Rant No. 18: Being right.

We all love to be right. But for Germans this is a must.

They want to be right, they need to be right, and more to the point, they believe that they are always right.

As a copywriter, working in an agency in Germany, this can get really frustrating. I’m the English native, and the person that everyone comes to with language queries.

Fine. Can be annoying, but if I have time, I’m happy to help.

What doesn’t make me happy is when German colleagues ask you what is correct, and then check with Google to make sure that you are right. And sometimes even act with surprise that you are.

If you ask someone their expert opinion, this is really rude, as it shows a natural distrust in others’ opinions. If I asked a German how to spell something, or a grammatical rule, I would just trust that what they told me is right.

Sometimes, they even question that what you wrote is what you intended to write: couldn’t it be like this, or shouldn’t it be like that. No, if it were supposed to be like that, I would have written that.

I don’t mind using my time to help, but what I do resent is to use my time to explain why something is right when it is, or even worse, to have to convince someone that something is right.