Tillmann Prüfer is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
I’ve heard that some employers like it when employees have worked in the hospitality industry before. Because then not only do they know what hard work is, but they’ve usually had dealings with customers before and had to be nice to them. Because that is obviously difficult for many in the company today.
Unfriendliness seems to be a real problem in the corporate world. I read in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” that the management consultancy KPMG calculated that 15 to 20 percent of the working time in a company is wasted on trouble. That’s quite a lot.
According to the management consultancy, managers often have to plan even more time for arguments. I find that amazing. That means in a five-day week, managers would have to spend a whole day arguing.
I don’t even know how they even do it. Rumble through a whole day, bully, stress. How do they even find topics that they can deal with in a correspondingly unfriendly manner? How can we remember enough things we don’t like about others to blame them?
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I am convinced that only the best managers are so well organized that they can consistently produce so many disputes. They probably need pretty good planning for it and constantly jotting down new topics in order to properly clash with others. Who then celebrates the 30th anniversary of the company has spent six years alone with arguments and unfriendliness.
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This is obviously too much for companies today. Now it should be more peaceful. Netflix, for example, is now even trying to avoid employees who cause discord: “In our dream team there is no place for ‘brilliant puke'”, is quoted from the rules for corporate culture.
This raises the question of whether it wouldn’t be a bit much to ask a reliable puke to be brilliant anyway. Usually, companies have to be satisfied with little ingenious puke, that’s all the job market can offer.
However, it is also emphasized that nobody is really helped if the climate is too harmonious. In order to be able to cope with the diverse tasks, teams should be set up in a correspondingly diverse manner. Unfortunately, things can only be peaceful if the corporate culture is correspondingly homogeneous.
Companies today want a diverse group that always smells a bit like beef and stress. But despite this, there should be no angry outbursts, but “decent human interaction” should be possible. Just as you can solve any conflict in gastronomy by saying, “It’s not on the menu” – and leaving.
More: The nine-euro ticket teaches us that we have a lot more time than we think