibly expensive. America pays more than anybody else on health care per capita and that still leaves million uninsured. The health care they get in return is ranked 37th in world based on outcome. Costa Rica's health care is ranked 36th while they pay one tenth per capita of what Americans pay. I think the reason is that in the health care chain (insurances, doctors, hospitals) in the USA everybody benefits from sick people. In contrast to for example the British NHS doctors are paid a fixed salary meaning that if fewer of the patients on their books get sick they do fewer work for the same money.
Greetings from 🇩🇪! Make friends at work: I personally met my best friend at work. In the video it is described somewhat strangely... Of course, friendships can develop between colleagues. At work, however, professionalism often plays a major role. It is therefore rather unusual to develop a friendship with the boss.
The "no friends at work" thing heavily depends on the company. My company encourages employees to spend time together off work to allow for a better work atmosphere. We are even allowed to mark lunch or dinner with co-workers as "business expense".
i'd say its company and also Expat related. I've seen so many subreddits with posts like "How do i find friends in Germany?? its so hard!" while most of those posts insinuate that they just seem to expect to suddenly mesh and blend with their colleagues and be invited to private outings. My last two vacations i took with colleagues. With one i went to Teneriffa for 10 days and shared a finca with her, with the others i had a 5 day outing in an "off grid" house somewhere in the forest. I love most of my colleagues and mesh with all of them. but they are also vastly different characters that need vastly different levels of social interactions. I do need my recharge time. so weekends are "me" time, exept for certain friends when we go out to museums or for dinner. I do think that some of these expats just have such a vast different understanding of social norms that they project their expectations onto their "host culture" that they're always dissapointed and disgruntled if they don't find friends within the first couple of weeks or months.
@@KaySan666 true, especially for US expats in my experience. I have so many US contacts, that would consider themselves to be my "friend" and would go out on a beer or dinner with me. But I personally wouldn't consider them my friends, I would consider them associates at best. That US "friend" stage simply doesn't exist in Germany and a German friendship is much deeper in comparison.
@@m.h.6470 Agreed tho i have noticed that behaviour also with people form southern america. A good comparison i once heard was that Americans are like Peaches, all sweet and delicious on the outside but with a hard center that you can not get through , germans are like coconuts, it might take a while to crack it open but once you do, you get it all its delicousness.
I am from Germany. I was even send home when not feeling good at work. So in the end you have much more off days than only a month. In Germany we say: we don’t live for work, but we work for life.
There's no such thing as being "late" where I work. We're just contracted to work a certain number of hours per week (which almost without exception we will exceed) and we're ultimately judged on what we get done not when we start work for the day. As it should be.
This is only valid if you have "Gleitzeit" (flexible time) in your work contract - or something similar. Factory workers where "15 Minutes late" results in a 15Minutes "stop of Production" because one station of the production line is empty have to be there on time. Cashiers in small business should be there on time or otherwise the shop has to open later (and you will see what happens when a Grocery store like ALDI opens 20minutes later because the only - early morning cashier was late).
In the EU there is usually nothing like the concept of "sick days". When you are sick and have a doctors note, you stay away from work and are paid at least for some weeks. In Germay up to 42 says still is covered by your employer, after that the general health insurance is paying about 60-70% of your monthly income to you while you are sick.
Never forget to add that visiting the doctor doesn't cost a dime. It is free. Yes, you pay with your pay check, but it is a fixed amount. If you're healthy, this amount pays for those who are ill. And vice versa.
The 42 days rule only applies, if the doctors note is for one and the same illness/reason. If you got 80 days or more a year for various reasons, the employer still covers 100 percent. Small companies, I think with less than 20 employees and a limited annual turnout, can get like 60 percent back from your insurance. I work at a big company with starting time and finishing time 24/7 22 days a month with a lot of overtime (payed of course). I have many coworkers with way more than 42 sick days a year. If our employer wants to get rid of one of us for sick days, that one goes to court, wins and gets payed for all the months he stayed home cause of the termination. If you get treated like a number, you kind of have the right to have a work ethic representing that.
But you have to mention that it's 42 days (6 full weeks including weekends) IN A ROW that your company pays your full income. Not 42 days per year as someone might assume. And it has to be for the same reason/ sickness.
Also in most companies it is totally okay to stay at home one or two days even without a doctors note if you feel sick. The idea is that it is better if you don't turn up with a cold because otherwise, everyone else will get sick too, and naturally it is over the top to go for the doctor for a cold.
About that friendship thing, I’d say it’s true that we distinguish between colleague and friends but that doesn’t mean that were cold or unfriendly towards our colleagues. You can still have fun and talk with your colleagues, it’s just that they aren’t necessarily people you’d meet outside of work. It might also just take longer for you to form a friendship but that can also be a good thing because both of you know what to expect in the friendship. My mother for example has a colleague she worked with for 40 years and they’ve become good friends, still my mother has other friends outside of work that she rather meets than someone she basically sees everyday
About friendships at work. It is not uncommon to find friend s at work in germany. I think the difference is, you don't depend on that, as much as many US Americans. We have more freetime, so many germans do more freetime activities or are member in a club or something like that. There you have a big chance to meet people with shared interests and it is more easy to find friend there, then at work.
Club Culture is indeed an important part of German life. Sports clubs, shooting clubs, volunteer firefighters, etc. Everyone I know is a member of one club or another. That’s where you find friends, where you find a partner. For newcomers it’s an entrance into community life.
In Austria we have 5 weeks paid holiday and in June and December the boss is obligated to pay "vaccation money" (Urlaubsgeld) and "christmas money" (Weihnachtsgeld) wich is the double amount of what you usally get per month. I love it here because you know your work is appreciated
German here, there is a difference between co-workers and friends, but you can be friends with your co-workers. I was friends with my co-worker for longer than we worked together, but at work we are co-workers, personal stuff will be talked about after hours. Work is Work and free time is free time.
Don't take that friendship thing no too serious. It is Benny's view, but not necessarily everyone's. I think, it is important to make friends outside the "job bubble", so you can relate to other things, too, than only the work themes. And often your co-workers have families and friends of their own, and so it is not easy or they do not want you to penetrate this very personal sphere of them. But in evey case you can do the way it works for you. Point. Viele Grüße!
Germans will not call anyone their "friend" just because they work together. If you want a colleague to be a friend, you need to engage with that person more than just work or superficial small talks. I personally did that and few of my colleagues now become my friends, but it took like half a decade to build up this friendship.
I think that friendship at work depends on the size and the people of the company. If you are very young and the other colleagues are way older than you are I totally admit. Some companies are very small and it can happen that you only have a bunch of colleagues. I work in a company with very mixed ages and of course good friendship has been formed over a time. My last company I worked at, I had a lot of really good friends. So, it really depends.
About not making friends at work: that is not perfectly correct. I think this depends of what kind of job you have. But being friends in Germany is a total different thing than in America. We call very few people friends.
Very much agreed, I think the definition of who is a friend is a bit wider in other cultures. I mean I love my coworkers, went hiking together on a weekend with some of them or go bowling or for a drink after work, but I wouldn' call them my friend but rather good aquaintences. The "friend"-threshold, at least for me, is when I am comfortable to invite them into my home and plan holidays or longer trips like festivals or camping together.
@@Jothaka IMHO you are right. A Friend in Germany is someone you can call at 2am in the morning and tell him that your car broke down near Chicago and a few hours later he drove from NY to pick you up with spare parts.
But mate, of course you CAN make friends at work :-) It usually takes longer as you might want, but once you broke the walls with a German you have a friend for lifetime. And I'm quite sure - just from watching a few of your videos - your charm is irresistible, you are a nice guy, you are polite, you are interested in everything around you. So you wouldn't have a hard time to make friends here. Greetings from Berlin 🙂
I think the leave thing is standard in most of the world outside the US, Australia is the same: - Minimum 4 weeks paid holiday leave - Minimum 2 weeks paid sick leave - Between 11-13 paid public holidays off (depending on the state, Victoria is 13) Then also paid maternity leave, bereavement/compassionate leave, domestic violence leave, etc if or when each is required, and long service leave on top of holiday leave after you've been at a company for 10 years. Holiday and sick leave start accruing on Day 1 of your job, and holiday leave gets rolled over if you don't use it. What I did in the last decade was every second year I'd take a 6-7 week holiday overseas using paid time off by saving most of it up and rolling it over. Also, holiday leave is paid at 17.5% more than your usual rate because you spend more while on holiday than when working, although some businesses just claim they build that into the salary package rather than paying the leave at a higher rate.
Working in human resources in Australia, I can say employers offering above the minimum legal requirement is a thing many companies do to attract and retain good workers. I get over 30 paid work days off from my employer, 20 days annual leave, 8 days long service leave and another 3 days employer granted leave, in addition to 10 paid sick days per year, plus all the public holidays. We even have volunteering leave, where you can take a paid time off work to do volunteering in the community.
Don't forget that sick leave is also accumulated over the lifespan if your job at the company. So if you don't need to take any it continues to build up. Some jobs do pay out the excess from time to time ( my husband gets his paid out up to 50% every so often). I current have the equivalent of 2 full years of work days accrued because I'm luckily rarely unwell (I do take the occasional sickie, it's unAustralian not too😃) . It's good to know that if I had a major illness requiring significant time off, I would have a job to go back to.
Im still weirded out by the fact that someone decided you can put a number on how often you are allowed to be ill. And everything else is "holiday". If a person that studied medicine decides im ill, im ill. You cant restrict illness.
I think it`s harder to be friend with colleagues in larger companies in Germany than in smaller companies. Personally , I work in a small company and we colleagues sometimes meet to have dinner together and talk to each other outside of work .If you are sick you can call in sick immediately , which many employers in Germany prefer so that you don`t infect your colleagues. For us Germans, work is not everything we love also love our free time and time together with our family.My grandma always said if you can party, you can go back to work the next day.😅💚
Everyone thinks of us as "Work, work, work" and telling everybody to "work harder" but actually, we only get perceived as "hard" workers because we use the most efficent methods to save as much time as possible to be able to fck off into the sunset as quickly as possible :D :D
Den "Wer feiern kann, kann auch arbeiten Spruch" bringe ich auch gerne. Montags zur Arbeit obwohl der Körper noch nach Erholung schreit? Ja! Man muss ja nicht immer eskalieren 😅
Great vid JP. I actually worked in Amsterdam for one summer when I was in college a couple years ago and they have the same basic "work culture" as in Germany. And I think its pretty much like this through out most of Europe. Employers treat their employees MUCH MUCH better that in the USA, and youre part of a family when you work for someone. Sounds crazy when you try to describe this to people here in the USA.
I personally didn't really make friends at work yet, but my father is working in a car garage together with like 30 other people, mostly men but also women (both in the garage itself as well as in the bureau). They all have really tight bonds towards each other and also sometimes meet outside of work. Also, their boss offered all of them the "du" (informal salutation) on their company Christmas party like two years ago. And he also has a great relationship with his employees and does a lot for them. Also, when the boss's wife died at a very young age, leaving him with their two kids, all employees were invited to the funeral because she was kind of the good soul of the company and also did a lot for the workers.
Germany here: i have a lot friends at work and a few couples found together at work too. So everything is possible in Germany too. Depends on the colleagues, sometimes you are happy not to see them private and sometimes they are best friends. I had a relationship with a colleague and made often holidays together with colleagues.
