all together now

I talk rarely about work because i spend 8+ hours there, so I see no need to further 'prolong' my work day by blogging about it. However, I know that some of my American readers like to know a little about life here, working in Germany.

There is currently a big project going on with heavy American involvement. My German colleague leading the project speaks decent business English, but has been worn out recently by having to work with the Americans, as he normally doesn't spend 80%+ of his workday with them, and he has never worked outside of Germany, so it's an effort for him to constantly be 'on'. Couple that with our Americans who have never been outside of America and can never bring in enough casual phrasing guaranteed to confuse a non-native speaker. "Let's levelset this." Um, ok.

So we're sitting three of us on a conference call here in Germany, with this worn-out German colleague in Belgium, and five Americans in the US. The purpose was to discuss a proposed agenda for a big meeting that is upcoming. The worn-out German is doing his best to lead the discussion, but the Americans are brainstorming. (*giggle*) I forget sometimes that as annoyed as the Germans can make me, the Americans can annoy/confound the Germans in an equivalent amount.

My boss and I on the call have it on mute for side discussions when he isn't jumping in as he's trying to blow over some of the storm and herd the cats but they just bounce off track in another direction and Mr. Worn Out in Belgium is tired. At the same time we're both on the edge of getting sick as sickness has been floating around our office for two weeks with various colleagues in and out, and it was after 5 PM, so overall we were so loopy.

The Americans, bless their little hearts, aren't 'German direct' and won't give an order per se, so they are couching suggestions softly, such as 'not sure if it would work, but maybe you could blah blah' and 'well, this is what we did, perhaps that is helpful?'. And on and on, with the Germans politely acknowledging because they won't go on the offensive with such a light approach, but getting more and more stymied by what to do with this deluge of ideas when they already put their ideas on this agenda, so why are there more ideas?

We finally get through the agenda and they have even more overall helpful suggestions such as 'adding interactive components to the various sessions'. (cackle) We have 80 people coming to this shindig, and the Germans are already stressed about getting all ducks in order and in the same direction and the Americans are suggesting 'break-out sessions' and 'interaction'.

We're on mute and I make the sarcastic comment to my boss, 'if you really want to impress them, why don't you tell them, in addition to the break-out sessions we also have some icebreakers planned'.
'Some ice-what?'
'Oh nevermind, I'll tell you afterwards.'

Sure enough five minutes later, one of the Americans offered the question--so...do you have any icebreakers planned? And this was the point in the call where we finally lost it. There was dead silence on the phone line as we were on mute with laughter that could not be contained. We managed to scrape together an answer. If only they knew.