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try "fill up and run", and you will see what happens.... once i somehow forgot to pay, next day i had the police at my door.... could explain everything and paid for the gas the next day. gas stations got cameras all over the place.
U ask for positive things check out the Miniatur Wunderland and their positive vibrations incl a new worldrecord. Btw they are no one ranked loved attraction from foreign tourist.
My personal good news is: My Corona bonus has finally arrived! I used to do a small teaching job in adult education, which I currently can't due to the virus, so the state of Bavaria pays me a small compensation. By "small" I mean really, really small, but it's better than nothing. And, no, it's not a loan, I won't have to pay it back.
On the trash topic: there is another way to enforce trash separation. The trash can is weighed, you pay for every gram of trash. There is a flat fee for each individual emptying and a price per kg of trash produced. On the contrary plastic, paper and organic is not priced, so if you separate, you save money.
At Gas Stations in Germany you and your Car get scanned by cameras and when you left without paying the police are standing in front of your door the next day.
You can look up the information online and see that many gas stations actually don't put up any surveillance or very limited. The reason being 1) an increased rate of people putting fake plates on their car to fill up and drive off and then removing the fake license plate. 2) Many police offices won't investigate gas theft because the amounts are too small and petty for them to look into. Therefore, most gas stations accept this loss and don't invest the money in surveillance equipment. The data is in the neighborhood of only 22% of gas thefts are ever solved, but that again is only the crimes that are reported. source: www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article154425682/Das-dreiste-Business-der-organisierten-Sprit-Diebe.html Would love to see where you got your information though!
There is a third way: Enter the station and hand the clerk cash (say, a twenty) and they will authorize the pump to dispense the equivalent quantity of fuel. One pumps until the tank is full (say, after fifteen) and then returns to the clerk to collect one's change (a five). This works with a card also; especially if one wants to top off the tank and not simply purchase a fixed quantity. Many stations in the U.S. used this system prior to pay-at-the-pump becoming near universal.
@@PassportTwo Whether super market or gas station, stolen things are covered by insurance. Prices for gas are rather low, it`s the tax that`s 64%. So if gas costs 1,569 per liter, it`s 1 Euro tax only. edit: Apologies, I mistook that. SoI have to remedy: Insurances just pay for burglary.
@@atconnys8786 I actually have no idea what happens with things like VAT and gas taxes when something gets stolen. With VAT, the gas station might still have to pay it (at least on the price they themselves pay their suppliers) but with other taxes I don't know at which level in the supply chain they are charged.
@@PassportTwo Hmm, welt.de is not necessarily a reliable source for information. At least I’d double check anything before taking it for granted. For those Mom&Pop gas stations in the countryside, it’s not always that economically viable or feasible to install much more of a simple CCTV system with limited capabilities and less good image quality for a few grand. For about anything else, it’s a major difference. The gas station franchise owners rarely receive noticeable commissions from gas, their most important business is anything else: their shop. Also, gas stations are “popular” with robbers: so these owners are used to invest in security systems like CCTV and automatic cash registers (who act like an “operated” ATM). So: a CCTV system is installed anyway, why not hook up a few extra cameras? The gas supplier is strongly interested against any theft, as the tax offices aren’t willing to write off their gas taxes that easy, and insurance companies do demand premiums close to the actual damages. Think about it from the tax offices view: the gas station might be selling untaxed gas for a huge profit, so the tax-accepted thefts are pretty low. At medium to larger gas stations, unpaid bills account for up to 7% of total revenue, so an investment in a decent CCTV system for tens of thousands of euros does often pay off in much less than two years and so is a no-brainer decision. Gas stations nowadays are often running FullHD cameras, and newer systems are even recording in 4K at 30 FPS whenever motion is detected: you’ll have a perfect image of the driver’s face and many car details aside of just the license plate… While there are still ways to defeat those systems, it’s getting harder and so usually about 50-70% of unsettled bills can be recovered by those systems.
In the US salad is typically first, almost as an appetizer, in Germany it usually comes after the soup with the entree. But as a German I must add that I never had the criminal "intelligence" to even think about "gas theft" or "under weighing" my fruit or veggies.
In our local Edeka the fruits and vegetables are weighed at the cashier. I think that is better because it does not require a label to be printed (lower impact on environment).
