A German craft bakery chain has 145 stores and more than 1,350 employees. Many of its workers said they disliked being monitored through checklists. The firm then removed two of these checklists in half of its stores, chosen at random. Economists from Cologne and other universities studied the results. Sales in the stores without the checklists rose by 2.7 percent on average. Turnover among trained staff fell by 35 percent. In team surveys, employees named spürbare Wertschätzung, appreciation they could feel, as the reason. The co-author Matthias Heinz summed it up. Wer Mitarbeitende zu stark kontrolliert, schadet dem Unternehmen. Whoever controls employees too much harms the company. The effect was not the same for everyone. Unskilled workers left more often after the checklists were gone.
studies
Busyness as a Status Symbol
In 2017 three marketing scholars, Silvia Bellezza, Neeru Paharia and Anat Keinan, published a study in the Journal of Consumer Research. Its title is “Conspicuous Consumption of Time: When Busyness and Lack of Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol.” They argued that in North America “a busy and overworked lifestyle, rather than a leisurely lifestyle, has become an aspirational status symbol.”
Keinan explained: “the new conspicuous consumption is about saying, I am the scarce resource, and therefore I am valuable.”
The phrase conspicuous consumption comes from Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). For Veblen, leisure was the mark of status.
What Used-Car Buyers Want First
The DAT, the Deutsche Automobil Treuhand, surveys what matters when people buy a used car. In the results reported in February 2024, Zuverlässigkeit, reliability, came first. On a scale from 1 to 4 it had an average of 1.22, compared with 1.30 the year before. It came clearly ahead of freedom from accident damage and ahead of price.
Breakdowns per Thousand Cars
In 2025 the ADAC, the German automobile club, came to help broken-down drivers 3,691,813 times. A breakdown call came in every nine seconds.
Every year the club publishes its Pannenstatistik, its breakdown statistics. It counts the breakdowns per 1,000 vehicles of each model. A model series is included only if more than 7,000 of it were registered in at least two of its first ten years. The 2026 edition covers 158 models from 27 makers. It rates 74 model series as extremely reliable.
Treatment Errors, Counted
In 2025 the doctors of the Medizinischer Dienst, the medical review service, wrote 11,735 expert reports on suspected treatment errors across Germany. In every fourth case, 3,098 in all, they found an error that had caused harm. In 97 cases the error led to death or contributed substantially to it.
When it presented the figures in August 2026, the service called for a mandatory, pseudonymized and sanction-free reporting system for so-called never events.
How the Laundry Comes Out
When Stiftung Warentest tests washing machines, Handhabung, handling, counts for 15 percent of the grade. The criteria listed with it include the controls, loading and unloading, filling in the detergent, the display of the remaining time, cleaning and the user manual. The testers even judge how loose the laundry is when it is taken out of the drum.
Who Germans Trust
In March 2018 the GfK Verein published its survey of trust in professions. It had asked 2,000 people in Germany aged 14 and over. Feuerwehrleute, firefighters, came first with 96 percent, level with paramedics. Nurses followed with 95 percent. Doctors, bus and train drivers and pilots each reached almost 90 percent. At the bottom were advertising professionals with 25 percent, insurance agents with 23 percent and politicians with 14 percent. The press release noted that the federal election of 2017 took place during the survey and probably played a role in the politicians’ figure.
What Managers Look For First
In July 2022 the market research firm Appinio surveyed 100 managers and 400 employees in Germany for the software company Cegid. The managers ranked the traits and values they look for in job applicants. Zuverlässigkeit, reliability, came first with 64 percent, far ahead of every other trait. Verantwortungsbereitschaft, willingness to take responsibility, came second with 35 percent. Creativity came third with 30 percent.
A Quarter Take It Personally
In 2019 the tech site t3n reported on a Randstad survey of 400 employees in Germany, aged 18 to 65. 24 percent said that they do not relate negative appraisals to their work, but take them personally. 21 percent said they feel uncomfortable when they receive feedback from managers.
Three Hours a Day of Paperwork
In a 2022 survey of about 8,500 employed doctors by the doctors’ union Marburger Bund, documentation and data entry took three hours a day on average. In 2013, 8 percent of doctors had spent more than three hours a day on administration and documentation. By 2022 the share was 32 percent.
In May 2023 the union’s task force on reducing bureaucracy gave examples. Forms for patients must be printed, explained, signed and then scanned in again. The paper for patient forms comes to about 1,300 tons a year.