I moved to Frankfurt 30 years ago and met all my friends at work. So maybe it depends on the region and the people 😀 Have a great weekend and greetings from 🇩🇪 to 🇺🇸
It depends on the company and most often on the size of that company. Smaller companies tend to be more friendship orientated amongst collegues, larger companies often generate annonymous collegues through fluctuation of the people and other factors.
Our holidays can be accumulated here in Oz as well. And we get long service leave paid every 5 or 10 years, depending on the company you work for which can add another month to 6 weeks to your normal holidays. Incidentally, our holiday leave is on top of the statutory holidays like Christmas, Boxing and New Years Day, Anzac Day, Queens birthday, Easter and Australia Day. In the finance/ banking sector you also get Bank holiday. And then there’s 10 days sick leave, paid parental leave, compassionate leave and study leave.
This year I finish my 4 years of deferred salary, so I get next year off. All five years are at 80% pay, but getting a year off defo makes it worth it.
Germany don't get an especially good deal with annual paid leave as most countries get 20+ days leave. The US is really the outlier by absolutely shafting their employees.
You can really make frinds at work. It depens on the person you meet and what kinde of person you are. Normaly it's like: coworker > good coworker | > | friend > good friend. The step between good coworker and friend does not alway happen. The definition of friend is also a little bit different. I think that leads to the idear that you can't make friends so easy in germany.
go to the train station and you have to step over homeless people to get the train, are you telling me it´s their job 😂 germany still punish drug use, even cannabis use (even though they are legalizing) and lots of people are out of jobs thanks to a lack of treatment and because germany punish people that are feeling bad even getting a place to live in germany for drug users are hard, because they are being punished for their illness...
If people take 2 weeks off to learn English, why would they go to the US to learn American. Come to England to learn English. The clue is in the name as Al Murray the pub landlord would say! Lol 😆
I think it is because a lot of Germans learn more American than British English, there's major US military bases in Germany, and a lot of films and media tend to come from across the Atlantic. It's very interesting because speaking like an American is seen as the peak for a German, since it seems more efficient to learn the variety that's more widely spread and economically important. It actually goes as far as some Germans feeling weird when they are told a term in British English, or are associated with it, because in their mind they speak American English, I think there's a few channels on German travellers to the US like Felicia who expressly mentioned getting annoyed if an American corrects themselves to say Football instead of Soccer for example. It's quite bizzare, I personally always prefered learning British English, but I guess I can sort of understand where they are coming from.
In school I learned "BBC English" but this is 30+ years ago in working life I had to handle with British, US , Canadian, South African, Indian and Chinese colleges and my "english" is now a mixture of these variants.
I could go visit England over the weekend and already did a few times as it is convenient from where I live (Airports in Cologne and Düsseldorf, also some bus companies offer city trips to e.g. London leaving Friday around 9p.m. spend Saturday discovering London return early Sunday morning for about 60€). So, if having the oportunity I'd choose somewhere farther away.
Regarding workplace friendships: I'm austrian which is very similar to germany. A worker spends 8 hours a day and 5 days a week with the collegues at work. It is very important to have a good relationship BUT after spending pretty much most of the time with them one just doesn't need to be around the same people at evening or the weekends too. Also, if privat life and worklife are seperated there will be way less annoying gossip going around. Who wants to work at a place where everyone knows and talks about ones love life or feels the urge to give unasked for advise to hobbies from people who usually don't know the first thing about it. Also one does not think about any workrelated things during the spare time and it is way more easy to not see anything or anyone who could remind one of work.
just to clearify some of his points: 24 days holdidays if you work full time is the minimum (2 per month). We also have 10+ public holidays. Educational leave is 2 weeks in 2 years - you may take them at once or split. Usually you don't need to do anything related to the job! There are other special holidays if you are a volunteer (I got unpaid leave for a trip with the sports club and the city covered 75% of my loss in income). If you are sick, very often you only need a doctor's note from day 3 on! I have friends at work. I believe that is the older generation 🙂
I'm in Australia and in my company. We get 7 days paid sick leave a year. 5 weeks paid annual leave. What ever you don't use rolls over the next year. 12 weeks maternity leave for the women and 4 weeks for men. We also can buy our leave if we have no leave accumulated or if we've used up all our leave. We have the option to still take 1 to 2 weeks purchase leave then when your back the company deducts $50 to $100 dollars from your pay every week until you paid back the money you received during your leave. Also if you work full time which is 5 days a week 8.5 hrs a day you are entitled to get RDO which is 1 day off a month. If that makes sense. Because we get paid only the 8hrs and the other 30 mins is accumulated to go towards your RDO every month. My favourite is public holiday. I'm not speaking for the rest of Australia but only for my company. You have a few options to choose how you would like to get paid. 1. You can choose to not work and just get paid for a normal day 2. You can choose to work the public holiday and get paid 250% of your pay rate for the day 3. You can choose to work 4 hrs on 150% of your pay rate for the day and go home and still get the other 4 hrs paid at normal pay rate. 4. You can choose to work the full 8 hrs of public holiday on 150 % of your pay rate and choose another day to have off paid at normal pay rate. I get paid really good at the company I'm at and will never leave and these incentives I've just mentioned makes it hard for me to leave
For sure we make friends @work too. Maybe its in general a cultural difference between the US and Germany. We are much more reserved and call somebody a "friend" is nothing what happens over night. Its maybe harder to connect but maybe deeper if you do.
Now i watched and enjoyed the whole Germany playlist. I would highly recommend you the channel of the blackforestfamily, a young american family, who lives and works in the Blackforest, since a couple of years. They have a lot videos, where they go deep down in your preferred issues, while showing differences or similarities. ..and they built a house , quite interesting. Greetings from Germany, Luna
In Australia in our now defunk auto industry, we had 4 weeks plus a 17.5% leave loading. The leave loading ended up covering most of your tax while on leave, plus 2 weeks sick leave which was upfront. You didn't have to work 12 months to "earn" your sick leave, any sick leave or annual leave that wasn't in calendar year was rolled over to the next year. That's the benefit of having good union negotiating for it's members.
It's rather amusing to see the thumbnail. Lots of countries will give 4 weeks holiday some will give 5 to allow for a Christmas break. The amazing thing is there are some third world countries that offer better leave arrangements than the US does. Some third world countries even allow long periods for maternity leave.
he never said you wouldn't find friends at work. just that your coworker arn't automatically your friends. in general in europe, for someone to become your friend you have to actually enjoy each other's company, not just be remotely acquainted. don't expect to be invited to their birthday because you asked them about the weather. when someone call you their friend in europe, they are your FRIEND
About making friends: school and university are definitely places to find them. And I wouldn't agree that it never happens at the workplace, but usually people want to seperate work and free time - which includes the people you work with. So, if you don't connect with people at your workplace, do something different - join a club (sports or otherwise), or simply go to a pub. Don't overwhelm the people with your american small talk, though ;)
The minimum by law is 4 weeks paid leave in Germany. If you would work 6 days the week (as was the case for most people in 1963 as the law was made) that would add up to 24 days per year; nowadays 5 days per week is the norm, so it adds up to 20 days. Most companies will however grant about 30 days per year; if you work e.g. in civil service you get 6 weeks paid leave per year (according to the wage agreement for civil service, TVöD, negotiated by the trade unions). Additionally we have in 2023 8 public holidays at federal level (only counting such not at a Sunday) plus up to 4 state-wide public holidays. The work-free Sunday is a constitutional right since 1919; before that it was introduced as amendment to the trade law in 1891 to protect workers and their families: they should have at least one common day of rest per week to be together. Overtime is officially frowned upon, but it is accepted if necessary to get work done in time. Many companies (as well as civil service) have flextime accounts at least for office jobs, and you're required to take time off at another day if you work overtime. Often the rule is you have to take time off for your overtime at least until 31 January of the following year. Paid leave on the other hand can be taken until 31 September of the following year (and - according to court decision - your employer has to remind you of it). Sick notes: Most employers follow the rule "for up to 2 consecutive days of sick leave no doctor's note (called Arbeitsunfähigkeitsbescheinigung = "certification of inability to work" or short AU in Germany) is necessary, but at the 3rd day you have to supply one". Before this year that AU was a yellow slip of paper (sometimes still referred to as "gelber Zettel"), but now it can be done electronically: The physician sends it to your health insurance, which then provides it to your employer. There is no fixed number of sick days, and they are not deducted from your paid leave days. You are regularly paid by your employer for up to 6 weeks (depending e.g. on duration of employment) of consecutive sick days; after that time your health insurance will pay you up to 70% of your last income as "sick pay" (Krankengeld). 7:30 Work culture can differ widely depending on the company as well as the sector of industry it is in. Some companies do not appreciate "chatter in the hallways", others have another approach. Germans often tend to segregate their private social life from their work. So they'll not necessarily invite randomly colleagues to a private barbecue at home or have regularly after-work drinks together. That's however not so much the case with e.g. startups where all employees are young, without family and often "new in town". It depends also on the seating in the office. Open-plan offices with cubicles are rather the exemption in Germany (one reason may be labor law which e.g. guarantees each office worker a place with at least partial daylight) - those places would be rather "anonymous". Most offices have 2 to 6 desks, and there is of course sometimes some chatter about more private things (sick children, new house, favorite games and so on), but you would rarely have that with the person from the office next door except at social events (organized either by the colleagues or by the company itself).
Australia has sick leave, vacation time (usually four weeks), maternity leave, special leave for personal time etc - all paid. We can also roll over unused days into the next year.
What he says about being friends with colleagues is also not true. At least not always. My colleagues have known each other for over 30 years. They have celebrated many parties together, collected for deceased colleagues. In the lounge you can find a whole gallery of pictures of the fun they had back then. Sometimes in the summer we have a barbecue at lunchtime, or just last week we had a delicious Christmas meal paid for by the company. A caterer came with different kinds of meat, potatoes, sauces and cauliflower.
Also we have protection against dismissal here in Germany. In my case e.g. (working for the same company for over 20 years) my employer has to give me a 7 months' notice (fully paid) before I have to leave the company. And handicapped people get five extra days a year of paid leave.
Of course we do make friends at our workplaces. In my experience it just takes a little longer than for example in the US. But as soon as you become personally involved it is usually deeper.
After you've seen how much better working conditions are outside the US, I thought you'd be looking at working abroad, on a young person's working visa, either in Europe or Australia. Your university may have contacts with companies in countries you fancy working in. I'm sure the experience you'd gain would enhance your CV, if you decided to return to the US after a year or 2 away.
Working in Germany is something different for sure. I work for Amazon in Dortmund and planing to move to London during this year, so I compared it and less holidays in London, working in night shift benefits me 2 hours less every day and 30% add-on on payments here in Germany, London would raise my working time by 2 hours and just adds less than 2 pounds for the night shift to my salary. (Germany add about 4.50€ per hour). Same job, same company, different country and the working benefits dropped kinda drastically. We Germans do bond with colleagues, but during working hours the hierarchy has to be as it should be. Friendship can happen, relationships between colleagues happens. Germans hate small talk and to bond to a stranger without small talk is simply harder. The moment we found a common interest, it is like everywhere else in the world.