@@johncatty6560 Yeah I normally buy my stuff at Edeka and yesterday in another shop I forgot to weigh my vegetables. It's emberassing to me to block the line with such things.
As a university student I worked as a cashier of a gas station in German for some years. Each Sunday… It happened only once that someone drove off without paying. And I even knew the guy… my professor in theoretical physics. He came back about 20min later. On his way home he realized that he forgot to pay.
Christtian S-P! That indicates to me that Germans basically are honest people. That applies to most Germans. Why put yourself in a spot when found out that you cheated. It will cost you quite a bit more then having been honest in the first place. The kind of people that cheat will almost all found out. Eventually you will get caught. Then the fine you have to be pay is steeper then the original cost. Things have defiantly changed since I lived in Germany. When I lived there we didn't have giant super markets. When I needed bread, I went to a bakery, when I needed meat, I went to a butcher store. The same took place if you needed milk. Yes being able to buy those items, its nice, safes you time, when you now can now go to a store where you can purchase all those items in one store.
Yes, it happens to me once, too. I was in such a rush and had things on my mind, that I when I drove out, and looked at the seat next to me that I realized that my wallet lay there untouched. I turned around and payed. No complication
Its strage for me, that at the time you left, you didn't have "gigant" supermarkets. I am 29 and grew up with them my entire life. We still have bakeries and stuff, especially if you want something special or high quality. But we always gad supermarkets too. Of different sizes. May I ask you, how old are you? You have to be perhaps as old as my parents 🤷🏼♀️
I am german and I have honestly never thought about weighing less then I will actually buy😂 When you said it I was thinking „omg right you can do this haha“
I think about this every time I'm at a supermarket where you still have to weigh the stuff yourself (they have become rare in my area anyway) but I've never actually done it 😂
When I know I only has a certain amount of cash with me and no card, I weight exactly how much I can buy, and if it's some g too much, I put one tomato back. I never thought of after weighting putting it back in
I only did this one time. Our supermarket is fucking expensive and they tend to take way too much money for certain fruits. So I put the expensive strawberries in the bag, but put in the number for the cheap ones (that taste awful)
I have a strong opinion on the "everything is closed in Sunday"-thing : it is amazing, I would flip my shit if my friends weren't regularly free Saturday night
In Austria, it is being regarded as a bit rude to walk into someone's home without taking your shoes off. It was only at the very end of my year abroad in Canada that I found out that taking off your shoes gives many hosts across North America the feeling that you're making yourself more at home than you should, especially if you don't know them too well.
That's a great cultural difference! It definitely is very true as well. It has been interesting as we travel in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, etc. and this holds true for all of these cultures as well.
It used to be like this in Belgium, but it seems it's getting lost here. Most people just keep their shoes on, especially since the rapid urbanisation of Belgium. Let's be honest, we carry in a lot less dust than when we worked the fields. At my parents, I get them off because I often have to walk through mud, but elsewhere?
@@beatrixpastoors1104 maybe in your part of germany. Here were i live i most of the time needed to take my shoes of. In german houses. Ofc generally u ask first "Soll ich die Schuhe ausziehen?" and the answer is mostly "Kennst anbehalten." or "Ja, tu deine Schuhe hierhin."
personally I always take my shoes of when I'm visiting people and I like for people to do that as well when they're visiting me. Mainly foremost because of cleanliness. I hate to walk with my street shoes (that I may have stepped into godknowswhat with) into someone's home.
Here in the Netherlands it's quite rude to take your shoes off in someone else's house, especially when you don't know each other that well. And even when you do, you should still ask for permission. It's even rude to not wear shoes in your own house when you have visitors.
We have already had many conversations asking what all is going to be open and what all will be closed tomorrow and people panic trying to make their plans 😂
@@PassportTwo restaurants are open (at last in the way we define open in these times) also Tankstellen and shops in train stations, normal shops and supermarkets are closed.
As far as i know, the cashiers do weigh them, too. Every checkout has a scale built in, so they can check if the Sticker checks out with the actual weight. Edit: Well, I guess I should wait until you finished the topic before commenting xd - Edit end Fun Fact: When cashiers open your egg-boxes, they don't do it to check if all eggs are unbroken but if you have put something else in there.
