Accountability sinks

I remember experiencing this in one of the German airports/airlines and having that exact thought.

It was this fully automated airport, where the checkin is self serviced and you only interact with computers.

Eventually, when I inserted my boarding pass I had a printed piece of paper back that said that they had to change my seat from aisle to midseat

I then tried to find someone to talk to the entire way, but computers can only interact in the way the UI was designed, and no programmer accounted or cared for my scenario

The ground attendant couldn't have done anything of course because it wasn't part of the scope of her job, and this was the part of germany where nice was not one of their stereotypes.

Eventually I got a survey a week later about a different leg of the flight, so could I really complain there? that one was fine? I had a paranoid wonder if that was intentional

I had a similar experience in Germany about a year ago. Train stations are mostly self-service now. The ticket kiosk ate my €50 and promptly rebooted. It didn’t print a receipt or anything. The only human I could find was a security guard. He told me to call the number on a sticker on the machine. The person who answered couldn’t speak English. My €50 is out there somewhere but it would cost me more than that to track it down.

> The person who answered couldn’t speak English.

It sounds like this was the main point of failure. I’m not sure it can be considered an error in the system. I’d consider the risk inherent in traveling in a country without knowing its language.

Germany is the only country in which I’ve had 112 (emergency services) hang up on me because they couldn’t speak English.

It’s worse than France in this regard.

Yes, but it’s still fine to have a customer service only answering in the official language. The chance are high that a random German speaks english so you’ll probably be good but if that’s not the case, blaming the company seems unfair to me.

>The chance are high that a random German speaks english so you’ll probably be good

What does high mean in this context? I experienced what I would call the inverse Danish maneuver, the German obviously understand English because they often answered our English questions correctly - In German.

In Denmark if a Dane understands what you said in Danish but you have a definite accent they will often answer your question in English.

Maybe Germanic cultures are geared towards the rude.

They might have been rude, but that's besides the point. Even if they could speak English you shouldn't expect them to be comfortable doing so. That actually seems pretty rude in itself to me.