I'm South African, and my employer, with whom I've been 24 years, gives all employees 24 working days annual leave, extra leave for every 5 years for long service after 10 years (next year in 2024, I'm getting an additional 30 working days, which can be encashed), 80 days sick leave over 3 years cycle, 5 days per annum for family responsibility/compassionate leave. We get 100% of salary 13th check as a bonus in the month of your appointment. They give bursaries for further studies as well. Pay 60% of medical insurance, contribute 22% equivalent of your salary towards pension, and if you own your own home, they give a housing allowance as well. Mothers get 3 months maternity leave after birth of child, dads get 1 week paternity leave
Australia has 4 weeks paid annual leave also plus a 17.5% leave loading paid so you have more money to have a holiday with. We also have 'long service leave' which is 1 month fully paid extra leave every 10 years of service in the same employment. Also, 7 national holidays plus state/territory holidays per year.
I rarely create bonds/friendships with colleagues. Having a good relation to your colleagues is important, however it is most of the time on a professional level. Having insight into some colleagues private life or interest makes them vulnerable. So most of us avoid sharing too much private informations. Although we share a common ground of information. Some is kept hidden as it might put someone our yourself into a bad position. So in the end it is having a good (professional) time at work without having too much contact. Especially in jobs with high employee turnover.
About making friends at work: Your points, why you love that (meeting people in class having random conversations etc), is EXACTLY why it is frowned upon at German workplaces. If in a 500 people company everyone would be spending 3x10 minutes per day talking about taking about the barbecue last weekend, then that would be 15000 minutes of lost time - during work hours - which in turn would mean, that a lot of people would have to stay late making overtime. And that is exactly, what is happening in the US. You can't have both, chit chat during the day and then get home punctually and additionally having 20 days off. This sound ls a bit abstract, but as someone, who has worked in two different work cultures, in an work environment like the US, it happens quite easily, that over the whole work day, there are four, five people coming to your desk (or you walking over) to chit-chat about something. As someone who has planned out their work day, knowing full well what should be done by the end of the day, each time something like that happens to me, I cringe up slightly innerly, because I know that every minute someone tells me about his niece's school performance or the juicy barbecue meat, I know I will get home late by that storys amount of time. And I know that I am exchanging this or that of my long planned fun activities against that completely uninteresting story. So why would I do that - and more importantly, why would I do that to someone else?
In Canada we get a minimum of 2weeks vacation. This goes to 3 weeks after 5 years and if you stay with a company for 20+ years it can go up to 6 weeks. We also get 10 paid public holidays per year. Most companies give 5 to 10 sick days per year.
Bei vielen Jobs hast du "Gleitzeit", d.h. Arbeitsbeginn ist z.B. zwischen 0800 und 1000, d.h. du bist erst zu spät, wenn du nach 1000 zur Arbeit kommst. Wenn natürlich Besprechungen, Workshops etc. angesetzt sind, musst du natürlich pünktlich zu deren Beginn da sein. Feiertage gibt es zwischen 10 und 12 pro Jahr, abhängig vom jeweiligen Bundesland. Diese werden natürlich auch bezahlt, allerdings nicht nachgeholt, wenn diese auf ein Wochenende fallen. Freunde kann man im Job durchaus finden, so absolut wie im Video sehe ich das nicht. Also, lerne etwas Brauchbares, Deutschland freut sich darauf, dich begrüßen zu dürfen! 😄
Here, the Nordic countries and Germany are copies of each other! The holidays in our countries are the same length, if you get sick you have the same rights in all our countries, etc. And apropos the contact with work colleagues - at the company where I worked there were MANY people who had met their partners, so neither Germans nor us Nordics are hermits. We often met after work and did nice things together. You are young! Why not move here to us here in Europe. :-)
@@kellymcbright5456 if I remember right in Germany too, or you have to get a certificate by a doctor. That law was made to stop people from just taking a day of by saying: I am ill 🙂
@@juttaweise No, not in Germany. A proposal appeared in the 90ies, but was rejected by an overwhelming majority. You need a certificate, yes. But then you get paid. In Sweden you do not get paid under whatever circumstance, and no certificate changes that. In most cases, it is but right what @Stig said. The swedish welfare state in it's beginning copied most regulations from Germany which was kind of the admired model of the achievements of the workers' movement.
It's not that Germans don't socialize with their colleagues at work. That's a big part of the "Kaffeepause" - the coffee break he first talked about. Sometimes, colleagues that like each other will go out for lunch together / share their lunch break. In some companies, there's "break rooms", where you can play foosball or darts or just talk to each other. It's just that we separate our work life with what comes after work. And it's not uncommon that people find their SO at work. My sister married one of her co-workers and they still both work at the same company. How would that have been possible if we didn't socialize at work? ;)
@@grischad20 Well, if I read that word, I wouldn't want to use it, either XD It would most probably be translated with "Bekannter" in German - a person you know the name of and perhaps basic information, but who's not as close to you as a "Kumpel" (buddy) or real friend would be. (Explanation for those who don't speak German.)
I worked holidays which gave me two paid vacation days each. I had about 2 months off each year. 1,5 month bag packing while you get paid like you work is fantastic. It left me two weeks for family stuff and little trips. You actually get almost an extra months pay each year in holiday money, you still get paid on holiday so you can use the holiday money just for or the holiday. When you go on holiday one or two weeks, you count the days. With 6 weeks you don’t think about that. After so long, you are almost happy to go home. With a bad pack you really get to experience a country. The money spend goes directly to the locals, not to some hotel chain. If you go to a developing country you understand there is more to life, struggles of people there make seem your own back home trivial.
I worked at Volkswagen from 1998 to 2006. From 1993 to 2003, Volkswagen had a 4 day week (28.8 hours per week = 1209 hours per year - 230 hours vacation = 979 hours work per year = 135 days per year) and earned around 50,000 euros per year.
German here! I´m supervisor for our shift and I have a very relaxed, face to face relation with my Boss, who´s only the next level in a big Company. Which means we could talk straight forward, if there is something. no ones angry, its about work! When we have a chance to share a short coffee brake, its all about personal stuff we´re talking about. But we both know where to stop. A good buddy at the bar, but still your boss is hard to manage. Thats basically what they wanted to figure out.
In New Zealand you get 4 weeks paid holiday per year and you can accumulate this if you want to. There are also sick days bereavement leave and a few public holidays as well.
Yeah, almost the same in Australia with 4 weeks annual leave and paid public holidays. Work in the same job for 7.5 ~ 10 years and you are entitled to up to 16 weeks paid leave, called “Long Service Leave.”
This guy is only speaking from his experience. Keep that in mind. My experience: 1. We can be friends with co workers and sometimes even click immediately. 2. It's not really easy to get sick leave. Your doctor will define weather you are able to work or not. Many companies don't like it if you miss a lot of work days and you might have to answer uncomfortable questions. 3. Often people are expected to work overtime, which will be either paid or you get the hours added to your account and you can use them some other day. 4. Question: do you really still get a physical paycheck every 2 weeks? I see and read that sometimes on social media or TV? We usually get paid once a month by bank transfer. I love your enthusiasm about my country and enjoy your videos a lot. Danke und Tschüss 😀
In Australia working full time the minimum 4 weeks a year paid holiday leave is normal. Australia it is normal to have a number of paid days sick leave, usually about a week. With personal issues in Australia most employers are compassionate too and offer paid or unpaid leave off work, depending on the situation. It's sad the US can't offer the same as other developed countries.
In Australia you get 4 weeks annual leave with full pay, plus 17.5 % on top of your weekly holiday pay depending on the award agreements covering the industry you work in, leave loading is taxable but the 1st $320 is not.
I’ve got many co-workers who actually became couples sooner or later. My parents met at work too. About „keeping co-workers at arms-length“ it’s partly about respecting that their private life doesn’t necessarily have to include you and it sometimes feels like an infringement of their privacy if you try (at least it’s that way for me). Then again I managed countless times to have long conversations with my colleagues after work, delaying both them and me from getting home.
the Kaffe and Kuchen Tradion is also a thing when you have a Birthday. Its up to you but Colleges love when you bring a Cake ,Cupcakes or Muffins to Work . Dont need to be something huge just yummy stuff to take a Moment off to Celebrate the Birthday in a Work Break
In Australia as well as all these things, if you have worked for the same employer for 7 years or more you also get paid Long Service Leave on top of your annual leave, this is written into Employment Law. And I have used it to travel a lot 😊 Annual leave is also loaded , with an extra 17.5% on top if normal pay added. The 8 hour working day, started first in Australia, is celebrated with a Public Holiday😊
I get 30 days PTO in Germany, as do most others. The sick days are also paid. If you are seriously sick, your employer will pay your full wage the first six weeks of your sick days, after that the health insurance pays you 70 percent of your wages. I have been on sick leave for 3 months without being afraid to lose my job.
Here in tiny Barbados, we have pretty much the same leave benefits here: especially in the public service, and within the University of the West Indies. Many if not most people are entitled to 3 weeks off minimum upon assuming full-time work which rises to 28 days after five years. Plus many jobs allow all 12 public holidays off with pay, or in the situation where the employee is required to work, they are entitled to double or triple the hourly rate depending on the holiday (Christmas Day, Easter would fall into the latter category). Also in the public service, you can get 2 weeks of study leave per semester, at least that was the case when I was there.
In Australia we have a months annual leave, about 8 public holidays, 10 days sick leave and after 10 years we have 2 months long service leave. ALL PAID Life is good.
He just mentiones the legal required minimum of vacation days. Through your unions you can negotiate a lot more. In my company we have 10 weeks payed leave every year. We can choose between 6 weeks off and 4 weeks extra payment, or having all 10 weeks off.
So to explain this with a concrete example. For me it looks like this: I work as a forklift driver for a food company for frozen food. Who doesn't like fish fingers? We work from Monday to Friday from 6 a.m. to 2:06 p.m. We have a lot of work. We have at least 30 days' holiday a year (older colleagues have more). If we work overtime, we can have it paid out or accumulate it for compensatory time off. Some colleagues have accumulated several hundred hours. We get a cold storage allowance on top of our normal hourly wage. That means we get extra money when we work in the cold store. But since we work with closed forklifts, that's not bad. It's rare to have to get out now and then for something. At minus 29 degrees. We also have a menu every week when we order lunch. (Costs 3,20€), because our location is about 4 kilometres away from our production plant, it is brought to us by the external truck driver of our supplier, who works together with us. He has the job of driving the pallets from us to production. (Due to a lack of space, our colleagues cannot store a lot of goods in their cold store). We deliver up to 350 tonnes of raw fish every day. By the way, we are only allowed to work a maximum of 10 hours a day. The employer must then compensate us for the next day. For example, we have to start work later. We also have an Edeka supermarket that is open 24 hours a day. From 6am on Monday until 11:59pm on Saturday. Sunday is generally not worked. There are exceptions. Petrol stations must also be open on Sundays.