@@markusschmitz6056 and thats a big problem... the EDEKA in my place allways has wrong outcomings... you press let's say 5 for bananas cause the price-tag says 5 is for bananas and you know 1kg would be let's say 99cent but than the 1kg switches to 1,29€ or instead of bananas the sticker has the price and name of tomatos on it ... I told the store once about this as my sweetpotato was a onion cause I wondered how a sweetpotato was that cheap till I realised the scale showed me the name and price of an onion ... they apologized and said it happend a few times before allready and no they are not using one with a touch screen so someone working in the store has did it and not a program-error or something since its maybe a over 10 year old scale with buttons
When I was a kid, I actually caught a carrot thief in a small bio store. She weighted the carrots, put the sticker on and then put in even more carrots. I (well, my mum) told it to the cashier, they reweighted the carrots and charged the right amount of money. I got a banana as a thank you (which my mum estimated to be roughly as expensive as the stolen carrots would have been). But I was really proud. As for your question: Social pressure will probably pay a big part in not cheating.
@Gunther H.G. Geick ..because walking is a very fundamental right and the only natural mode of mobility. You cannot take away somebodies right to walk - or generally expect anything of anybody walking. Driving a car on the other hand...
Most stores in the area in Germany where I live are weighing the produce while checking out here’s only one store where you have to do it yourself! Regarding the black trash bin , over here people go around and inspect the trash bins before they come over to collect the trash bin and if it’s not sorted right you’ll get a sticker on the trash bin that says that the trash isn’t sorted correctly and that they won’t collect it !
Hamburg doesn't really enforce separation of trash. You COULD theoretically dump everthing into the black residual bin. But hell, are you gonna pay up for that luxury. Merely 800€ per year?!? If you add a zero to that number you might, possibly, reach the true cost for your house if EVERYTHING you produce in trash is dumped in there. So, yeah, all people I know get the idea really quickly that separating your trash really helps save your personal money. That's how you incentivize most people: make 'em recognize where it hurts most people most: in their wallet. Weighing groceries: my favorite supermarket is Famila. Until roughly a year ago they had the "weigh in the fresh produce section yourself with a sticker and have it scanned at the check out" system. But then they changed to having a scale at the check-out line in the cashier's scanning area with the cashier weighing. I once talked to a cashier about that. They told me it's got nothing (or at least very little) to do with reduced trust in customers but rather with the speed. They had far too many customers who either failed to understand the previous system and held up the check-out line because they had no sticker. Or who accidentally picked the wrong number when weighing; or who did not remember the correct number, yada-yada-yada. Recently reusable cloth bags have become a thing instead of plastic bags for fresh produce in an attempt to phase out plastic bags for every fresh item of produce. These weigh more, thus the standard tara for the scales with a fixed amount calculated for standard size plastic bags could not be used anymore but required a true tara button. But many customers failed to understand that they had to place the cloth bag on the scale first, tara it, add the fresh produce, etc. In effort to pre-eminently prevent any kind of court cases for making customers pay more due to higher weights of the cloth bags they simply decided to move it into the scales at the cashier check-out again. Also many customers didn't want to add loads and loads of difficult to peel off stickers to their reusable cloth bags or nets, so they often wrapped them around the draw-strings, making them unreadable at the check-out.
I sometimes get confused when buying fruits and vegetables too, because not every store does it the same. I look for the scales when there are none or forget to weigh my things when I have to :D good news: my grandmother celebrates her 90th birthday today :)
Most people do respect the trash separation. As you point out, I think you can put more in the black bin, put you pay for it. In our region, it is about 10 Euros per collection. So if we put more in the black bin, it has to be emptied more often, so more expensive. We are a family of 4 and we have our 80l bin empied once every 4 weeks. We could empty it every 2 weeks, but instead of 120 € per year it would be 240 €. Everything else (like organic, paper, etc. ) is free.
I wish we had trash separated from recycling here but instead we have a big green bin and everything goes into it with once per week service. You can of course do your own recycling and not empty your bin as often but the charge is monthly, per bin and there's no incentive to reduce its use. Only business are required to separate for recycling. They say our local waste transfer station hires people who manually separate all household waste for recycling, but in reality it all likely goes to the incinerator.
