Love Conquers All
Reddit user wine_and_book and her co-workers were totally confused when a US company took over their German company and started spouting off silly rules like no relationships among co-workers. Then, someone in the meeting finally spoke up in defiance of the new guidelines and it was epic!
“15 years ago, I worked for a company in Germany that was bought by a large US company. One of the first actions was a mandatory HR meeting. They used their US power point deck and guided us through the rules & regulations although directed by our local HR team to not do that:
Here are some of the highlights: We are not allowed to accept tickets for the Super Bowl. Utterly confusion – 90% of the people had never heard of the Super Bowl… a discussion about why we would want to watch that anyways, started.
We are not allowed to have relationship with anybody from a supplier or within the company. Uproar in the room: This is against the German constitution – what you do in your free time is none of their business. The discussion gets heated, everybody is discussing.
The Americans on the line are very confused why…. The head of QA finally gets up and shouts “If I love that woman, nobody will prevent me from dating her”. People signed the sheet that they participated and read and understood the presentation “with reservations.”
People start discussing where to sign up for legal expenses insurance. HR refrained from that day from having mandatory global HR meetings.
Management tried a couple of other stuff – at will employment (against the law – everybody has a contract), cutting vacation (against the law), canceling bank holidays (against the law).
Make people work on vacation days (guess what, against the law) and a couple more. It was a prime example of cultural ignorance and incredible funny…”