I think the „not making friends“ part is mostly just in higher paid, office jobs. If you’re working in Warehouse like me for example, you know every guy you’re working with pretty well, we talk about whatever. I don’t know them well enough to actually go out with them after work, but there’s prolly like 2-3 days in the week where we’re just hanging out in our warehouse after work, drinking a beer or fire up the grill :)
Here in Australia we enjoy 4 weeks paid annual leave , paid at a rate of 117% of your salary. Ten per cent as Superannueation ( i.e. your employer's contribution to your retirement- this accumulates and moves with you for life.. Also 13 public holidays ( also paid) and are entitled to a minimum of 10 sick days ( paid ) per annum. Some days such as Birth of a cild ( 3 for men, many weeks for mothers), Funeral leavealso and family days ( e.g. graduation of son/ daughter. I'm sure ther's more but that's all I can remember at the moment. That's most of what I know. I have a pension scheme like the army. Punctuality is mandatory and can lead to dismisal- so too partial drunkenness. Ocertime is 1 and 1/2 your hourly rate after 8 hours and on certain days like weekends, particularly Sundays ( twice hourly rate) and night work ( outside 9-5 p.m.) That's all I can think of but, Joel, I guess you're reeling in yor chair by now.
I feel your pain when you heard about paid leave in Germany. Have there not been any improvements in American work culture since COVID? I thought maybe some companies would have introduced sick leave at the least.
I live in the Netherlands. I work 40 hours a week and have 40 days off each year. When I get sick with like the flu, it's normal to stay home a few days. If it takes longer or you have something more serious, you will have to see a special doctor (besides the your own personal one) that also reports back to your company to inform them how long your absence will be. Maybe you start working only a few hours a day before starting with full days again.
If you have had a chronic illness or accident, your doctor can send you to a clinic. The stay usually lasts three weeks and of course you will continue to receive your salary. We call it rehabilitation and it can be repeated every three or four years.
Those benefits were mostly not given by any employer or government out of free will, it was fought for by workers unions. England and even the USA had official unions even before most other countries in Europe had (correct, if I am wrong, might not have all data). The ugly part is that the movement to keep unions strong died in the USA and the laws started to favor the employers in the chase for the allmighty short term dollar.
French and germans are coconuts and american are apricots in term of friendship. In the apricot the knife meet no resistance but can't get on the stone. Wirh the coconut the skin seems unbreakable but once it's done, it goes right to the heart.
Bugger living in the US, in Australia we get at least 4 weeks paid annual leave, sometimes 5, ADO’s, 10 days paid sick leave. This is of course if your full time or permanent part time.
I have 30 days vacation. Since I have been working in my company for 25 years, I have received 1 additional day per year. Since I have a mother who is disabled, I get 8 days of special leave a year to take care of her. So a total of 39 days of paid vacation. In addition, there is overtime that can be accumulated and paid as days off.
German companies are not "generous", but they had to accept that after bargaining with the unions. The legal minimum amount is 24 days a year, if you work a 6 day week. Otherwise it is less. Educational holidays are not part of the Federal Law. States regulate that. But there are also 8-12 public holidays a year, but some of them are on weekends. All that other time off (like in case of family issues) is also part of the so called "Tarifvertrag". Which is a general contract with unions and companies. Btw. companies also unionize in a organization called "Arbeitgeberverband". Tarifvertrags are between workers unions and Arbeitgeberverbands. His remarks about friends and companies are a kind of misleading. Keep in mind, that friendship in Germany is a way more serious affair (remember Mark Wolters video about that?).
Like many others here already mentioned: Becoming friends at work is not as unheard of as the video mentions. I do count quite a lot of my colleagues as friends, and, using my roommate as an example, there is seldom a day over the week, where my roommate doesn't have one or more colleagues over at our place, as a majority of his friends are also his colleagues. I think it's very depending on the size of the company you are working at and the type of person you are. Starting a new job it might take a little longer to get to know people on a more personal level compared to the US (but that's only a guess, i've never been or worked in the USA)
Actually If I remember correctly its a minimum of 24 Days paid leave per year, If you are working a fulltime job so I think atleast 30h/w, but im not entirely sure about this one tbh.
20 days is the legal minimum of vacation days, the average is 30 days. In addition, there are also 5 days of educational leave, if you want. And 10 paid holidays. You have to use the vacation, only part of it can be paid out. The days must not expire any more.
Sick Days: Whats not mentioned in the video is, that in a lot of Companys a "Note from a doctor" is needed just after the 3rd or 4th day. So you can have paid sick days for 1 to 3 days just by saying "Im sick".
Maybe the friends thing is list in translation. In my experience it’s completely normal to be friendly with your co-workers but Germans tend to make a distinction between friends and friendly acquaintances. I’d talk about personal stuff with co-workers but if I had a serious problem I needed help with, I would rather talk to a real friend. That being said, I met my best friends at work. We’ve all moved on to different employers since but we’re still friends.
I have made many friends at work (as a German), so I don't get why people sometimes claim we don't do that here. You just remain professional anyway at work.
i work at a grocery store and i usually work from monday to saturday and have a day off in the middle of the week. of course sunday is an offday too. I have 36 days paid leave. they also offer many other benefits.. like buying a bicycle and the company paid the tax, or 5 % off the goods they sell. If i use puplic transport they would have bought my a annual ticket. i use my car, so they give me a monthly gift card for gasoline. Of course they pay half of the taxes ( like every company has to) but they also offer a additional retirement fond. Oh, btw, i am only a part time worker with 25-30 hours per week..i get all the benefits as long as i earn more than 520 euros per month
As a German I like to add 😉: There ist a difference in Germany between "friend" and "aquaintance" - it´s not that strange as ist is mentioned in the video
What gets dropped many times when it comes to PTO : Germany, depending on its state, has at least 10 days, in some instances up to 15 days of public holidays. Unfortunately the concept that a public holiday falling on a weekend being considered an observed holiday has not yet been put into law yet. These public holidays are in addition to the 24 days minimum a company has to grant you. On top of that many companies allow you to accrue additional PTO days off for overtime, up to a certain limit. These PTO days are added to an account. Every 8 hours overtime accrue can be transmuted into one day PTO. Note: not all companies do this, but from what I've gathered a large majority do.
yeah we dont really do friends at work, but almost every german is a member in at least 2 clubs / associations, be that sports or sth else to meet people and do activities in your leisure time, thats where we meet our friends
The actual law on paid leave states that you have six weeks of paid leave, so the actual number of days depends on the days per week you work according to your contract. Part-time can mean you get 12 days (2 days week) and full time shift work can mean 24 days (6 days a week). On top of that you also have to consider work hours, having a 40 hour contract with a six day week means, you work rarely 6 days in a row, sometimes 4, most of times 5 but still get 24 days of vacation. At 4:00 you adress certifications and qualifications, there is an important thing to consider. In case your employer needs you to take this class/course etc to actually work your job, it is paid work time. Not time off, but time you spend on the clock. The 2 weeks mentioned in the video are things you choose, not your employer. Some people even study for bachelors or masters degrees on company time, usually with a 5 year exclusive contract after graduation. At 7:00 there is a simple reason for that, you are there on company time, you "sold" your time to the company. Your boss tells you what you need to do, you do not grant favours to collegues or ask for them, you do not expect benefits from your boss. It is a way to keep nepotism out of the picture, it does not work all the time, but thats because some people break this habit of not bonding too closely on the job.
In Australia I get 4 weeks annual leave 8 sick days no dr note required + 10 more days sick with dr note needed I also have long service leave (currently 40+ days) I can purchase extra leave and pay it back across 12 months and we get public holidays. We also have flexible work arrangements around part time work and work from home! Don't live to work...work to live
I have never not had the option of sick leave...two days or more and you generally need a note from your doctor though . single day off (tues to thurs so they don't just let you have a long weekend) you can do without a note though. I can't remember how many days a year we were limited to though
Here in germany we do make differences between workers and hired office people. Most of the workers are paid per hour on a monthly base Most of the office people or on service jobs are paid monthly fixed salery. Workers with paying per hour getting extra money on extra hours. Weekend working will be paid by higher percentages. The monthly out paid money can be varifying by the worked hours. People who have got fixed salery get not extra money for extra hours but can get extra days off. 8 hours = 1 day off. The maximum working hours in a day are regulated by laws or of what fought out by strikes of the workers unions but in some causes union members will get those special conditions, only. So if you aren't a union member than maybe your salery will be much lower than the salery of the union members. Holidays are regulated by laws, too and of what worker unions have fought out. In minimum the holidays are three weeks and the maximum can be open by special regulations. In lot of normal conditions it is varifying between the from the state guranteed three weeks up to six weeks or more than that. Young people below the age of 18 or disabled people will get much more holidays as vacations in addition.
I disagree on the friends at work thing. I've made friends in almost every job I had & those friendships last until today, years after I left the company. But I have to agree, I prefer to not spend my entire free time in a work setting & the introvert in me is just not loving after work drinks. that's a personal thing though. I work in Tech in Berlin - just for reference. :)
I guess the friendship thing between coworkers isn't that true. At least at the "arbeiterschicht" we tend to become friends. Sure everybody has their own "bubble" but we still go out a few times in a year with the colleges
From a German perspective: Of course nobody will prevent you from making friends at work. But there isn’t the expectation that your collegues are the center of your social life. If you want to have a beer with your collegues after work, just have it! But there is no pressure to do so. Everybody has his own private life.
100%
In the US you have to find your friends among your co workers, because they are virtually the only people you meet. In Europe the world is so much bigger outside the workplace, it's easier to find people with the same interests as you anywhere else. There is just a bigger pool to fish in.
Yeah you just don't need to become friends with your coworkers if you have enough free time to live a life besides your job.
yesss definitely! this video makes it sound more strict than it actually is i think. of course, if there is natural chemistry that either develops while working together or is there from the start, you’re free to form a more personal relationship.
also important to note: you can still have fun working with your coworkers, it’s not serious all the time. the main thing is that especially personal topics don’t really have a place at work, unless your work is affected by it (e.g. „sorry i’m not giving my all atm, i’m going through a breakup“).
you’re expected to tolerate your coworkers so you can be productive working with them. if there is space and time for you to make friends, great. if not, doesn’t matter, as long as the work gets done
Agreed. The problem with hanging out with friends from work is that work is often the topic of discussion. I hate talking about work topics when I am on break or in my private free time. I stop thinking about anything work related the second I leave the office. My free time is my free time and my workplace does not deserve to live rent free in my head.
I left the USA and have been living in Germany for a long time. I must admit I cannot Understand, why people still live and work in the USA. Not only did I get a free education (PhD) in Germany, but also affordable health care and good public transportation. At work I get 30 days (6 weeks) of paid vaccation yearly plus at least 10 national holidays (with full pay), my employer pays 50% of my health insurance, my unemployment Insurance and my retirement fund, all compulsory national benefits. I can take off work at full pay, if I am sick and a Doctor says I cannot work. For at least 6 weeks a year my employer will continue my salary if I am ill. I got hurt in an accident at my office and was not able to work for 3 months...I had no charges from the hospital or doctor and my employer along with the national health Insurance continued my full salary. My employer does not expect me to work more than the 38 hour week and will only calls me during my leisure time, if things are really neccessary...which has not happened in over 20 years. I know that most Americans call this "socialism" or even "communism", which of course is not true, but I definitely see no disadvantage in this form of social responsibility.
" I know that most Americans call this "socialism" or even "communism" "
That´s the craziest part. But a good method to prevent them from demanding these rights.
@@samuelsamenstrang6069 I think the problem is due to the lack of Information the adverage American has about the rest of the world. They learn "the USA is the best country in the world" and do not want to investigate if this is true. The big industries also do not want the American workers to be well informed and especially the Republican Party uses "socialism" as a threat and purposely gives false Information, for example saying that in the German medical System you cannot choose your medical doctor, but rather one is assigned to just one Doctor and if you do not go to this Doctor, you get no help. This of course is a lie but that does not bother the Republicans. The main thing is, that everything remains as it is, so that only a few can become milliarders and the rest just häng on.