My experience is that you have to weigh yourself only in big supermarkets outside the cities, while at the smaller ones (Edeka, Rewe etc) they are weighted at the checkout desk.
In Berlin where I live some bigger grocery stores are moving back to your weigh your own produce. I really like weighing my own stuff because it is easier to see how much you are buying.
Where I am our stores put a small coded sticker on most of the produce, then it is weighed and scanned at the checkout counter by a built-in scale. There's also several scales in the produce department for customers to check weights before they buy. Only "wet" items like unbagged lettuce is left for the employees to deal with at the checkstand.
That's odd, reverting back to the old system where customers weigh it themselves seems kinda counterproductive to me...the main reason many stores switched over to cashiers weighing the products was because of efficiency. There's so many people who forget to weigh their stuff, it just makes more sense for the weighing to be done at the till, especially since they have scales there anyway for cashiers to check the weight.
In northern Italy, alongside walking trails, there are self-service stands for lemonade, working like you have described. Sometimes you will even find local produce like honey sold the same way.
Yeah, this works out fine for low cost stuff like lemonade and most produce. The money you lose by people not paying is more than offset by not paying for someone to sell your stuff. It obviously doesn't work for 1.000€+ TV's. But local lemonade and flower? That makes a lot of sense.
the point for giving this flowers for free is: when the people are cool and pay for it, its allright, when to many people dont do that and pick the flowers without paying, the owner will change his system and will watch, so the people have the disadvantage from the selfishness of others. Most of the People are knowing that. They want this trust and dont pickup without paying.
My parents have a plant nursery, and while not pick-your-own, there's still occasional theft. There's no guaranteed solution, I'm afraid. And taking care of your plants or prepare orders takes time, all those hours aren't free. That's why my sister, who wants to take over the family business, is thinking of having a part pick-your-own, too. All in all, if it saves you time, it saves money, too.
I also think they would change if their too many thieves and what thought after I hear that it could be person how watch over felt and than get some flowers as pay. I know from Newspaper vending machine that have signs that are monitor in some case they let one take own before, and I think case cost more have pay to get open.
@TUX LINUX cameras are heavily regulated, you can't just put up a camera, even on your private property, leave alone the images are acceptable as evidence...
I work for a Food Bank. Last week my Flat Manger allowed me to bring 6tons of Produce & giveaway,Free to any Family. I never asked my Manger in 2 years,if I could do this. I was pleasantly surprised when she said ,”Yes.” & “I could do this at least twice a month.” Wow. My Leader was very excited with this News,also.
Always learn so much from your videos! So in our Edeka, there’s no weighing or labeling system for our produce section - it’s done like it is in America. And even though we live in the countryside we haven’t come across any flower picking fields yet! But maybe that’s because we’ve had a super cold winter and everything is behind in blooming...but hopefully we will find one soon! And trash sorting is a freaking beast and we are finally just now figuring it all out 😂.
The classic: In which trash can does a tea bag belong? Here's how to do it right: The bag with the tea belongs in the "bio garbage can", the label belongs in "the paper garbage can" and the little clip that holds both together belongs in the scrap metal.
Some examples of the "trust system" where I live (Leoben, Austria): Of course there is the typically Austrian way of selling newspapers: You will find just a bag attached to a streetlight with a small box to throw coins in, so you take a newspaper and throw in your coin. If nobody watches, nothing keeps you from taking the paper without paying, or even the entire bag and the coins already paid. A local beekeeper sells excellent honey and related products. It's in a showcase near his beehives, so if you come by there you just open the case, take what you need and pay into a box. There is even a box with coins for exchange money so if you get something for 6€ and pay with a 10€ bill you can take two 2€ coins. In the next town a farm offers milk, eggs and other agricultural products, you can find them in a refrigerator at the entrance to the farm and at any time of the day or night you can go shopping there. Again you just throw your coins into their savings box (which in this case has the shape of a little tractor). On a nearby mountain (Mugel) the restaurant has to be closed due to covid regulations. They still offer a room as weather protection which is always open, with a table, a bench, heating and a fridge full of softdrinks and beer. There too you take one and pay. On the way there you come by a fountain of the type frequently found in the Alps (a hollowed tree trunk with a constantly running water supply) filled with submerged bottles of drinks so you can always have a cold drink as you come by. Pay into a little locked box with a coin slot.
