Germany is a land famous for rules. These rules not only mean that you have to register yourself when you move into a new apartment and sign everything several times, but also that there are unwritten rules that govern interactions with other people. I am not sure what they all are, but I've learned a little bit, mostly about elevator greeting.
Most of the labs here at the Institut für Organische Chemie are housed in a 6-story (7-story, American style) building referred to as the tower (die Turm). The group I'm in is on the 5th floor, so of course we take the elevator (the elevator was recently broken for a day and productivity dropped because no one wanted to walk down to the ground floor to drop off NMR samples). I was in the elevator with some labmates on the way back from eating some disgusting food in the Mensa, and some one from a new research group entered the elevator. They didn't say hi to us, and we didn't say hi to them. When they got out, my labmate remarked that the Rueping lab people are funny because they never say hi. I asked if anyone in our lab had tried to say hi to them, and my labmate answered that they were required to say hi to us because they had entered the elevator after us. Why can't people just say hi?
This rule also applies to when you approach a group of people in other situations, such as walking into the coffee area when people are already there. The new person is apparently supposed to interrupt the conversation the others are already engaged in and say hello. If you say nothing, you will pretty much be ignored. Why didn't anyone explain this to me sooner? I did not know about these rules and thought that people were just unfriendly. I can confirm that people will really just ignore you if you don't say hello first, which seems ridiculous.
You may be thinking that there are situations in which two people approach each other at the same time, for example passing in a hallway. Who is supposed to be the first to greet then? Apparently, the younger person has to be the one to greet. Are there any rules I'm missing? Is this why I don't have many (read:any) German friends?
Another unrelated note about greetings--the email sign-off "greetz" at the end of English emails written by non-native English speakers is apparently very popular. Why have they come to think it is correct? I can understand directly translating the German "Viele Grüße" into "many greetings," which is also not a standard English sign off, but where did they get the idea to ghetto-ize it into Greetz. It reminds me of Bratz, and I don't ever want to be remind of Bratz dolls.
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2 comments:
The interaction rules! I noticed these rules while sitting in the waiting room for a doctor. Every person that entered the room said Hallo or Guten Morgen and then sat down. People mostly ignored this greating but when someone entered the room without a greeting(me or some other foreigner), a awkward feeling descended upon the room. Every one also said Tchuss! upon leaving, despite the fact that they never spoke to anyone else in the room. Weird...I have to test out this elevator theory soon. My office is on the second floor so I have never used the elevator here...
Being a german, I never thought about these "rules", because I always considered this "natural behaviour". But I'll make sure to tell future students who share our home about them, since they do not seem to be universal after all. Claudia
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