Ditto from Australia.
All those compusary insurances (health insurance, unemployment and retirement) have been implemented in Germany by Otto von Bismarck OVER 150 years ago from 1883 to 1891.
Dude was a conservative monarchist.
@Aussie Pom The main problems with the US model of privatized health care is that it is incredibly expensive. America pays more than anybody else on health care per capita and that still leaves million uninsured. The health care they get in return is ranked 37th in world based on outcome. Costa Rica's health care is ranked 36th while they pay one tenth per capita of what Americans pay.
I think the reason is that in the health care chain (insurances, doctors, hospitals) in the USA everybody benefits from sick people.
In contrast to for example the British NHS doctors are paid a fixed salary meaning that if fewer of the patients on their books get sick they do fewer work for the same money.
Greetings from 🇩🇪!
Make friends at work:
I personally met my best friend at work. In the video it is described somewhat strangely... Of course, friendships can develop between colleagues.
At work, however, professionalism often plays a major role. It is therefore rather unusual to develop a friendship with the boss.
I completely agree.
The "no friends at work" thing heavily depends on the company. My company encourages employees to spend time together off work to allow for a better work atmosphere. We are even allowed to mark lunch or dinner with co-workers as "business expense".
i'd say its company and also Expat related. I've seen so many subreddits with posts like "How do i find friends in Germany?? its so hard!" while most of those posts insinuate that they just seem to expect to suddenly mesh and blend with their colleagues and be invited to private outings.
My last two vacations i took with colleagues. With one i went to Teneriffa for 10 days and shared a finca with her, with the others i had a 5 day outing in an "off grid" house somewhere in the forest. I love most of my colleagues and mesh with all of them. but they are also vastly different characters that need vastly different levels of social interactions.
I do need my recharge time. so weekends are "me" time, exept for certain friends when we go out to museums or for dinner.
I do think that some of these expats just have such a vast different understanding of social norms that they project their expectations onto their "host culture" that they're always dissapointed and disgruntled if they don't find friends within the first couple of weeks or months.
@@KaySan666 true, especially for US expats in my experience. I have so many US contacts, that would consider themselves to be my "friend" and would go out on a beer or dinner with me. But I personally wouldn't consider them my friends, I would consider them associates at best. That US "friend" stage simply doesn't exist in Germany and a German friendship is much deeper in comparison.
@@m.h.6470 Agreed tho i have noticed that behaviour also with people form southern america. A good comparison i once heard was that Americans are like Peaches, all sweet and delicious on the outside but with a hard center that you can not get through , germans are like coconuts, it might take a while to crack it open but once you do, you get it all its delicousness.
I am from Germany. I was even send home when not feeling good at work. So in the end you have much more off days than only a month.
In Germany we say: we don’t live for work, but we work for life.
There's no such thing as being "late" where I work. We're just contracted to work a certain number of hours per week (which almost without exception we will exceed) and we're ultimately judged on what we get done not when we start work for the day. As it should be.
This is only valid if you have "Gleitzeit" (flexible time) in your work contract - or something similar.
Factory workers where "15 Minutes late" results in a 15Minutes "stop of Production" because one station of the production line is empty have to be there on time. Cashiers in small business should be there on time or otherwise the shop has to open later (and you will see what happens when a Grocery store like ALDI opens 20minutes later because the only - early morning cashier was late).
@@DSP16569 I'm fairly sure Aldi would not open late because one employee turned up late. That would be so dumb.
@@listey I don't think Aldi qualifies as a "small business"...
In the EU there is usually nothing like the concept of "sick days". When you are sick and have a doctors note, you stay away from work and are paid at least for some weeks. In Germay up to 42 says still is covered by your employer, after that the general health insurance is paying about 60-70% of your monthly income to you while you are sick.
Never forget to add that visiting the doctor doesn't cost a dime. It is free. Yes, you pay with your pay check, but it is a fixed amount. If you're healthy, this amount pays for those who are ill. And vice versa.
@@xwormwood Also if one lives in poverty, then they don't have to pay.
If you make a lot if money, you of course may have to pay more.
The 42 days rule only applies, if the doctors note is for one and the same illness/reason. If you got 80 days or more a year for various reasons, the employer still covers 100 percent. Small companies, I think with less than 20 employees and a limited annual turnout, can get like 60 percent back from your insurance. I work at a big company with starting time and finishing time 24/7 22 days a month with a lot of overtime (payed of course). I have many coworkers with way more than 42 sick days a year. If our employer wants to get rid of one of us for sick days, that one goes to court, wins and gets payed for all the months he stayed home cause of the termination. If you get treated like a number, you kind of have the right to have a work ethic representing that.
But you have to mention that it's 42 days (6 full weeks including weekends) IN A ROW that your company pays your full income. Not 42 days per year as someone might assume. And it has to be for the same reason/ sickness.
Also in most companies it is totally okay to stay at home one or two days even without a doctors note if you feel sick. The idea is that it is better if you don't turn up with a cold because otherwise, everyone else will get sick too, and naturally it is over the top to go for the doctor for a cold.
About that friendship thing, I’d say it’s true that we distinguish between colleague and friends but that doesn’t mean that were cold or unfriendly towards our colleagues. You can still have fun and talk with your colleagues, it’s just that they aren’t necessarily people you’d meet outside of work.
It might also just take longer for you to form a friendship but that can also be a good thing because both of you know what to expect in the friendship. My mother for example has a colleague she worked with for 40 years and they’ve become good friends, still my mother has other friends outside of work that she rather meets than someone she basically sees everyday
About friendships at work. It is not uncommon to find friend s at work in germany. I think the difference is, you don't depend on that, as much as many US Americans. We have more freetime, so many germans do more freetime activities or are member in a club or something like that. There you have a big chance to meet people with shared interests and it is more easy to find friend there, then at work.
Club Culture is indeed an important part of German life. Sports clubs, shooting clubs, volunteer firefighters, etc. Everyone I know is a member of one club or another. That’s where you find friends, where you find a partner. For newcomers it’s an entrance into community life.
In Austria we have 5 weeks paid holiday and in June and December the boss is obligated to pay "vaccation money" (Urlaubsgeld) and "christmas money" (Weihnachtsgeld) wich is the double amount of what you usally get per month. I love it here because you know your work is appreciated
German here, there is a difference between co-workers and friends, but you can be friends with your co-workers. I was friends with my co-worker for longer than we worked together, but at work we are co-workers, personal stuff will be talked about after hours. Work is Work and free time is free time.
Don't take that friendship thing no too serious. It is Benny's view, but not necessarily everyone's. I think, it is important to make friends outside the "job bubble", so you can relate to other things, too, than only the work themes. And often your co-workers have families and friends of their own, and so it is not easy or they do not want you to penetrate this very personal sphere of them. But in evey case you can do the way it works for you. Point. Viele Grüße!
Germans will not call anyone their "friend" just because they work together. If you want a colleague to be a friend, you need to engage with that person more than just work or superficial small talks.
I personally did that and few of my colleagues now become my friends, but it took like half a decade to build up this friendship.
I think that friendship at work depends on the size and the people of the company. If you are very young and the other colleagues are way older than you are I totally admit.
Some companies are very small and it can happen that you only have a bunch of colleagues.
I work in a company with very mixed ages and of course good friendship has been formed over a time.
My last company I worked at, I had a lot of really good friends. So, it really depends.
Coffe and cake is also common in lot of Czech companies, people are often bringing home made cakes to show their baking skills to coleagues. ;)
and sometimes home-brewed beer, too!❤️👍
About not making friends at work: that is not perfectly correct. I think this depends of what kind of job you have.
But being friends in Germany is a total different thing than in America. We call very few people friends.
Very much agreed, I think the definition of who is a friend is a bit wider in other cultures. I mean I love my coworkers, went hiking together on a weekend with some of them or go bowling or for a drink after work, but I wouldn' call them my friend but rather good aquaintences.
The "friend"-threshold, at least for me, is when I am comfortable to invite them into my home and plan holidays or longer trips like festivals or camping together.
@@Jothaka IMHO you are right. A Friend in Germany is someone you can call at 2am in the morning and tell him that your car broke down near Chicago and a few hours later he drove from NY to pick you up with spare parts.
@@Jothaka it might be wider or narrower based on culture in Europe, but nowhere near as big of a jump as Europe VS NA.
@@grischad20 NA? What does it stand for?
@@edwinf4524 North America
But mate, of course you CAN make friends at work :-) It usually takes longer as you might want, but once you broke the walls with a German you have a friend for lifetime. And I'm quite sure - just from watching a few of your videos - your charm is irresistible, you are a nice guy, you are polite, you are interested in everything around you. So you wouldn't have a hard time to make friends here. Greetings from Berlin 🙂
I think the leave thing is standard in most of the world outside the US, Australia is the same:
- Minimum 4 weeks paid holiday leave
- Minimum 2 weeks paid sick leave
- Between 11-13 paid public holidays off (depending on the state, Victoria is 13)
Then also paid maternity leave, bereavement/compassionate leave, domestic violence leave, etc if or when each is required, and long service leave on top of holiday leave after you've been at a company for 10 years.
Holiday and sick leave start accruing on Day 1 of your job, and holiday leave gets rolled over if you don't use it. What I did in the last decade was every second year I'd take a 6-7 week holiday overseas using paid time off by saving most of it up and rolling it over.
Also, holiday leave is paid at 17.5% more than your usual rate because you spend more while on holiday than when working, although some businesses just claim they build that into the salary package rather than paying the leave at a higher rate.
Working in human resources in Australia, I can say employers offering above the minimum legal requirement is a thing many companies do to attract and retain good workers. I get over 30 paid work days off from my employer, 20 days annual leave, 8 days long service leave and another 3 days employer granted leave, in addition to 10 paid sick days per year, plus all the public holidays. We even have volunteering leave, where you can take a paid time off work to do volunteering in the community.
LSL is from 7 years actually. I know, I use it regularly !
Don't forget that sick leave is also accumulated over the lifespan if your job at the company. So if you don't need to take any it continues to build up. Some jobs do pay out the excess from time to time ( my husband gets his paid out up to 50% every so often). I current have the equivalent of 2 full years of work days accrued because I'm luckily rarely unwell (I do take the occasional sickie, it's unAustralian not too😃) . It's good to know that if I had a major illness requiring significant time off, I would have a job to go back to.
@@triarb5790 That depends on which state you live in.
Im still weirded out by the fact that someone decided you can put a number on how often you are allowed to be ill.
And everything else is "holiday".
If a person that studied medicine decides im ill, im ill.
You cant restrict illness.