Yeah those things really are quite popular here in Austria. I think I have seen a fridge with drinks along a popular hiking trail and a we also have those little shops at a farm were you just walk in, get what you want and leave the money there. And that's even pretty close to a big city and near student housing, so I do wonder how often people walk out without paying there.
I hat my best note in a Math "Arbeit" which is a big test. It was an E1+. The E stands for "Erweitert" which means advanced the 1 is the best note of 1 to 6 with 6 the worst and really hard to get, because then you wouldnt respect the teacher and haven't done anything during class and also no homework and the + means, that it's good rated or at the high end of the note. There is also as an example the G3-, and there the G means "Grundschulniveau" which is worse than an E the 3 means, that it's a normal note for a "Grundschule" (pre-school) and is actually bad. the - means, that it is nearly a G4+. The worst ost a G6- and the best a E1+. In pre-school there is only 1 to 6, with 1 the best note, the 6 the worst, as explained earlier, that you have to be very disrepsectful and stuff. And a normal note is a 3 which is about "It's not bad, but also not very good." But witch a 3 you can be happy.
In my city the penalty fee is only charged for putting non-recyclables into the yellow bin or non-compostables into the bio-bin. For putting recyclables or compostables into the normal trash bin there is no penalty but of course it costs more standard fee if you need additional or larger bins as you said. However, since I found a German yellow bag full of German trash in Kenya‘s nature, I‘m not sure if Germany should continue with this separation system.
wow, I'm sure that experience gave you a great insight into what the system really is versus what people think is being done with trash in some cases 🤔
Normally in 99,99% of the stores I visited in Germany you do not weight your own vegetables anymore. This was a thing of the past and is generally only used in stores with old equipment. In the future this will become rarer and rarer as all new shops do wieght at the end
Easy with the black bin (at least where I live): You should not do but are allowed to throw everything (except electronics and harmful materials) in the black bin. You simply will not have a bin big enough so it is indirectly enforced (you only get 60l per fortnight).
Well, in our region most supermarkets do weight the stuff when you checkout! Only smaller supermarkets with older technique still use the sticker method! It was quite common in the past, but now the systems get more and more modernised for checkout scales!
When we lived in my small hometown in Southern Oklahoma, my husband would get frustrated at the lack of recycling in the area. Coming from Germany, he was accustomed to recycling. We purchased a home in the Upper Harz in September, and opted to clean the house out for a reduced sale cost. We have been emptying trash every two weeks for months. I can't wait to see our end of year trash bill. Yes, we have made some changes recently. Mike and I just began our own channel about village living, "Village Life in the Harz". It is in its fledgling stage, but we hope to get more videos out soon. Thank you for sharing your experiences.
That`s what most foreigners get wrong about the german trash system: It `s not forbidden to throw an empty jar or an old newspaper into the black bin occasionally. Especially single housholds are having a hard time to store several bins and boxes in their tiny appartements to seperate the waste. However: it would be an administrative offense to put regular trash into the paper / glass / "yellow" bin.
Point 1: The "Honor" principle. Children are taught at a very early age that stealing etc. is wrong. Now you might think, "Hey, the owners of the flower fields or pumpkin fields are fooling themselves. This will never work out". Well... it is simple mathematics and/or probability calculation. If you have a flower field, someone will ALWAYS come and pick flowers just like that. If you then also have to hire staff to pick the plants, it all becomes very expensive for the farmer. However, if he simply has the cost of sowing and then after a few weeks puts a money box and hopes that the people themselves throw money in, precisely because they might otherwise have a guilty conscience, then it pays off very quickly for the farmer. So it's more a social-cultural reason coupled with common sense why the system works - at least for plants that are cheap to grow. Point 2: Again, a socio-cultural reason why, for example, gas stations work the way they do here. If you let customers pay first and then open the pump station, you would indirectly imply that the customer is a thief and would take advantage of the system, it would work differently. Customers would be pissed off just thinking about it and would avoid that gas station. However, should someone actually steal and be caught, he/she would be met with disgust. "We all adhere to the simplest social norm...why can't you manage that? What's wrong with you?". Back when prepaid cell phone cards came along, they also directly advertised that that was for having TOTAL COST CONTROL. So you, as a responsible German, are not being ripped off by the phone provider, because if you invest 20€, then you can only make calls for 20€. Practical also for the cell phone of the teenage daughter... no 200€ bill etc. Of course the reason for prepaid was rather that the phone providers didn't want to sit on open bills, especially with younger customers ;) Point 3. the scale. A separate scale in the store is easier and cheaper to maintain than a scale that is built into a POS system, for example. If the scale in a cash register breaks down, no one who wants something weighed can shop there either (and scales have to be calibrated regularly). So it is much cheaper for a store owner to have the cash register in the customer area and let the customers do the work of weighing. Is there cheating going on? Sure, but that's all factored in.
