There's an Ausbildung for that

The German capacity to impose order rivals that of the Borg. Many people don't notice it because it's such a quietly pervasive part of German society. Spend enough time with Germans or in Germany, though, and you'll start to see it too.

There are little habits like the German love for office supplies. Go to a classroom and nearly everyone has a “Mäppchen“, which is a little pocket that holds their traditional pencils, mechanical pencils, ball-point pens, felt-tip pens, markers, ruler(s) and highlighters. All usually in assorted colors.

Then there are some very well hidden things, like the German legal system. This one took me a long time to notice. I was sitting in a seminar and all of the students seemed to be quoting legal statutes in their presentations, and I thought “Why the hell is there a law for the establishment of recreational small gardens or the amount of fertilizer you can apply to a potato field?” But when I was making my presentation on patent law in the US, all of the laws I found were vaguely worded, and I ended up referencing dozens of court cases in my presentation to get the point across. Then it dawned on me; Germany's legal system isn't based on laws open to interpretation or hair-splitting court cases like the US. They have a statutory legal system, and they codify everything beforehand; there is no uncertainty. The US inherited a common law legal system from Britain, so we have dozens of court cases to determine exactly how a law applies in this and that situation. Also the German legal system doesn't use wishy-washy, imprecise juries. There is just a judge, and if need be, two lay judges, but the lay judges are most certainly not your peers like the jury would be in the US. This bit would be a bonus for me if I immigrated, since I've already been called for jury duty twice in the US!

But my favorite daily example of German order, and, incidentally the topic of this post, is the German apprenticeship system (Ausbildungssystem). The German lower schooling system is a riddle wrapped in a mystery broken into a jigsaw puzzle and cloaked in a conundrum, so I won't even attempt to explain that in this post, but at the end of it all the students have to choose a career, and heaven knows they can't just get a job. They have to first go through one of Germany's 344 governmentally approved Ausbildungen (translated). When I first heard about this system, I though it was fantastic, and admittedly I still kind of do, but for different reasons.

The Ausbildungssystem assures you as the consumer that not just anyone is building your roads, painting your walls, or wiring your house. And in the US we still have apprenticeships for professions like plumber, electrician, barber, carpenter and so forth. It's a good system. I don't want some guy whose “got a thing for electronics” wiring my house, I want a professional. But Germany takes it to a whole new level. If you looked through the list of approved apprenticeships, some of them make perfect sense. They provide the German work force with people trained to do very technical and specific jobs that any industrialized society needs. Some of the jobs though, just seem like the sort of joke a lawyer would hide in a contract to see if anyone actually reads the fine print. There is the Biology Model Maker (this link is in German), the Screed Layer (what the hell is screed?!), the Precision Optician (who is different from the regular Optician...somehow), the Surface Coater, and the list goes on.

The point is, it gets far too specific for my tastes, and some of the jobs seem like they hardly need training. For instance the Ausbilding to become a waiter takes three years! At Red Robin I got a week of training and was thrown to the sharks. My first table was a birthday party of handicapped tweens. I made two of them cry and one boy dislocated another girl's wrist. It was a blood bath. More training would have been nice, but three years is still ridiculous. On the upside, I think the Germans who go through the apprenticeships have more pride in their careers and tend to keep them longer, whereas many Americans take a job and then switch when it no longer suits them.

Now, you might say that this is just an example of out of control bureaucracy; just because the apprenticeships exist doesn't mean the Germans actually hire the people. I beg to differ. Another note on German culture is that Do-It-Yourself does not exist here, not to the extent it does in the US. When I was in language school in Radolfzell, my host mom's son had his birthday party at our house, and they didn't grill or potluck; their hired a butcher. I've been volunteering at a library in town. They had to move buildings and instead of taking things apart themselves, they hired a carpenter. A motion-controlled light needed to be installed, they hired an electrician. My bathroom ceiling molded over, they hired a painter and a sheetrocker.

It's not that the Germans are lazy or incapable, not at all. It's just that the Germans want things done right, and they value dependability. I guarantee, if that motion-controlled light stops working, the electrician will be there to fix it the next day. And the carpenter that was hired for the move was, incidentally, the one who built all of the fixtures in the first place 10 years ago. For me, the sense of fulfillment and triumph I get when I build a futon or a desk is worth it, but for a German it's better to know that that futon or desk is built properly, and that there is someone whose reputation you can depend on standing behind the desk.

I don't think I'll ever be able to understand totally the German need for Ordnung, but I'm getting closer. Though I still wonder what three years of training would be like to become a waiter.