Some of the stories doing the rounds on the working environment in the European Patent Office and some other bodies you would not believe the culture of bullying and endemic jockeying for dominance, control and rampant attempts at corruption from EU nations - aIl allegedly I might add. The suicides are real enough though. The court cases from the families all end in being thrown out. And so it continues. But, I might add, the Munich office is sound enough, so if you go to work for them, go there young man.
So nothing surprises me.....
And I have my own nasty madness to contend with. One office country manager accused some low level coordinator in the UK of bullying them and also someone else in a certain discipline. It was actually the opposite, they were bullying them to get special treatment to be excluded from due process. So I had to stamp down.
Cultural differences are real, the EU attempt, or shall I say, on-going attempt to create the EU-super-person, is an epic failure.
As the very definition of an intrepid internationalist global business person, I travel to places all around the globe and I find the same office environment infrastructure everywhere, it's all the same. But it is the culture that is the decisive factor. In my experience, cultural differences are extremely underplayed, they are the essential element.