From the first second of the video: It sometimes sucks when its sunday. My worst sunday memory was from as I was 18 and ran out of period pads and my mom foreced me put a kitchen-cloth you use for cleaning dishes in my pants. A few months later the nearby gasstation begun to sell stuff like toilet paper and period pads in case people run out of it on a sunday
@@Stoffmonster467 they probably would, but at least here (Belgium), the pharmacy on guard asks for a premium, a quite hefty one, I add, especially at night.
Gas stations: In Europe, there are also some gazoline automata. But they work differently insofar, as when you put in your debit card, they first "make a reservation" for the possible maximum amount (eg. EUR 200,00), but then they only book the money you have to pay. But this reservation can lead your bank account be "charged" (not booked) anyway for the additional money, and you might pay credit fees for this money even it has never been "booked".
In city stores rewe and Netto there are self checkouts. There you could cheat in terms of put all on the cashier scale but klick a wrong button for a cheaper price. I never did that on purpose, but when I put my bread on it, I couldn't find this exact bread in the system so I took something similar. Apperently I payed more that I had to lol
All grocery stores in my town have a weighing scale at the checkout but there is this one Edeka that does not. Sometimes, on my way from the gym, I go to that Edeka but forget that it does not have the weighing scale and I have to endure the embarrassment of holding up the line. Funnily enough, that does happen very often at that Edeka and people in front of me sometimes remind me that I forgot to do it by forgetting themselves. :D
Me too, as a German. I’m used that the vegetables are being weighted by the cashier and almost every time when I’m shopping at Kaufland I forget it and then I’m upset, that I have to do it by myself.
In some cities you only get charged a fee if you put your black bin out to get emptied ( IIRC e.g. Grevenbroich) and other cities have garbage trucks which scan and weight the trash bin and charge you accordingly (St. Tönis or Tönisforst does this). So that definetly stops one from trowing everything in one bin.
I remember when I worked at a cash desk serveral years ago, there was a bunch of young children with a bag full of fruits and a 50ct weight sticker on it. After a hard stare they ran away.
Recycling in our city is also punished if you don't do it correctly, but on top of fines, there are controls and if it only happens once in a year or something you won't be fined, they just won't empty the can. Hasn't happened to our house because most of us actually look out for these things.
12:32 I lived in an apartment for 3 years with 2 roomates and later as it ws only 1 she refused to seperate trash. I asked her whats the purpose of having 2 trashcans when she would trow all trash into 1 bag, but all she said was "IDK we allways did this" and as I asked her if she could seperate the trash she ignored me. We had big containers in front of our building (cause 2 houses with 40 apartments each were using them) and she said since people were trowing stuff in the containers without looking she said she cares zero for the recycing into where it belongs. And oh boy... someday a paper was hung on the front door of the building saying since people trow trash away without looking they would punich the whole building by locking the containers between 6pm and 10am even tho its legally allowed in Germany to trow trash away from 7am to 7pm
The gas stations make a lot of their earnings not by just selling gasoline but by other items selling inside the cashiers room . Therefore, they are interested that people walk in for paying and then do additional buying. There are some gas companies thinking of using video plate number surveillance, but this is not allowed in Germany yet according to data protection laws.
