How my experience with bullies has changed me

Hello everyone, further to my recent posts on the topic of bullying, I thought of doing two more posts about the bullying that I have experience (in the army and in the sales environment), but I realized that I have blogged so much about my time in the army over the years and as for the sales environment, well it is a dog-eat-dog world out there and because of the chance to make a lot of money through commissions, there is no honour amongst salesmen. I felt that such a post would be too similar to what I have written in my last confession type piece and again, it is stating the bleeding obvious: bullying goes on in the army. Duh. Tell me something I don't know already, right? But there was an incident in Berlin that made me realize how bullying has changed me as a person and so I would like to talk about that instead.

At the old national gallery, Berlin

I was in Berlin earlier this week for rehearsals (well, at Babelsberg studios, about 30 minutes outside Berlin near Potsdam) and since Berlin isn't a day trip from London, I was flown there a day early and I took the opportunity to play tourist in Berlin on Monday. Berlin is such a fascinating city. As my flight was at 7:30 am, I had to be at the airport by about 6 am and as you can imagine, I barely got any sleep the night before. But nonetheless, I didn't care - I was running on adrenaline and caffeine, determined to see Berlin whether I had enough sleep or not. Now having worked in Germany in the past and yes, I do speak German (but not fluently), I was determined to always speak German when encountering a local rather than English (even if English is very widely spoken in Germany, especially amongst the younger Germans). My regular readers will know that I do speak several languages fluently, but German is not one of them - it is one of those languages I suppose I can get by in because I have used it a lot for work over the years but it is just not as good as say my French or Spanish. I do think that German is a useful language to learn.

Hence at lunchtime, I popped into a Nordsee - this is a popular German fast food restaurant chain. It is somewhat different from say McDonald's, KFC or Burger King where you walk up to the counter and order your food. Various fish dishes are prepared and displayed in a vast glass cabinet display along a rather long counter: customers can look at (and even smell) the various dishes on offer that day. Now given my obsession with trying to order in perfect German, I was constructing the sentence in my head and conjugating verbs whilst I stood in front of the item I had selected (a prawn salad) by the counter. I then noticed that the lady behind the counter (she must have been around 60 years old at least) kept serving other white German customers whilst effectively ignoring me. Well, after a few minutes, I just snapped. I yelled at her in (rather good) German, accusing her of being a racist - I had gotten there before the customer she was currently serving and I told her that the Berlin wall had fallen in 1989, but she still thinks she is still in the DDR working for the Stasi. For those of you unfamiliar with German history, the Stasi was the secret police of the East German government who struck fear in the hearts of all East Germans for they existed to ensure that everyone obeyed the government, very harsh punishments were meted out to those who had the audacity to break the rules.

Haven't you lost your temper before as well?

Well, I went on to remind her that most people her age would have retired and that life in the former East Germany (aka, the DDR) would have probably been better for people like her who ended up at the bottom of the good chain in a capitalist society. By this time, I realized that people were watching me bully this old woman by being not just abusive, but making such cruel, Berlin-specific insults in German (well, I probably didn't conjugate all my verbs correctly but my German is definitely good enough to pick a fight in). I then decided I couldn't have lunch there after what I did and I didn't want a prawn salad badly enough, but I couldn't have walked out of there without giving her a piece of my mind (in German of course). So as she tried to response, I told her to shut up and I was going to a nicer restaurant where my money could get me a better class of service. You see, as a bully, I always used my superior intellect to remind people why they are inferior to me. I don't just unleash a barrage of obscenities and abuse like a common bully - that was a trait I had developed in secondary school when I knew I could never take on my bullies in a traditional fist fight but I could use my words to undermine their self-esteem and cause far greater damage long term that way.

My regular readers will remember a similar incident in Rome when I verbally abused a toilet attendant in near-perfect Italian. Why do I react like that? Why do I go out of my way to insult people like that? Well, there are two reasons. Firstly, I was bullied a lot in secondary school and after that experience, you become acutely aware of when people are trying to take advantage of you or insult you in any way. So what I do when I sense that is that I immediately launch a counter-offensive to send the message, "you're messing with the wrong guy as I am more of a bully than you, so back off".By doing so, I ward off any potential bully. It's just like in nature, when some species of lizards puff up their necks to look bigger and more menacing when confronting a potential attacker. It is an act of defence when reacting to a potential threat. I have been conditioned to react like that, it is almost a reflex action at this point. And secondly, I know what my parents (and so many Singaporeans) would do in such a situation - they would walk away defeated and not say anything and then spend the next 20 years bitching about the incident. No, I was going to do the complete opposite of course and address the issue at once, on the spot, without a moment's delay so I would emerge the victor, not the loser in such a situation. Oh there was no way I was not going to let that woman get away with what she did.

How would you have dealt with such a situation?

The next place I went to was not even that posh or expensive, but I had excellent service and great food. In all my time in Germany, this was the first time I had encountered what I thought was racism. Or so I thought - because the next day, when I was at Babelsberg Studios for my rehearsals, there was a lot of waiting around and I got talking to one of my German colleagues there (let's call her Katrin). I told her exactly what had happened and she said, "Alex, it isn't racism at all. You need to understand... let me explain, please." You see, Nordsee operates a system actually a lot more similar to say McDonald's or Burger King after all - you go to the person at the till and tell them what you want. The server then walks away from the till, picks up the item(s) of food you ordered and brings it back to the counter where s/he will total up the price and ask for payment then. I had not gone up to that lady by the till - instead I had waited by the salads section (all of two or three meters away from the till). "So maybe it was a misunderstanding, she could have thought that you were still deciding which dish you wanted to eat and were not quite ready to order. I am sure she wasn't being racist - you were standing in the wrong place to be served."