I think it`s harder to be friend with colleagues in larger companies in Germany than in smaller companies. Personally , I work in a small company and we colleagues sometimes meet to have dinner together and talk to each other outside of work .If you are sick you can call in sick immediately , which many employers in Germany prefer so that you don`t infect your colleagues. For us Germans, work is not everything we love also love our free time and time together with our family.My grandma always said if you can party, you can go back to work the next day.😅💚
Everyone thinks of us as "Work, work, work" and telling everybody to "work harder"
but actually, we only get perceived as "hard" workers because we use the most efficent methods to save as much time as possible to be able to fck off into the sunset as quickly as possible :D :D
Den "Wer feiern kann, kann auch arbeiten Spruch" bringe ich auch gerne. Montags zur Arbeit obwohl der Körper noch nach Erholung schreit? Ja! Man muss ja nicht immer eskalieren 😅
Ja so ist es.👍😅@@ExtremeTeddy
Great vid JP. I actually worked in Amsterdam for one summer when I was in college a couple years ago and they have the same basic "work culture" as in Germany. And I think its pretty much like this through out most of Europe. Employers treat their employees MUCH MUCH better that in the USA, and youre part of a family when you work for someone. Sounds crazy when you try to describe this to people here in the USA.
I personally didn't really make friends at work yet, but my father is working in a car garage together with like 30 other people, mostly men but also women (both in the garage itself as well as in the bureau). They all have really tight bonds towards each other and also sometimes meet outside of work. Also, their boss offered all of them the "du" (informal salutation) on their company Christmas party like two years ago. And he also has a great relationship with his employees and does a lot for them. Also, when the boss's wife died at a very young age, leaving him with their two kids, all employees were invited to the funeral because she was kind of the good soul of the company and also did a lot for the workers.
Germany here: i have a lot friends at work and a few couples found together at work too. So everything is possible in Germany too. Depends on the colleagues, sometimes you are happy not to see them private and sometimes they are best friends. I had a relationship with a colleague and made often holidays together with colleagues.
I moved to Frankfurt 30 years ago and met all my friends at work. So maybe it depends on the region and the people 😀 Have a great weekend and greetings from 🇩🇪 to 🇺🇸
That British guy lives in Frankfurt as well 😁
It depends on the company and most often on the size of that company. Smaller companies tend to be more friendship orientated amongst collegues, larger companies often generate annonymous collegues through fluctuation of the people and other factors.
Our holidays can be accumulated here in Oz as well. And we get long service leave paid every 5 or 10 years, depending on the company you work for which can add another month to 6 weeks to your normal holidays. Incidentally, our holiday leave is on top of the statutory holidays like Christmas, Boxing and New Years Day, Anzac Day, Queens birthday, Easter and Australia Day. In the finance/ banking sector you also get Bank holiday.
And then there’s 10 days sick leave, paid parental leave, compassionate leave and study leave.
Long service leave is the dumbest thing. They should just give everyone an extra couple of days leave per year.
This year I finish my 4 years of deferred salary, so I get next year off. All five years are at 80% pay, but getting a year off defo makes it worth it.
@@listey Long service leave is great. It encourages loyalty.
@@listey I love long service leave, I once went to Europe for 2 months.
Wow, great for the economy, not
Germany don't get an especially good deal with annual paid leave as most countries get 20+ days leave. The US is really the outlier by absolutely shafting their employees.
You can really make frinds at work. It depens on the person you meet and what kinde of person you are. Normaly it's like: coworker > good coworker | > | friend > good friend. The step between good coworker and friend does not alway happen.
The definition of friend is also a little bit different. I think that leads to the idear that you can't make friends so easy in germany.
you will meet people out of work. In germany there are multiple ways to meet people with the same interests and hobbys
go to the train station and you have to step over homeless people to get the train, are you telling me it´s their job 😂
germany still punish drug use, even cannabis use (even though they are legalizing) and lots of people are out of jobs thanks to a lack of treatment and because germany punish people that are feeling bad
even getting a place to live in germany for drug users are hard, because they are being punished for their illness...
If people take 2 weeks off to learn English, why would they go to the US to learn American. Come to England to learn English. The clue is in the name as Al Murray the pub landlord would say! Lol 😆
I think it is because a lot of Germans learn more American than British English, there's major US military bases in Germany, and a lot of films and media tend to come from across the Atlantic.
It's very interesting because speaking like an American is seen as the peak for a German, since it seems more efficient to learn the variety that's more widely spread and economically important.
It actually goes as far as some Germans feeling weird when they are told a term in British English, or are associated with it, because in their mind they speak American English, I think there's a few channels on German travellers to the US like Felicia who expressly mentioned getting annoyed if an American corrects themselves to say Football instead of Soccer for example.
It's quite bizzare, I personally always prefered learning British English, but I guess I can sort of understand where they are coming from.
@@witthyhumpleton3514 Interesting as I never considered that would be the goal.
People tend to visit countries where they actually feel being welcomed, i reckon.
In school I learned "BBC English" but this is 30+ years ago in working life I had to handle with British, US , Canadian, South African, Indian and Chinese colleges and my "english" is now a mixture of these variants.
I could go visit England over the weekend and already did a few times as it is convenient from where I live (Airports in Cologne and Düsseldorf, also some bus companies offer city trips to e.g. London leaving Friday around 9p.m. spend Saturday discovering London return early Sunday morning for about 60€). So, if having the oportunity I'd choose somewhere farther away.
Regarding workplace friendships: I'm austrian which is very similar to germany.
A worker spends 8 hours a day and 5 days a week with the collegues at work. It is very important to have a good relationship BUT after spending pretty much most of the time with them one just doesn't need to be around the same people at evening or the weekends too. Also, if privat life and worklife are seperated there will be way less annoying gossip going around. Who wants to work at a place where everyone knows and talks about ones love life or feels the urge to give unasked for advise to hobbies from people who usually don't know the first thing about it. Also one does not think about any workrelated things during the spare time and it is way more easy to not see anything or anyone who could remind one of work.
just to clearify some of his points: 24 days holdidays if you work full time is the minimum (2 per month). We also have 10+ public holidays. Educational leave is 2 weeks in 2 years - you may take them at once or split. Usually you don't need to do anything related to the job! There are other special holidays if you are a volunteer (I got unpaid leave for a trip with the sports club and the city covered 75% of my loss in income).
If you are sick, very often you only need a doctor's note from day 3 on! I have friends at work. I believe that is the older generation 🙂
I'm in Australia and in my company. We get 7 days paid sick leave a year.
5 weeks paid annual leave. What ever you don't use rolls over the next year.
12 weeks maternity leave for the women and 4 weeks for men.
We also can buy our leave if we have no leave accumulated or if we've used up all our leave. We have the option to still take 1 to 2 weeks purchase leave then when your back the company deducts $50 to $100 dollars from your pay every week until you paid back the money you received during your leave.
Also if you work full time which is 5 days a week 8.5 hrs a day you are entitled to get RDO which is 1 day off a month. If that makes sense. Because we get paid only the 8hrs and the other 30 mins is accumulated to go towards your RDO every month.
My favourite is public holiday. I'm not speaking for the rest of Australia but only for my company. You have a few options to choose how you would like to get paid.
1. You can choose to not work and just get paid for a normal day
2. You can choose to work the public holiday and get paid 250% of your pay rate for the day
3. You can choose to work 4 hrs on 150% of your pay rate for the day and go home and still get the other 4 hrs paid at normal pay rate.
4. You can choose to work the full 8 hrs of public holiday on 150 % of your pay rate and choose another day to have off paid at normal pay rate.
I get paid really good at the company I'm at and will never leave and these incentives I've just mentioned makes it hard for me to leave
In Oz I got 4 weeks leave a year plus 12 rostered days off, one per month and 2 weeks sick leave which carried over each year.
For sure we make friends @work too. Maybe its in general a cultural difference between the US and Germany. We are much more reserved and call somebody a "friend" is nothing what happens over night. Its maybe harder to connect but maybe deeper if you do.
Now i watched and enjoyed the whole Germany playlist. I would highly recommend you the channel of the blackforestfamily, a young american family, who lives and works in the Blackforest, since a couple of years. They have a lot videos, where they go deep down in your preferred issues, while showing differences or similarities.
..and they built a house , quite interesting. Greetings from Germany, Luna
In Australia in our now defunk auto industry, we had 4 weeks plus a 17.5% leave loading. The leave loading ended up covering most of your tax while on leave, plus 2 weeks sick leave which was upfront. You didn't have to work 12 months to "earn" your sick leave, any sick leave or annual leave that wasn't in calendar year was rolled over to the next year. That's the benefit of having good union negotiating for it's members.
It's rather amusing to see the thumbnail. Lots of countries will give 4 weeks holiday some will give 5 to allow for a Christmas break. The amazing thing is there are some third world countries that offer better leave arrangements than the US does. Some third world countries even allow long periods for maternity leave.
he never said you wouldn't find friends at work.
just that your coworker arn't automatically your friends. in general in europe, for someone to become your friend you have to actually enjoy each other's company, not just be remotely acquainted.
don't expect to be invited to their birthday because you asked them about the weather.
when someone call you their friend in europe, they are your FRIEND
About making friends: school and university are definitely places to find them. And I wouldn't agree that it never happens at the workplace, but usually people want to seperate work and free time - which includes the people you work with. So, if you don't connect with people at your workplace, do something different - join a club (sports or otherwise), or simply go to a pub. Don't overwhelm the people with your american small talk, though ;)
The minimum by law is 4 weeks paid leave in Germany. If you would work 6 days the week (as was the case for most people in 1963 as the law was made) that would add up to 24 days per year; nowadays 5 days per week is the norm, so it adds up to 20 days. Most companies will however grant about 30 days per year; if you work e.g. in civil service you get 6 weeks paid leave per year (according to the wage agreement for civil service, TVöD, negotiated by the trade unions). Additionally we have in 2023 8 public holidays at federal level (only counting such not at a Sunday) plus up to 4 state-wide public holidays. The work-free Sunday is a constitutional right since 1919; before that it was introduced as amendment to the trade law in 1891 to protect workers and their families: they should have at least one common day of rest per week to be together.
Overtime is officially frowned upon, but it is accepted if necessary to get work done in time. Many companies (as well as civil service) have flextime accounts at least for office jobs, and you're required to take time off at another day if you work overtime. Often the rule is you have to take time off for your overtime at least until 31 January of the following year. Paid leave on the other hand can be taken until 31 September of the following year (and - according to court decision - your employer has to remind you of it).
Sick notes: Most employers follow the rule "for up to 2 consecutive days of sick leave no doctor's note (called Arbeitsunfähigkeitsbescheinigung = "certification of inability to work" or short AU in Germany) is necessary, but at the 3rd day you have to supply one". Before this year that AU was a yellow slip of paper (sometimes still referred to as "gelber Zettel"), but now it can be done electronically: The physician sends it to your health insurance, which then provides it to your employer. There is no fixed number of sick days, and they are not deducted from your paid leave days. You are regularly paid by your employer for up to 6 weeks (depending e.g. on duration of employment) of consecutive sick days; after that time your health insurance will pay you up to 70% of your last income as "sick pay" (Krankengeld).
7:30 Work culture can differ widely depending on the company as well as the sector of industry it is in. Some companies do not appreciate "chatter in the hallways", others have another approach. Germans often tend to segregate their private social life from their work. So they'll not necessarily invite randomly colleagues to a private barbecue at home or have regularly after-work drinks together. That's however not so much the case with e.g. startups where all employees are young, without family and often "new in town". It depends also on the seating in the office. Open-plan offices with cubicles are rather the exemption in Germany (one reason may be labor law which e.g. guarantees each office worker a place with at least partial daylight) - those places would be rather "anonymous". Most offices have 2 to 6 desks, and there is of course sometimes some chatter about more private things (sick children, new house, favorite games and so on), but you would rarely have that with the person from the office next door except at social events (organized either by the colleagues or by the company itself).
