Germany Inefficiency and Lazy Berlin Delivery Men

Or:  "I Got Yer Package:  RIGHT HERE."

I just had to tell a Deutschbag to go fuck himself.  Yes, I tend to over-react emotionally in all sorts of situations where most normal people would simply keep a stiff upper lip and bend over and take the sheisse.  But I'm not normal people (scroll down through the past posts and say "yup").

By now we all have figured out the Berlin is not Germany; it's more of an island of poor in a rich country, a chaotic, spastic lily pad in the otherwise still lagoon, and many more metaphors I have yet to think up.  So flush your stereotypes of 'German Efficiency' right down the no-standing-while-pissing shelf toilet and hitch a ride on the inefficiency express.

Enter:  delivery deutschbag.  "Package for Herr Hasenpfeffer."

db: "Not here.  Note doorbell.  Not Hasenpfeffer."

dd: "But do you know where HH is?"

db: "No, sorry."

dd: "Then can you take this package for him?"

db:  "Ummm.  Just said I don't know the fella.  Why in HELL would I take a package for someone I don't know?"

dd:  "But I can put a note in his mailbox and you can bring it to him."

db:  "You know where his mailbox is, know he's in the building, and want ME TO DO YOUR JOB FOR YOU?"

dd:  "JaWOHL."

The dialog above has been slightly fictionalized for theatrical purposes, but this rant/spleen vent/whinge is all to say that there seems to be a serious problem with Deutsche Delivery Dudes in my 'hood.  I understand that in an uberefficient world, there would be flat numbers, floor levels and colorful maps next to each name on the buzzer/mailbox.  But after about 44 different DDDs from a half dozen delivery companies asked me to hold their plain, light brown, sweaty packages I just had to cry 'BULLSHEISSE!' and let slip the dogs of db.

I'm thinking that there's only a dozen flats in our building.  I'm also thinking that it would take the DDDs all of 5 minutes to investigate all 3 flats on all 4 levels to find their Herren and Frauen.  Lazy fuchsen. Better yet:  HEY!  Here's an idea:  your company delivers to this building every single business day of the year. WRITE DOWN THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE/FLATS AND GIVE IT TO YOUR FUCKING DRIVERS FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

End of rant.

This particular DDD today happened to be the last in a long line of lazy fux who ring my bell, dragged me away from my kung fu theater flix and hit me with their deutschbaggery.  I had to yell at him and tell him to go fuck himself, this is true.  But in my defense, this occurred right after I politely refused to hold his package and he stormed off muttering in a pissed off tone. THAT's when he got the business end of my foul mouth.

db

German Toilets, Emasculation and Film School for Scheisse Videos

It was only a matter of time before I broached the subject.   I was going to breach the subject, break on through to the other side; leave it leaking, as it were.  But my deliberate malapropisms merely confuse people.  Perhaps it’s the redneck accent in which I deliver the news.

I’m avoiding again; sorry.  Okay:  shit, piss, pinkel and sheisse.  There, I’ve gone and said it.  I’ve had to drink and eat large amounts of beer and donuts while living in Berlin.  As a result, I’ve had to look at the ridiculous sticker on my toilet lid for quite a while now:  the silhouette of the peeing man with the line through him, the ‘don’t pee standing’ sticker, or the ‘keinenpinkelnbestandungschweinhund’ as it simply said in simple German.  Of course this must have been left by the previous tenants, no doubt a fine German family of upstanding social status and non-standing pissing status, a family with a large, strong woman who beat her poor, emasculated-post-war-Moby-maybe-man with her terrible swift loo brush.

Then someone told me that it was normal for German men to sit down while peeing, that it was necessary to avoid the splash of urine onto the sacred seat above.  Right.  The country known for its uber-efficiency in ALL OTHER THINGS designed this paltry device:  The Trophy Toilet.  It’s that peculiar flat shelf directly in the center of the toilet where normally there would be a wide open space full of a gallon of water.  It’s what we in the West have been using since the barn and the outhouse.  We went directly from crapping in a hole in the ground to the Powerflush 2000.  I once read that a measure of a culture is in the way it deals with its waste products.  A lot can be said about a culture which moves too quickly.  Perhaps we missed a great deal of culture when we decided that it was better to mask, drown and dispose of our waste as quickly as possible.  Maybe the Germans were onto something when they decided to keep their waste hovering directly below the lid for easy inspection and diagnosis of all the nut and corn content of their fibrous feces.

Sure, it had to be a logical, medical, holistic reason that the flat shelf was there, hoisting my gawdawful anal progeny high above the low water mark where it can choke me with the stench, or when standing to pee, splash back with a thrust in direct proportion to the amount of beer I had consumed.  There can be no other explanation for this uber-inefficiency, this blatant disregard for culture from the culture who gave us so much, y’know….culture.  UNLESS…

American Culture Answers German Culture: The South Park German Sheisse Video.

[person speaking German on "cliteris" website]

Kyle: Dude, it's a lady getting pooed on!

Stan: Whoa! Is it Cartman's mom?

Cartman: Oh, very funny!

Kyle: Hey! It IS Cartman's mom!

Mrs. Cartman: [man speaking German on computer] All righty then!

Cartman: SON OF A BI...

[shocks]

Cartman: AHHH!

Ike: [bounces in] Ba ba ba ba.

Kyle: Get out of here, Ike. You're too young for this stuff!

Ike: Bullshit.

Stan: What's she doing now?

German: Essen meine scheisse.

Mrs. Cartman: Okey-dokey!

Kyle, Stan, Cartman: [they see something gross] AWWWWWW!

Stan: [pukes] Click it off, dude, click it off!

[Kyle clicks it off]

Stan: Dude, what the fuck is wrong with German people?

I am not educated enough to tell you why the Germans can give us buttloads of composers, philosophers and all of modern psychology and NOT give us a proper fucking toilet.  But I’m just going to assume that German men are not all emasculated, simpering fools who sit down each and every single time they have to take a piss.  I don’t believe that the treaty that ended the war had the clause “and you shall give up your arms, weapons, military bases, delusions of Aryan grandeur, nationalism and the God given right for your men to stand up to urinate from here on out.”

I am starting to be convinced that the Germans LOVE their sheisse--and not just because it made it all the way over to South Park, U.S.A.

Footnotes:

Chocolate poo: http://www.schokoscheisse.de/

Kackel Dackel, the crapping daschund toy for KINDER!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOdEE-Z919A