Culture Shock! Austria - A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette

(Steven Felgate) #1

246 CultureShock! Austria


the invention: we have never done that before; we have
always done it another way; or, if we accept yours, anyone
could come along and try and convince us of their ideas.
Thus, modernisation takes a backseat to tradition. Titles and
status take on more meaning than they should, and creative,
hardworking people, even perhaps a few geniuses here and
there, are squelched before they even begin.

The Civil Servant on the Job


Jokes are made about the clerk or official (Beamten). It is
said that in government offices, the traffic of clerks arriving
late and leaving early can be as bad as a car jam on a busy
highway. Lunchtime can be, well, any time. Sick leave seems
to be every other day, although after one day you need a
doctor’s note (still, there is no restriction on the amount of
sick leave you can have). Then there are the holidays and
vacations. The holidays correspond generally to the Catholic
holidays, and vacation time depends on your status (up to
eight weeks a year).
The bureaucracy is so great that it requires an astronomical
workforce (25 per cent of Austria’s workforce) to keep it
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