Australia has sick leave, vacation time (usually four weeks), maternity leave, special leave for personal time etc - all paid. We can also roll over unused days into the next year.
What he says about being friends with colleagues is also not true. At least not always. My colleagues have known each other for over 30 years. They have celebrated many parties together, collected for deceased colleagues. In the lounge you can find a whole gallery of pictures of the fun they had back then. Sometimes in the summer we have a barbecue at lunchtime, or just last week we had a delicious Christmas meal paid for by the company. A caterer came with different kinds of meat, potatoes, sauces and cauliflower.
Also we have protection against dismissal here in Germany. In my case e.g. (working for the same company for over 20 years) my employer has to give me a 7 months' notice (fully paid) before I have to leave the company. And handicapped people get five extra days a year of paid leave.
Of course we do make friends at our workplaces. In my experience it just takes a little longer than for example in the US. But as soon as you become personally involved it is usually deeper.
After you've seen how much better working conditions are outside the US, I thought you'd be looking at working abroad, on a young person's working visa, either in Europe or Australia. Your university may have contacts with companies in countries you fancy working in. I'm sure the experience you'd gain would enhance your CV, if you decided to return to the US after a year or 2 away.
We have 5 weeks of vacation in Finland: 4 weeks in summer and 1 week in winter during Christmas.
Working in Germany is something different for sure. I work for Amazon in Dortmund and planing to move to London during this year, so I compared it and less holidays in London, working in night shift benefits me 2 hours less every day and 30% add-on on payments here in Germany, London would raise my working time by 2 hours and just adds less than 2 pounds for the night shift to my salary. (Germany add about 4.50€ per hour). Same job, same company, different country and the working benefits dropped kinda drastically.
We Germans do bond with colleagues, but during working hours the hierarchy has to be as it should be. Friendship can happen, relationships between colleagues happens. Germans hate small talk and to bond to a stranger without small talk is simply harder. The moment we found a common interest, it is like everywhere else in the world.
I'm South African, and my employer, with whom I've been 24 years, gives all employees 24 working days annual leave, extra leave for every 5 years for long service after 10 years (next year in 2024, I'm getting an additional 30 working days, which can be encashed), 80 days sick leave over 3 years cycle, 5 days per annum for family responsibility/compassionate leave. We get 100% of salary 13th check as a bonus in the month of your appointment. They give bursaries for further studies as well. Pay 60% of medical insurance, contribute 22% equivalent of your salary towards pension, and if you own your own home, they give a housing allowance as well. Mothers get 3 months maternity leave after birth of child, dads get 1 week paternity leave
Australia has 4 weeks paid annual leave also plus a 17.5% leave loading paid so you have more money to have a holiday with. We also have 'long service leave' which is 1 month fully paid extra leave every 10 years of service in the same employment. Also, 7 national holidays plus state/territory holidays per year.
I rarely create bonds/friendships with colleagues. Having a good relation to your colleagues is important, however it is most of the time on a professional level. Having insight into some colleagues private life or interest makes them vulnerable. So most of us avoid sharing too much private informations. Although we share a common ground of information. Some is kept hidden as it might put someone our yourself into a bad position. So in the end it is having a good (professional) time at work without having too much contact. Especially in jobs with high employee turnover.
About making friends at work: Your points, why you love that (meeting people in class having random conversations etc), is EXACTLY why it is frowned upon at German workplaces. If in a 500 people company everyone would be spending 3x10 minutes per day talking about taking about the barbecue last weekend, then that would be 15000 minutes of lost time - during work hours - which in turn would mean, that a lot of people would have to stay late making overtime. And that is exactly, what is happening in the US. You can't have both, chit chat during the day and then get home punctually and additionally having 20 days off.
This sound ls a bit abstract, but as someone, who has worked in two different work cultures, in an work environment like the US, it happens quite easily, that over the whole work day, there are four, five people coming to your desk (or you walking over) to chit-chat about something. As someone who has planned out their work day, knowing full well what should be done by the end of the day, each time something like that happens to me, I cringe up slightly innerly, because I know that every minute someone tells me about his niece's school performance or the juicy barbecue meat, I know I will get home late by that storys amount of time. And I know that I am exchanging this or that of my long planned fun activities against that completely uninteresting story. So why would I do that - and more importantly, why would I do that to someone else?
In Canada we get a minimum of 2weeks vacation. This goes to 3 weeks after 5 years and if you stay with a company for 20+ years it can go up to 6 weeks. We also get 10 paid public holidays per year. Most companies give 5 to 10 sick days per year.
Bei vielen Jobs hast du "Gleitzeit", d.h. Arbeitsbeginn ist z.B. zwischen 0800 und 1000, d.h. du bist erst zu spät, wenn du nach 1000 zur Arbeit kommst. Wenn natürlich Besprechungen, Workshops etc. angesetzt sind, musst du natürlich pünktlich zu deren Beginn da sein. Feiertage gibt es zwischen 10 und 12 pro Jahr, abhängig vom jeweiligen Bundesland. Diese werden natürlich auch bezahlt, allerdings nicht nachgeholt, wenn diese auf ein Wochenende fallen. Freunde kann man im Job durchaus finden, so absolut wie im Video sehe ich das nicht. Also, lerne etwas Brauchbares, Deutschland freut sich darauf, dich begrüßen zu dürfen! 😄
Here, the Nordic countries and Germany are copies of each other! The holidays in our countries are the same length, if you get sick you have the same rights in all our countries, etc. And apropos the contact with work colleagues - at the company where I worked there were MANY people who had met their partners, so neither Germans nor us Nordics are hermits. We often met after work and did nice things together. You are young! Why not move here to us here in Europe. :-)
First day of sickness is unpaid in Sweden. A real deficit.
@@kellymcbright5456 if I remember right in Germany too, or you have to get a certificate by a doctor. That
law was made to stop people from just taking a day of by saying: I am ill 🙂
@@juttaweise No, not in Germany. A proposal appeared in the 90ies, but was rejected by an overwhelming majority.
You need a certificate, yes. But then you get paid.
In Sweden you do not get paid under whatever circumstance, and no certificate changes that.
In most cases, it is but right what @Stig said. The swedish welfare state in it's beginning copied most regulations from Germany which was kind of the admired model of the achievements of the workers' movement.
It's not that Germans don't socialize with their colleagues at work. That's a big part of the "Kaffeepause" - the coffee break he first talked about. Sometimes, colleagues that like each other will go out for lunch together / share their lunch break. In some companies, there's "break rooms", where you can play foosball or darts or just talk to each other. It's just that we separate our work life with what comes after work.
And it's not uncommon that people find their SO at work. My sister married one of her co-workers and they still both work at the same company. How would that have been possible if we didn't socialize at work? ;)
I think it's more about the general difference between what's a friend in europe and NA. what they call friends are more like acquaintances.
@@grischad20 Well, if I read that word, I wouldn't want to use it, either XD It would most probably be translated with "Bekannter" in German - a person you know the name of and perhaps basic information, but who's not as close to you as a "Kumpel" (buddy) or real friend would be. (Explanation for those who don't speak German.)
I worked holidays which gave me two paid vacation days each. I had about 2 months off each year. 1,5 month bag packing while you get paid like you work is fantastic. It left me two weeks for family stuff and little trips. You actually get almost an extra months pay each year in holiday money, you still get paid on holiday so you can use the holiday money just for or the holiday. When you go on holiday one or two weeks, you count the days. With 6 weeks you don’t think about that. After so long, you are almost happy to go home. With a bad pack you really get to experience a country. The money spend goes directly to the locals, not to some hotel chain.
If you go to a developing country you understand there is more to life, struggles of people there make seem your own back home trivial.
I worked at Volkswagen from 1998 to 2006. From 1993 to 2003, Volkswagen had a 4 day week (28.8 hours per week = 1209 hours per year - 230 hours vacation = 979 hours work per year = 135 days per year) and earned around 50,000 euros per year.
German here! I´m supervisor for our shift and I have a very relaxed, face to face relation with my Boss, who´s only the next level in a big Company. Which means we could talk straight forward, if there is something. no ones angry, its about work! When we have a chance to share a short coffee brake, its all about personal stuff we´re talking about. But we both know where to stop. A good buddy at the bar, but still your boss is hard to manage. Thats basically what they wanted to figure out.
In New Zealand you get 4 weeks paid holiday per year and you can accumulate this if you want to. There are also sick days bereavement leave and a few public holidays as well.
Yeah, almost the same in Australia with 4 weeks annual leave and paid public holidays. Work in the same job for 7.5 ~ 10 years and you are entitled to up to 16 weeks paid leave, called “Long Service Leave.”
This guy is only speaking from his experience. Keep that in mind.
My experience:
1. We can be friends with co workers and sometimes even click immediately.
2. It's not really easy to get sick leave. Your doctor will define weather you are able to work or not. Many companies don't like it if you miss a lot of work days and you might have to answer uncomfortable questions.
3. Often people are expected to work overtime, which will be either paid or you get the hours added to your account and you can use them some other day.
4. Question: do you really still get a physical paycheck every 2 weeks? I see and read that sometimes on social media or TV?
We usually get paid once a month by bank transfer.
I love your enthusiasm about my country and enjoy your videos a lot.
Danke und Tschüss 😀
In Australia working full time the minimum 4 weeks a year paid holiday leave is normal. Australia it is normal to have a number of paid days sick leave, usually about a week. With personal issues in Australia most employers are compassionate too and offer paid or unpaid leave off work, depending on the situation. It's sad the US can't offer the same as other developed countries.
In Australia you get 4 weeks annual leave with full pay, plus 17.5 % on top of your weekly holiday pay depending on the award agreements covering the industry you work in, leave loading is taxable but the 1st $320 is not.
I’ve got many co-workers who actually became couples sooner or later. My parents met at work too.
About „keeping co-workers at arms-length“ it’s partly about respecting that their private life doesn’t necessarily have to include you and it sometimes feels like an infringement of their privacy if you try (at least it’s that way for me).
Then again I managed countless times to have long conversations with my colleagues after work, delaying both them and me from getting home.
I’ve got 38 days paid leaves this year in Germany ❤️❤️❤️ if you add Saturdays and Sundays, it’s almost 2 months!
Great reaction 👍🏻 greetings from Austria 🇦🇹
the Kaffe and Kuchen Tradion is also a thing when you have a Birthday. Its up to you but Colleges love when you bring a Cake ,Cupcakes or Muffins to Work . Dont need to be something huge just yummy stuff to take a Moment off to Celebrate the Birthday in a Work Break
In Australia as well as all these things, if you have worked for the same employer for 7 years or more you also get paid Long Service Leave on top of your annual leave, this is written into Employment Law. And I have used it to travel a lot 😊
Annual leave is also loaded , with an extra 17.5% on top if normal pay added. The 8 hour working day, started first in Australia, is celebrated with a Public Holiday😊
I get 30 days PTO in Germany, as do most others. The sick days are also paid. If you are seriously sick, your employer will pay your full wage the first six weeks of your sick days, after that the health insurance pays you 70 percent of your wages. I have been on sick leave for 3 months without being afraid to lose my job.
