I’m normally a pretty healthy person, but since coming to Germany, it feels like I’ve been sick every other day. The most recent attack on my immune system started this past week with the loss of my voice, developing into the full-blown flu by Friday night. The main attraction: 102+ degree fever.
After massive quantities of aspirin and ibuprofen I’m starting to feel better, but I’m by no means out of the woods yet.
Current theory on why I’ve been so sick: it’s the reverse situation of what happened when the Europeans first came to North America; they brought all kinds of new diseases, which the natives didn’t have an immunity to. This is just the Native Americans taking their revenge for all the hard work my ancestors did in wiping them out.
Every day on my way to campus, I walk by a camera shop/photo place. One of the ads in the window, a 2-meter by 1-meter sign, is for Bewerbungsfotos (literally, “job application photos”). I’ve encountered this word before, in the context of having passport-size photos made, but had never really understood what they were (apart from the fact that they’re expensive). The other day, I asked someone about this, and here’s what I found out:
When you send in a job application in Germany, you have to include a head shot. Now, this isn’t just for modeling or acting jobs; professors, surgeons, bakers, everyone has to include a picture. You see, in Germany, it’s legal not to hire someone based solely on what they look like. In fact, it’s perfectly OK not to hire someone based on ethnicity, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, height, weight or any one of a thousand other factors that would get you sued immediately in America.
Moreover, this kind of discrimination isn’t just theoretical — it’s the norm. At the university here, for instance, they’re currently searching for a new professor to replace the outgoing English department chair. One of the members of the search committee didn’t find a particular candidate visually appealing, so that person was immediately dropped from the applicant pool; no-one objected to that kind of rationale, no-one thought it was unusual in any way.
Another quirk of the hiring system here: let’s say you have two candidates applying for the same professorship; they both have PhDs from the same university, but one applicant has published dozens of journal articles and several books, while the other hasn’t written a single thing since he got the degree. In Germany, these two candidates would be given equal consideration. The only qualifications that matter are what you have certificates for; your publication and research history is irrelevant.
Even if you do get hired, you’re not out of the woods. For the first year, you can be fired for absolutely any “reason” at all. You might come in to work one morning, the boss might not like the shoes you have on, and you suddenly find yourself looking for work again before 10AM. They don’t even have to lie about why they’re firing you; your pink slip could well read, “We wouldn’t have hired you if we had known you’re a fag”, and that would be well within the law.
Let’s assume you manage to keep your job, there’s still the issue of the German pay scale. In this country, your salary isn’t determined by how valuable you are to the company — age is the only factor. The older you get, the more they pay you, regardless of productivity or qualifications. As with hiring, it doesn’t matter what your publication or research history is, only that you’re a certain age.
There’s a reason I haven’t sent a single job application to a German firm.