In the late 1970s, when I was assigned in Germany for two years....I never noticed any burn-out or stress issues with most Germans. If something bothered them (particularly there at work)....they'd just cut loose a 5-minute lecture (with profanity) about how this was supposed work this way, or this was the failure of 'Martin' (the planning guy in the front office).
Even when I returned in the mid-1980s......I kinda noticed the same thing. People were able to get things off their chest and feel better about some screwed-up situation.
But as I returned again in 1993....that was a time of evolution....things were changing.
You'd notice less lectures, and just grumbling....like they didn't want to discuss the situation in front of people, or give hype to the failures of planning.
So in this era of the 1990s.....vacations seemed to be the solution to this bundled-up anger. You'd go off for two to three weeks.....get over your anger and frustrations.
In the past twenty years? I would suggest around of German society is in a permanent game of pressure...without much relief except the summer vacation.
What's really going on? I would suggest four key elements:
1. Germans have this anticipation that things are built to meet expectations....so if the train arrives eight minutes late.....it bothers them. If the train is mid-way to Frankfurt and halts for sixteen minutes because of oncoming traffic? Well...that shouldn't happen.
The telephone problem which requires eighteen days before a technician can come out to fix the problem? Again....in their mind, it should not be this way.
2. German acceptance of marginally-competent people? It's probably at a all-time low.
Just being a average 'slacker'....won't cut it with half of German society now.
3. Realization that PhD folks might not be that bright? In a quiet bar setting, you might find a fair number of Germans now talking over the chief-director of the company, or Doctor-so-V-so....who is fairly incompetent and not up to the task.
4. Just in general, when you look at the design of processes.....how a train works, or how a bank functions...or how the cellphone network is built.....it's like a thousand processes bundled together and any of them can fail.....triggering a 'ultra-bad' day.
Germans have become critical of these designs and complexity geared to a fairly advanced society.
Covid? It came along and offered an entirely different situation of stress problems. You couldn't go to your favorite bar hangout. You couldn't discuss matters with your drinking buddy.
So this is like an anchor....dragging them along, and the stress builds up daily over the little things.
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