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HARD HATS, HARD HEARTS - PART ONE

I was last made redundant almost a year ago to the day, this time because my three-month contract had slowly petered out. I had been taken on by an industrial installation company to provide services as an English-Portuguese interpreter for three German technicians (a delightfully Brazilian roundabout arrangement), a mechanic, an electrician and a machine operator, during the installation of a roll grinding mill for an aluminium company. It was money for old rope, despite the obvious challenges.

I must say that, unlike several of my contemporaries, I have never had a particular problem in dealing with Germans. Except perhaps for the clinically insistent Bavarian dental surgeon who demanded daily that I do a Business English class on the language of dentistry. Explaining for hopefully the last time that this wouldn’t be exactly fair on the other nine members of the class, and that he should seek private one-to-one classes for a subject area so specific, he’d then commandeered a surprisingly sour Dutch secretary to lend weight to his nagging, and presumably to take minutes of our discussions for any future claim for a refund, psychological trauma, etc. Eventually we reached a fragile compromise in which the two of them were invited to make lists of the subject areas they wished to cover, from which I would then select those I considered appropriate for the entire class. By their last day at the school, I’d covered everything they’d asked for except deontological ethics and shorthand. “So, Hans, have you enjoyed the course?” I enquired at the end of our last lesson together, seeking to bury the hatchet after of our tense, not to mention overlong, standoff. “I’ve learned a little,” he muttered sarcastically, pushing past me out of the room and leaving me counting slowly to zehn whilst suppressing the urge to bury a hatchet in the back of his head.

I started in the factory about a week before the first German mechanic arrived. The Brazilian technician who was supervising the installation didn’t exactly exude enthusiasm for the prospect of working with the foreigners. “The Germans are, of course, idiots,” he informed me, becoming noticeably bilious, “they’re arrogant, they’re condescending, they look down on us.” I suspected a bit of a history behind his vehemence, and it unfolded as he continued with rising agitation, “I said to him, ‘You come here, to MY country and start telling ME that everything’s crap! I’M allowed to say that, because I live here, but I don’t take that from ANYBODY!’” We were both shaking by this point, me due to the hilarity of his gone-ballistic narrative.

As it turned out, Mattias was a lot younger and more laid back than we expected. He wasn’t exactly warm, but he took the constant attempts by the Brazilian workers to entertain him in good spirit, at least whilst the installation was progressing problem-free. He even managed a few, slightly awkward air guitar solos to express his pleasure at the smoothness with which matters were unfolding.

One thing I’ve noticed about many Brazilians, which is great for foreigners, but at the same time saddening, is that they regard people from other countries, particularly so-called First World nations, as superior beings. Watching the mechanics and electricians around the Germans was like watching needy offspring trying to please a stern father, all competing for attention, all desperate to be accepted. Perhaps this is why so many dream of living abroad, particularly in the US, rather than try to stick around and make something of themselves at home. It’s a sad indictment of a vibrant culture that’s lost its way, and in which people have lost faith, one that can only look to other nations with envious eyes and make mournful attempts to copy them. Only Carnaval and music have any real Brazilian identity to them.

As the installation continued, Mattias began to let his fun-loving mask slip a little, until, by week 5 or so, he was screaming in High German at bewildered mechanics wondering if he wasn’t warning them of an impending electrical shock or gas explosion. It was probably lucky they couldn’t understand his salty commentary on their work practices. The Brazilian electricians’ supervisor told me of a middle-aged German engineer on another job who had failed to hide a profound loathing of the local workers made available to him by the company that hired him. Eventually totally losing it, he’d called one of them an idiot in German, and although there hadn’t been an interpreter on hand to clarify his ejaculation, the mechanic had understood only to well. When he’d woken up in hospital a couple of days later, the confused German was informed that he’d suffered a severe concussion after receiving blunt force trauma to the back of his cranium caused by being struck with a length of metal piping. Brazilian mechanics are on very low salaries, and have little to lose. The German engineer headed straight from the hospital to the airport, without saying his goodbyes at the work site.


PART 2 TO FOLLOW SHORTLY



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Comments

Anonymous said…
Fascinating stuff, Mr W. Maybe all first-world types should learn to dance a bit better, then they might have better work-place relations with colleagues of poorer countries (who can at least afford to acquire that skill, and may often do so). The young German’s air-guitaring was clearly a step in the right direction. (I haven’t entirely thought this theory through, and bear no responsibility for it’s embarrassing consequences!)
10 February 2008 at 04:58
M C Ward said…
I think you may be onto something, GD. If he'd done the jitterbug to express his feeling rather than simply rant, he may have been escorted from the area by security rather than leave in the back of an ambulance.
10 February 2008 at 12:42
No Good Boyo said…
Give me a duelling-scarred, monocol'ed Uhlan with a thing about head shapes any day over the faux-ingratiating variety, MC. The latter have an evangelical devotion to explaining Simply Red to innocent foreigners without the law. It's crueller in the long term than parking your panzer on their piazza and making them play all music in a ponderous waltz rhythm.
10 February 2008 at 17:17
Anonymous said…
I was thinking more along the lines that an open and relaxed body-language antagonises people less. But I suppose actually performing some steps could also work, as long they're performed to something lodged in the collective unconscious, like The Birdy Song.
10 February 2008 at 20:53
Anonymous said…
In London, many years back, I used to teach both Germans and Brailians in the same class. One lot sat in one corner, and the other bunch occupied the adjacent cranny. They might as well have been different species from differing planets.

Try as hard as I could, I failed to get them to mix with each other. Even mentioning WW2 and World Cup football failed to get them to communicate in any way at all, serious or frivolous.

I was always hoping one of the Krauts might make some sort of 'master-race' statement to wind up the Samba monkeys, but the all-out fight that I had been carefully plotting to take place never occurred. Shame, really...

Another failed lesson!
11 February 2008 at 17:06
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