bestandworstofgermany
how to survive in Germany, Deutschland without cultural barriers, best and worst of Germany
When to call somebody in Germany
As my heart is still beating from stress from a man shouting on me on the other end of the wire cause I seemed to called him in the middle of his lunch break.
I have a client who has an issue which I am supposed to solve, so I just googled the phone number of the government authority and dialed in. To get some clerk to answer the phone just to shout at me!
As this is not the first time I am in a similar situation, it made me think that in Germany it is my job in this situation to find out his highness working hours and dial in being sure I am calling on his working hours.
Picture from Wickimedia Commons
Well normally I consider my job to resist to pick my phone when somebody is calling me outside my working hours and deal with the anxiety related to either not answering or answering and then dealing with the feeling of being pissed off to be made to work on my free time. But as you guess I take it as my job not somebody´s else. Because, as a matter of fact, I accept a probability that my significance in this world might be rather limited, so people might simply not know when exactly my working hours are. Especially when they are used to quite other work schedule! And I have to say I am rather proud of my progress with dealing with my feelings lately.
Maybe in Germany if the phone rings regardless that outside the working hours, it is a deadly sin to not answer? And, knowing that, maybe it demonstrates ruthless rudeness to call outside working hours? I don´t know, I was not raised by a German mother?! But this is what I am starting to guess. And also maybe it is ok to start shouting on the person on another end of the wire? Even though when it is, I still find it so unprofessional providing the seriousness of the institution I was trying to talk to.
So in case you want to avoid putting yourself into a similar stress I just did, simply google your target name with a keyword Sprechstunden. Not Öffnungszeiten which stands for opening hours. As the two might and sometimes do differ!
And sometimes they are really ridiculous. But it is Germany, so I should not be surprised by now, right?
bestandworstofgermany 
Wow, when germans got into the song “Call Me, Maybe” they really must have put the emphasis on the maybe part…
Why do you think Germany is so efficient? 🙂
You can’t get much done if you keep getting interrupted.
Thats right. So shoukd have not picked the phone when I unknowingly called outside Sprechstunden. Instead if barking at me he coukd have done even more and being mire efficient 😉
That’s true and that’s why I almost never answer the phone: https://andreasmoser.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/why-i-dont-answer-the-phone/
As I come from the culture where the phone must be answered everywhere with no exception, it took me time and great deal of effort to learn to not answer the phone outside my working hours and during my breaks at work and also when I had something very important to finish.