Here in tiny Barbados, we have pretty much the same leave benefits here: especially in the public service, and within the University of the West Indies. Many if not most people are entitled to 3 weeks off minimum upon assuming full-time work which rises to 28 days after five years. Plus many jobs allow all 12 public holidays off with pay, or in the situation where the employee is required to work, they are entitled to double or triple the hourly rate depending on the holiday (Christmas Day, Easter would fall into the latter category). Also in the public service, you can get 2 weeks of study leave per semester, at least that was the case when I was there.
In Australia we have a months annual leave, about 8 public holidays, 10 days sick leave and after 10 years we have 2 months long service leave. ALL PAID Life is good.
He just mentiones the legal required minimum of vacation days. Through your unions you can negotiate a lot more.
In my company we have 10 weeks payed leave every year.
We can choose between 6 weeks off and 4 weeks extra payment, or having all 10 weeks off.
We need more time for our friends 😂. By the way my two almost sisters friends are former co-workers 😊
So to explain this with a concrete example. For me it looks like this: I work as a forklift driver for a food company for frozen food. Who doesn't like fish fingers?
We work from Monday to Friday from 6 a.m. to 2:06 p.m. We have a lot of work.
We have at least 30 days' holiday a year (older colleagues have more).
If we work overtime, we can have it paid out or accumulate it for compensatory time off. Some colleagues have accumulated several hundred hours.
We get a cold storage allowance on top of our normal hourly wage. That means we get extra money when we work in the cold store. But since we work with closed forklifts, that's not bad. It's rare to have to get out now and then for something. At minus 29 degrees.
We also have a menu every week when we order lunch. (Costs 3,20€), because our location is about 4 kilometres away from our production plant, it is brought to us by the external truck driver of our supplier, who works together with us. He has the job of driving the pallets from us to production. (Due to a lack of space, our colleagues cannot store a lot of goods in their cold store).
We deliver up to 350 tonnes of raw fish every day.
By the way, we are only allowed to work a maximum of 10 hours a day. The employer must then compensate us for the next day. For example, we have to start work later.
We also have an Edeka supermarket that is open 24 hours a day. From 6am on Monday until 11:59pm on Saturday.
Sunday is generally not worked. There are exceptions. Petrol stations must also be open on Sundays.
I think the „not making friends“ part is mostly just in higher paid, office jobs. If you’re working in Warehouse like me for example, you know every guy you’re working with pretty well, we talk about whatever. I don’t know them well enough to actually go out with them after work, but there’s prolly like 2-3 days in the week where we’re just hanging out in our warehouse after work, drinking a beer or fire up the grill :)
Here in Australia we enjoy 4 weeks paid annual leave , paid at a rate of 117% of your salary. Ten per cent as Superannueation ( i.e. your employer's contribution to your retirement- this accumulates and moves with you for life.. Also 13 public holidays ( also paid) and are entitled to a minimum of 10 sick days ( paid ) per annum. Some days such as Birth of a cild ( 3 for men, many weeks for mothers), Funeral leavealso and family days ( e.g. graduation of son/ daughter. I'm sure ther's more but that's all I can remember at the moment. That's most of what I know. I have a pension scheme like the army. Punctuality is mandatory and can lead to dismisal- so too partial drunkenness. Ocertime is 1 and 1/2 your hourly rate after 8 hours and on certain days like weekends, particularly Sundays ( twice hourly rate) and night work ( outside 9-5 p.m.) That's all I can think of but, Joel, I guess you're reeling in yor chair by now.
I feel your pain when you heard about paid leave in Germany. Have there not been any improvements in American work culture since COVID? I thought maybe some companies would have introduced sick leave at the least.
I live in the Netherlands. I work 40 hours a week and have 40 days off each year. When I get sick with like the flu, it's normal to stay home a few days. If it takes longer or you have something more serious, you will have to see a special doctor (besides the your own personal one) that also reports back to your company to inform them how long your absence will be. Maybe you start working only a few hours a day before starting with full days again.
If you have had a chronic illness or accident, your doctor can send you to a clinic. The stay usually lasts three weeks and of course you will continue to receive your salary. We call it rehabilitation and it can be repeated every three or four years.
you're a good man Joel. respect
Those benefits were mostly not given by any employer or government out of free will, it was fought for by workers unions. England and even the USA had official unions even before most other countries in Europe had (correct, if I am wrong, might not have all data). The ugly part is that the movement to keep unions strong died in the USA and the laws started to favor the employers in the chase for the allmighty short term dollar.
French and germans are coconuts and american are apricots in term of friendship. In the apricot the knife meet no resistance but can't get on the stone. Wirh the coconut the skin seems unbreakable but once it's done, it goes right to the heart.
Bugger living in the US, in Australia we get at least 4 weeks paid annual leave, sometimes 5, ADO’s, 10 days paid sick leave. This is of course if your full time or permanent part time.
I have 30 days vacation. Since I have been working in my company for 25 years, I have received 1 additional day per year. Since I have a mother who is disabled, I get 8 days of special leave a year to take care of her. So a total of 39 days of paid vacation. In addition, there is overtime that can be accumulated and paid as days off.
German companies are not "generous", but they had to accept that after bargaining with the unions. The legal minimum amount is 24 days a year, if you work a 6 day week. Otherwise it is less.
Educational holidays are not part of the Federal Law. States regulate that. But there are also 8-12 public holidays a year, but some of them are on weekends.
All that other time off (like in case of family issues) is also part of the so called "Tarifvertrag". Which is a general contract with unions and companies.
Btw. companies also unionize in a organization called "Arbeitgeberverband". Tarifvertrags are between workers unions and Arbeitgeberverbands.
His remarks about friends and companies are a kind of misleading. Keep in mind, that friendship in Germany is a way more serious affair (remember Mark Wolters video about that?).
Like many others here already mentioned: Becoming friends at work is not as unheard of as the video mentions. I do count quite a lot of my colleagues as friends, and, using my roommate as an example, there is seldom a day over the week, where my roommate doesn't have one or more colleagues over at our place, as a majority of his friends are also his colleagues. I think it's very depending on the size of the company you are working at and the type of person you are. Starting a new job it might take a little longer to get to know people on a more personal level compared to the US (but that's only a guess, i've never been or worked in the USA)
Actually If I remember correctly its a minimum of 24 Days paid leave per year, If you are working a fulltime job so I think atleast 30h/w, but im not entirely sure about this one tbh.
20 days is the legal minimum of vacation days, the average is 30 days. In addition, there are also 5 days of educational leave, if you want. And 10 paid holidays. You have to use the vacation, only part of it can be paid out. The days must not expire any more.
Sick Days: Whats not mentioned in the video is, that in a lot of Companys a "Note from a doctor" is needed just after the 3rd or 4th day. So you can have paid sick days for 1 to 3 days just by saying "Im sick".
Maybe the friends thing is list in translation. In my experience it’s completely normal to be friendly with your co-workers but Germans tend to make a distinction between friends and friendly acquaintances. I’d talk about personal stuff with co-workers but if I had a serious problem I needed help with, I would rather talk to a real friend. That being said, I met my best friends at work. We’ve all moved on to different employers since but we’re still friends.
I have made many friends at work (as a German), so I don't get why people sometimes claim we don't do that here. You just remain professional anyway at work.
i work at a grocery store and i usually work from monday to saturday and have a day off in the middle of the week. of course sunday is an offday too. I have 36 days paid leave. they also offer many other benefits.. like buying a bicycle and the company paid the tax, or 5 % off the goods they sell. If i use puplic transport they would have bought my a annual ticket. i use my car, so they give me a monthly gift card for gasoline. Of course they pay half of the taxes ( like every company has to) but they also offer a additional retirement fond.
Oh, btw, i am only a part time worker with 25-30 hours per week..i get all the benefits as long as i earn more than 520 euros per month
As a German I like to add 😉: There ist a difference in Germany between "friend" and "aquaintance" - it´s not that strange as ist is mentioned in the video
What gets dropped many times when it comes to PTO : Germany, depending on its state, has at least 10 days, in some instances up to 15 days of public holidays. Unfortunately the concept that a public holiday falling on a weekend being considered an observed holiday has not yet been put into law yet. These public holidays are in addition to the 24 days minimum a company has to grant you.
On top of that many companies allow you to accrue additional PTO days off for overtime, up to a certain limit. These PTO days are added to an account. Every 8 hours overtime accrue can be transmuted into one day PTO. Note: not all companies do this, but from what I've gathered a large majority do.
yeah we dont really do friends at work, but almost every german is a member in at least 2 clubs / associations, be that sports or sth else to meet people and do activities in your leisure time, thats where we meet our friends
The actual law on paid leave states that you have six weeks of paid leave, so the actual number of days depends on the days per week you work according to your contract. Part-time can mean you get 12 days (2 days week) and full time shift work can mean 24 days (6 days a week). On top of that you also have to consider work hours, having a 40 hour contract with a six day week means, you work rarely 6 days in a row, sometimes 4, most of times 5 but still get 24 days of vacation.
At 4:00 you adress certifications and qualifications, there is an important thing to consider. In case your employer needs you to take this class/course etc to actually work your job, it is paid work time. Not time off, but time you spend on the clock. The 2 weeks mentioned in the video are things you choose, not your employer. Some people even study for bachelors or masters degrees on company time, usually with a 5 year exclusive contract after graduation.
At 7:00 there is a simple reason for that, you are there on company time, you "sold" your time to the company. Your boss tells you what you need to do, you do not grant favours to collegues or ask for them, you do not expect benefits from your boss. It is a way to keep nepotism out of the picture, it does not work all the time, but thats because some people break this habit of not bonding too closely on the job.
In Australia I get 4 weeks annual leave 8 sick days no dr note required + 10 more days sick with dr note needed I also have long service leave (currently 40+ days) I can purchase extra leave and pay it back across 12 months and we get public holidays. We also have flexible work arrangements around part time work and work from home! Don't live to work...work to live
I have never not had the option of sick leave...two days or more and you generally need a note from your doctor though . single day off (tues to thurs so they don't just let you have a long weekend) you can do without a note though. I can't remember how many days a year we were limited to though
Here in germany we do make differences between workers and hired office people.
Most of the workers are paid per hour on a monthly base
Most of the office people or on service jobs are paid monthly fixed salery.
Workers with paying per hour getting extra money on extra hours. Weekend working will be paid by higher percentages. The monthly out paid money can be varifying by the worked hours.
People who have got fixed salery get not extra money for extra hours but can get extra days off.
8 hours = 1 day off.
The maximum working hours in a day are regulated by laws or of what fought out by strikes of the workers unions but in some causes union members will get those special conditions, only.
So if you aren't a union member than maybe your salery will be much lower than the salery of the union members.
Holidays are regulated by laws, too and of what worker unions have fought out.
In minimum the holidays are three weeks and the maximum can be open by special regulations.
In lot of normal conditions it is varifying between the from the state guranteed three weeks up to six weeks or more than that.
Young people below the age of 18 or disabled people will get much more holidays as vacations in addition.
I disagree on the friends at work thing. I've made friends in almost every job I had & those friendships last until today, years after I left the company. But I have to agree, I prefer to not spend my entire free time in a work setting & the introvert in me is just not loving after work drinks. that's a personal thing though.
I work in Tech in Berlin - just for reference. :)
I guess the friendship thing between coworkers isn't that true. At least at the "arbeiterschicht" we tend to become friends. Sure everybody has their own "bubble" but we still go out a few times in a year with the colleges