I then said, "hang on, how was I to know how the Nordsee system works? I don't live in Germany. I have eaten in Nordsee so many times before over the years in Germany and even if I broke the rules by queuing in the wrong place, the server would realize that I am a tourist, a foreigner and just walk over to me and serve me in the wrong place." Katrin then asked me, "was this in West Germany? It wasn't in East Germany, right?" I replied, "yes, come to think of it, it was in the West, in Hamburg, Frankfurt and Köln - why?" Katrin then explained that in the DDR, people had grown up in such a rigid Communist system whereby anyone who steps out of line was severely punished for not obeying the laws of the states. There were even horror stories of children informing the state about their parents making jokes about the regime, leading to their parents being hauled away and sent to jail for it. The brutality of the former DDR, controlled by the Stasi was very scary indeed - but you see, I knew all that as I did a history walking tour about the former DDR the last time I was in Berlin and I do have a morbid fascination with the Stasi. I truly enjoyed the series Deutschland 83 about the DDR (see trailer below - that was great TV). I speak German and have spent a fair amount of time working in Germany over the years. So Katrin wasn't telling me anything I didn't know about Germany already.

Katrin went on to explain, "you see, it sounds like this woman was from the former DDR and she was discriminating against you on the basis of the fact that you didn't follow the rules of Nordsee by queuing in the right place, rather than because you look Asian. Even if a white woman with blond hair and blue eyes had queued up in the wrong place, she probably would not have been served either. People from the former DDR are so stuck in their ways about obeying all the rules and laws, no matter how arbitrary or meaningless because they don't ask questions - they just fear the consequences of being perceived as someone who has broken the rules. Such was the Communist regime." Actually that mindset reminded me a lot of Singapore. "But come on Katrin, where's the common sense? I stood by the salads as I didn't want to have to memorize the specific name of the salad I wanted, I also had other questions about what was in each salad, how they are different etc. It was a conversation that would have made more sense to have in front of the salads where I could see them, rather than at the counter away from the salads." Katrin replied, "indeed, but that would mean breaking her rules. Oooh. And people from the former DDR believe that obeying the rules is what holds their society together so at times like this, they can lack simple common sense. I know it can be confusing for a foreigner - even frustrating, but please be assured that it wasn't racism at all. I am white and German but I face this kind of stupid shit at work when I am trying to get stuff done for the film production and I have all these people with that same stupid mindset. I am from the West of Germany and I can be frustrated too, just like you."

Well hindsight is 2020 of course, I have always prided myself in speaking the local language and understanding the local culture when traveling around the world. Let me be the first to admit that I had failed this time to understand the local culture - Berlin certainly has all the trappings of any modern Western European city with huge shopping malls and glitzy modern buildings, but the incident at Nordsee reminded me that you can take East Germans out of the DDR, but you can't take the DDR out of East Germans. It is so easy to forget that as the Berlin wall did fall in 1989, that means a child born that year would be 27 years old today and so those under the age of 30 would not have grown up with that kind of communist, DDR mindset at all and even those under the age of 40 would barely remember what it was like in the DDR as young children. This woman I encountered however, was at least 60, so the Berlin wall would have been there all her life and she would have lived through the entire DDR's existence. I have always made an effort to know the local culture wherever I traveled and embrace it - in Berlin, there are indeed museums dedicated to the DDR and the Stasi (and yes I have visited such museums in Berlin and I have traveled very widely throughout ex-Communist Eastern Europe) but a capitalist fast food restaurant was really the last place I would have thought I would encounter any lingering elements of the DDR's legacy. Even if I scolded that woman, I was not going to change her mindset at all.

Even if I do speak German, I didn't understand their culture.

So what have I learnt from this experience? Well the obvious one is not to lose my temper so quickly and go into full attack mode like that. Secondly, I should question my first impressions - okay, it was frustrating to be ignored by that woman when all I was trying to do was order a freaking prawn salad at a fast food restaurant, but I had been so obsessed with trying to get the right words out to order in German I wasn't even thinking about where I should line up - for that, I was just in auto-pilot mode. So the moment I thought she was bullying me and I responded by bullying her in return. The next time I am in such a situation, I would definitely pause and take a moment to observe what the others are doing, to be more aware of what is going on around me before leaping to conclusions and reacting by bullying people as a preemptive strike of self-defence. Even if that seemed to work back in my secondary school all those years ago, I have to learn to move on and develop more sophisticated methods to thrive in the world I live in today.

Am I sorry for my outburst at that woman? No, not really. All she could have done was to have called me to walk over to her at the counter to place my order - I would have gladly done that. She clearly lacked common sense and that was something that her line managers needed to address through proper training. I've been to plenty of fast food restaurants in Germany and this was the first time I had any kind of trouble - so this was an isolated incident and she badly needs training. She went out of her way to punish me for being a foreigner who wasn't aware of where to queue and whether or not she was from the DDR, I was a customer and deserved to be treated as such - this was a fast food restaurant for crying out aloud, not some school where the staff disciplined the students who weren't aware of all the strict rules! This was not a tourist attraction where we got to relive and experience the full brutality and harshness of the DDR mentality from another era. But by the same token, if this woman had been any more educated or skilled, would she be doing a job like this at her age? Perhaps a lesson I could also take away from this is to lower my expectations when going to a fast food restaurant. So, do you want good service or do you want very cheap food?

I have spent quite a lot of time working in Germany over the years.

That's it from me on this episode. What would you have done in that situation? Would you have reacted in the same way as I did or would you have done something different? Can victims of bullying learn how to react in a different manner when recovering from the experience of having to deal with bullies on a daily basis? Have you ever encountered the DDR mentality whilst in Germany as well? Have you encountered this in other counties you have visited as well? Do leave me a comment and please let me know what you think. Many thanks for reading, vielen dank!