You can look up the information online and see that many gas stations actually don't put up any surveillance or very limited. The reason being 1) an increased rate of people putting fake plates on their car to fill up and drive off and then removing the fake license plate. 2) Many police offices won't investigate gas theft because the amounts are too small and petty for them to look into. Therefore, most gas stations accept this loss and don't invest the money in surveillance equipment. The data is in the neighborhood of only 22% of gas thefts are ever solved, but that again is only the crimes that are reported. one source: www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article154425682/Das-dreiste-Business-der-organisierten-Sprit-Diebe.html
11:41 waste management is regional - rather locally organized, there are really no central rules and every municipality has different rules. For example, the neighbouring municipality (Landkreis) has different colour coding on its waste bins. The Paper bin here is green in the next village it is blue. One has really to check. In our area, only 2 collections (per year!!) of the black bin (Restmüll) included in the yearly fee. If you are not interested in separating waste one can just put everything in the black bin, hence the name Restmüll, but each time it is emptied after the 2nd collection per year is charged separately. In fact, when you separate your stuff it is really next to nothing left for the black bin, last year I had it actually only emptied once and it was not even full.
scales in Germany are obliged to be offically calibrated by the organization called "Eichamt". Businesses are not allowed to use uncalibrated scales by law and could be fined by doing so. Look for a small sticker at the scala indicatiing the due date of the re-calibration. it must be visible on the scale
i used to live together with flatmates during my early days at uni and we recycled only like 60% of the time, sometimes we just couldn't be bothered and we never had to pay for anything, i did however started to feel increasingly guilty and have been recycling dutifully ever since haha
I have to say: I really like the SB-Kassen that are becoming more and more popular. It's a really easy and swift way to checkout from a german supermarket if you just can scan everything by yourself although the terminals will sometimes refuse to work on specific items if their actual weight is not in the corridor of acceptable weights.
Often in the US, these lanes are definitely the most popular and there will be lines for those before they go through the manned checkout lanes. I know the impact this has on some people's jobs if they are the cashiers, but self-checkout does offer speed and convenience!
@@lanamack1558 there was a "switch off sound" button on the self check out's touch screen at our real,-market. I liked muting it while telling the stupid thing to shut up :D some form of stress relieve after a long day at work. They closed this supermarket for good, so no self scan check out near me anymore.
Also refusing to use them. I go shopping, i´m collecting the goods i want to buy, i put them on the checkout belt, i put them back in the cart, i lift them in my car. I honestly cannot be bothered to do also the cashier´s job by myself.
pump & run: the gas stations have cameras => your licence plates are known. The gas pump is locked as long as the pumped gas was not payed => if somebody did not pay, this will be recognised pretty soon. The licence plate is reported at the police and they will find you. I recently heard that somebody just forgot to pay, completely in his own thoughts he got in the car and left the gas station. He was pulled over by the police on the Autobahn some 10 minutes later. He immediately phoned the gas station and promissed to pay. The police believed him, that he had just forgotten to pay and he went back to the gas station and payed the bill. But if somebody really tries it with "criminal energy", pump & run might be succesful now and then. I guess all gas stations have an insurance for those things. weighing in grocery stores: usually the cashier has a scale. I can't remember when I last had to weigh the vegetables myself - except for on vacations in Spain maybe 10 years ago... garbage cans: people are trusted, that they recycle their stuff, just because recycling makes sense - and you have to pay for the garbage collection anyway, no matter if you put something into the can or not. Generally I think: if you trust people, they will be honest. If you mistrust people, you will get licked. Good news: the beautiful green leaves are finally out and the trees start blossoming....
i have worked as a cashier myself in germany, and most registers have a scale build in onece had a guy trying to get 3KG of nuts during christmas with the sticker saying it was 1KG we dont check if the amount seems about right but cashiers in germany generally also work in the store, thus know the price of an item and can make an educated guess if the price on the sticker is correct for the amount
Good news - my parents and my brother (who's becoming a dad again) have been vaccinated. All supermarkets (Rewe, Lidl, Aldi Nord) I frequent weigh at the cashout, but I still know the older system. You'll have to look around for the scales. I never really thought about not separating my trash but there are always some items where you're not sure and they might end up in wrong bin or bag. I live in three appartment house, so any officials would have to really investigate who did it wrong or just fine the whole house, which also wouldn't really work. I guess if you grow up with the "honor" systems, you really don't question them and don't see them as a burden, but it's really cool to get a glimpse into some "newcomers" perspectives
In rural Texas or outside of city limits, there are many people who will not pay for private trash service but will burn everything including plastics. Burn barrels simply piling stuff together and igniting it wafts toxic fumes into the air. On the other hand, recycled materials are being rejected by China and other countries now; it's hard to say whether much material is free of contamination and is actually recycled in the United States.
