Die Arbeitsanweisung. The work instruction. A controlled document describing how a specific task is performed, with a version number, an author, an approval and a review date. It is not a note. It is part of the quality system, and changing it requires going through the system.
business
The court-appointed expert
Der Sachverständige. German disputes over technical matters routinely go to a court-appointed expert, who produces a written report on a timetable measured in months. The court waits. The report arrives when it is finished.
The dealership
The American car dealership is the country’s most widely shared experience of price negotiation. The sticker is an opening position, the trade-in is a second negotiation, the financing is a third. What would it take to get you into this car today? is a question about the buyer’s number, asked after the seller’s number has been stated and abandoned.
The matter-worker
The German title for a caseworker or clerk translates literally as matter-worker. The person who works the matter.
Not an officer, not an associate, not a representative. The job is named after the thing being handled.
The failure résumé
A minor American genre: the list of rejections, failed ventures and abandoned projects, published deliberately. It only works as a gesture in a culture that reads a record of failures as evidence of attempts.
Review of standard terms
AGB-Kontrolle. German courts review standard terms and conditions for fairness and strike out clauses that unreasonably disadvantage the other side — and they do it between businesses, not only against consumers. A German company cannot rely on having got a hard clause into its own paperwork. A court will read it and may simply remove it.
The business judgment rule
Under American corporate law, a court will not second-guess a board’s decision if it was made in good faith, on an informed basis, and in the honest belief that it served the company. Directors are protected even when the decision turns out badly. The judgment itself is what the law examines, not the outcome.
Employment at will
The American default: either party may end the relationship at any time for any lawful reason, without notice. Forty-nine states apply it. There is no statutory dismissal protection accruing with service, and no requirement to justify the decision.
Work owed and effort owed
German contract law distinguishes the Werkvertrag, which owes a result, from the Dienstvertrag, which owes an effort properly performed. The distinction determines liability, and it turns on whether what was promised was an outcome or a way of working.
People buy from people
People buy from people they like. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Nobody buys a product, they buy a feeling. Three sayings in circulation across American sales training, and all three make the same claim: the transaction runs through the person.