Mikey, passing the buck and ensuring that responsability does not stop at one's door is indeed unknown outside Switzerland...
So Philip, so far the Swiss and the French are on you "bad boys" list...Anyone else?
Even God can make mistakes.
Even in coop this goes on when you are buying a liter of milk, there will be someone trying to do this.
Mee meee
Aside from the above, I'm getting a bit lost, are we Swiss virtual psychopaths barely able to work and live together or are we sheeps blindly following our "guide dogs"...?
Make your mind up...
It's sheep (plural). I've never seen a sheep with a guide dog. Usually it's the dog that rounds up the sheep.
That's it, you're Welsh!
I noticed the spelling mistake, thanks, mr pedant...
You seem to be implying that people who make typographic errors are Welsh.
Very logical.
I'd love to understand how you came to that conclusion...
I'm not saying that it doesn't occur everywhere, even back in good old England. The thing about generalisations is that you take a predominant trait as an example of general behaviour. For example, all English are fat alcoholics. It's not true of course but I don't think that anyone would argue that the English drink more than your average European, except for maybe the Germans, Dutch, Swede's, Irish etc.
My experience is that the Swiss do not like to make decisions, because making decisions is risky and the Swiss are not a nation of risk takers. Take the legal system, judges don't like to take decisions so they offer a legalised bartering service. Take your government, nobody wants to take decisions because that could come back to bite them so everyone gets to vote. I've had so many meetings over here that are essentially committees, so that nobody is to blame if there is a mistake. When someone makes a decision over here you can almost hear an audible sigh from everyone else in the room. Because at that point, they all know who will be to blame if things go wrong, and they all know it won't be them .
and racist.
Guys, I've let this play out for a while now. Please keep it on topic.
No personal attacks, no name calling. And calling someone Welsh doesn't make someone a racist, unless Welsh is a new race I'm unaware of.
Well, talking about England Mikey, you won't find a better example of pass the buck culture than when you read the stories behind the various rail crash of the last few years...
It is actually a myth that the Brits are great boozers, in term of pure consumption. They are quite high in the table when it comes to binge drinking however, so your example of a generalisation is based on a prejudice rather than anything with a firm basis in reality.
I do accept your comment on risk taking, up to a point, I don't think our consensual culture is solely down to aversion to risk but rather because we make damn sure that everyone is listened to (except foreigners, but hey...) in the decision making process. This can actually be quite irritating when it's a small minority doing the blocking but they have a right to be heard too. The reason why our politicians are quite careful is because they know full well that the people keep an eye on them and slap a referendum on them if they misbehave, not because they want to fudge their responsabilities, in fact their responsability is to ensure that the people are part of the process.
Between that and being lumbered with a Tony Blair...
You're talking about isolated incidents that are blown up in the media. I'm talking about very real meetings that I've been involved in and witnessed first hand. That's hardly the same.
I would even go as far to say that the culture over here is less concerned with proving that they are right, but proving that they are not wrong, or not to blame. Hence all the comments about people digging their heels in and not backing down. Admitting fault is a real hang-up over here.
A Swiss waitress apologized to me over lunch today after forgetting that I had already paid for my coffee. Oops! I must be in the wrong country.
Your story just worsens my impression of old men.
WHAT 'consensual culture', exactly? Having coalition governments doesn't amount to a country having a 'consensual culture'.
I'm talking about my experience of almost 8 years of living in Zuerich. I've noticed that for some reason, every time someone posts a negative experience here you feel the need to jump in and act as advocate-general for Switzerland. Frankly I'm getting quite fed up with squabbling with you - I know what I experienced and no amount of spin that you try to put on it changes that.
Probably one of the 25% of Auslander
I'm talking about incidents that have cost lives and have highlighted a shameful corporate culture of denying responsability that has caused great distress to the surviving victims and the relatives of those victims chap, a tad more serious than a few meetings you attended, would you not say...?
How is it different from in the USA where admitting fault is virtually opening the door to a lawsuit and therefore any deal is binded in so many clauses and legal agreements that no one ends up being blamed should something go wrong (except for some poor low-level management sap...See the recent trials of US troops over there).
Again, not denying that what you say is wrong but is it really any different than in other countries. I doubt it...
Yeah, I noticed that too, I guess I have too much time on my hands at the moment
I'm not disagreeing with the shameful way that individual companies act when faced with lawsuits that could potentially ruin them. But then let's face it, anyone who expects them to do otherwise would be a tad naive.
I still fail to see what this has to do though with my personal interpretation of meetings that I have attended. You do tend to be getting all defensive here, but then again it is a bit more difficult to dig your heels in on an open forum.
These are my experiences in over 12 years of living here. Sure the same sort of thing happens in other countries but not to this extent.