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Forgot to mention - in a week I am taking a high-level exam in German at the Goethe-Institut. All you Germans can wish me good luck - if you want to that is :-)
I got 93 points out of a hundred possible for that exam. I am a certified Germanophile now - literally. And have more love and pride than ever.
I'm an American in Europe. In every country I have visited, the customer service is much worse than in the US. Don't take it personally. That's just how it is here.
That is because people who perform customer service are viewed as equals, not as a lower class who are supposed to kiss the customer's *ss. Waiters in German restaurants get a livable wage and are not dependent on tips, so they are naturally less inclined to perform a song and dance around the customer.
Personally, I've never found anything to complain about any time I've been over there. But then maybe it's because I am European too.
That is because people who perform customer service are viewed as equals, not as a lower class who are supposed to kiss the customer's *ss. Waiters in German restaurants get a livable wage and are not dependent on tips, so they are naturally less inclined to perform a song and dance around the customer.
Personally, I've never found anything to complain about any time I've been over there. But then maybe it's because I am European too.
Service workers in the US are not seen as sub human. That's a common misconception. They're treated well in and customers consider tipping 20 percent obligatory, not something waiters earn or grovel for. It's just a different system.
I'm not saying the way things are done in the US is superior to European countries. I don't think that. Different countries do things differently. I can see why Americans misunderstand the service they receive in Europe and interpret it as rude though. In the US, customers receive far more deference.
That is because people who perform customer service are viewed as equals, not as a lower class who are supposed to kiss the customer's *ss. Waiters in German restaurants get a livable wage and are not dependent on tips, so they are naturally less inclined to perform a song and dance around the customer.
Personally, I've never found anything to complain about any time I've been over there. But then maybe it's because I am European too.
I don't think customer service is that much different, it just depends on what type of establishment you go to, a one star hotel is going to have very different service to a five star hotel and the same applies to eateries and restaurants.
In terms of more general customer service contrary to what many Americans believe, many small shops and businesses in Europe have offered centuries of superb customer service.
Whilst even big companies in the UK and Europe offer same day delivery and deliver shopping etc to your door.
This isn't true. The U.S. is nowhere close to majority German descent, but has an even lower % of British descent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NOLA101
Again, none of this is true. You aren't looking at Census data if you come to this conclusion. And there isn't even any such thing as "British" ethnicity in the U.S. ancestry.
In the latest Census, 46 million Americans claimed German ancestry. Only 25 million Americans claimed English ancestry.
Only?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim Randal Walker
And beyond a significant degree of intermarriage in the family tree, claiming any one ethnicity for your background becomes arbitrary.
However, I don't recall "mutt" being listed as a category for either census or genealogy purposes.
Exactly right
Both of my parents having been born and raised in the south (as were their parents, grandparents, g-grandparents, etc.) were never, ever big on espousing their ancestry because as far as they are concerned they are Americans...and have been for a couple of centuries.
Besides that whenever Americans are traveling abroad nobody and I mean nobody ever asks what country an American originated from; they don't care (nor should they) because we ARE Americans.
English Americans
English Americans, also referred to as Anglo-Americans, are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England, a constituent country of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. For these reasons, no other part of the pluralist American society is so difficult to describe as a separate entity as the English.
Sense of identity
Americans of English heritage are often seen, and identify, as simply "American" due to the many historic cultural ties between England and the U.S. and their influence on the country's population.
This kind of guilt the author is talking about can't be eradicated because someone in a conscious manner can say "enough, let's be done and over with it." Only time can take care of these matters, and it hasn't been even 100 years since those events.
Another thing I'd like to note ( on those Muslims giving Nazi salutes) is that Hitler himself acknowledged that Islam would have been much more fitting than Christianity for his purposes.
"A famous anecdote about Adolf Hitler's perspectives towards Islam and the Arabs is recounted by Albert Speer in his best-selling memoir, Inside the Third Reich. Speer reports that "Hitler had been much impressed by a scrap of history he had learned from a delegation of distinguished Arabs."[2] The delegation had speculated that the world would have become "Mohammedan" if the Berbers and Arabs had won the Battle of Tours in the 8th Century AD, and that the Germans would have become heirs to "a religion that believed in spreading the faith by the sword and in subjugating all nations to that faith. Such a creed was perfectly suited to the German temperament."[3] Speer then presents Hitler's claims on this subject:
Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.[4]"
That is because people who perform customer service are viewed as equals, not as a lower class who are supposed to kiss the customer's *ss. Waiters in German restaurants get a livable wage and are not dependent on tips, so they are naturally less inclined to perform a song and dance around the customer.
Personally, I've never found anything to complain about any time I've been over there. But then maybe it's because I am European too.
Do diners in France still call the waiter "garçon" the way we were told in high school French class that they did? (Or for that matter, did they ever?)
Only saw first page. Think this is due to the drastic increase in Muslims now living in Germany.
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