German engineers

Engineers are usually a bit awkward, but the German engineer has got to be the worst. It's like acting in a weird German variant of The Office. Everyone's wearing a short-sleeved shirt with way too big sleeves. The bosses (and the boss-wannabes) have a tie to that. Funny thing is that one of the last things that I read before I left Sweden was to never, ever wear a short-sleeved shirt. :)

Terrified of doing mistakes they dare not to do anything; there are loads of regulations and rules and procedures to brake - it's like moving in a mine-field. So most people don't move. Safest that way. But they hate it! Of course they do, it sucks - so they have to somehow let that frustration out. They do that by fucking with others, referring to the system. "We must have a stamp here." "We need the original." Whining, whining, in some bizarre way trying to get even with the system by making others miserable using that system. Like today: A paper came back, filled with stamps and signatures. It wasn't the original, get us the original. Sure, one stamp had to be gotten from another city so we'd used the scanned and mailed version and then gotten the last signatures. We went to the person we thought rejected the paper but now it was ok! "A colleague must have blah blah..." Unbelievable! Of course, when we came back later with a paper we forgot, we got the "please use the normal procedure... I have lots to do" waltz, but the paper was accepted.