We definitely know a lot of rural Texan and Oklahomans that do this as well. It really is interesting once you look into where trash goes for those that do use trash services and find out about the complexities of getting rid of trash as well as the international disputes over it.
In New Jersey we do not fill our gas tanks by ourselves. We have attendants do it for us. So no pump and run and no paying inside first or at the pump with your card.
Mittlerweile wird das Gemüse immer häufiger nur an der Kasse gewogen. Hab schon in mehreren Läden erlebt, dass nach einer Renovierung nicht mehr selbstgewogen wird, andersrum hab ichs noch nie erlebt.
For both the self-weighing in grocery stores and the unmanned flower and vegetable fields, the reason is simple: Time is money, specifically employee time is money. The cost of wages is relatively high in Germany compared to the US, where companies often pay untrained workers in the service industry minimal wages with no social plan attached (in germany, costs for social insurance are mostly organized stately in that sector of wages and the employer has to pay a fixed mandatory share). So companies "accept" a certain percentage of easy fraught by the few dishonest customers, because they would lose much more money if they paid a cashier to do all the weighing respectively to sit beside a flower field all day, charge the customers and watch for thieves. It works well with anything that is generally low in price, because most people wouldn't want to deal with the bad conscience of being thieves just to save a few cents.
I may age myself, but when I was a kid, I remember my parents paying after pumping gas. But that was virtually gone when I started driving at 15. Speaking of personally discipline. We separate out trash in the house, even though virtually none of it gets recycled. It’s called living with a German in America 😂🤣 And our good news of the week was James Bray’s reaction video of our Döner episode.
Regarding the black-bin question: You most certainly can. We actually had to for the past 8 years, because our apartment complex did not have a Yellow or Brown bin. We had Blue and Black. Now we also have a yellow one but that is so small, it is full not even a day after it was emptied, so in other words, you still need to throw your plastics into the black bin.
Separating trash is so ingrained in me that when my British landlady tried to explain the British system to me, I looked at her confused and asked "But where do I put paper?" "In recycling." "But there is plastic in it?" "Yeah?" That day I learned that not every country separates as much as we do. And I really needed to get used to throwing away plastic bottles again. I was a child when the current Pfandsystem was introduced, so yeah I remember throwing plastic out but it feels very weird when it is a soda or water bottle.
About the selfservice fields: About 10% of the people steel the stuff. This is included in the calculation of the owner and is usually cheaper then employing someone to guard the field and sell the stuff.
Black bin: In some areas people only have black bins and indeed throw everything in and don't separate or recycle. So yes, you can get away doing it and you might save some money on the flat rate for other bins, but afaik in some municipalities at least they weigh how much "black bin trash" you put out - or how frequent - and charge you extra. Sometimes there's a code on the bin that get scanned or they weigh it on the truck before emptying. I even lived in a town where they had a metal detector on board their Müllwagen to detect any metal in the paper waste bin. If they detected something they would leave it there for you to sort through again, put a sticker on top that says that you haven't recycled properly and you had to try your luck again next time.
I have a migrated neighbour from Tunis/Tunesia, which disposes more black bin trash than other neighbours, but thats typical when starting 1st own household/appartment as you buy things for your household like furniture, kitchen stuff etc. and this normally decreases after few years. I'm refuse teaching people about uneffective strict trash sorting as long as the system tunnels itself when burning all sorted collected trash finally together in Eschweilers power plant.
Bei Kaufland in Hamburg muss man das auch selber machen. Viele vergessen es und laufen dann zu einer Waage, die für solche Fälle extra bei den Kassen aufgestellt wurde. Ansonsten wiegen das die Kassiererinen.
its very common to have small non seperated trash cans, that just get emptied in the black can, in the rooms but to have separated cans in the kitchen/living room. Also non seperated cans are very common in public while seperated ones in public just being in crowded spaces like parks, highway rest stations or train stations/airports/etc.
There are grocery stores in the USA that have the same produce weighing process that you have in Germany. One such store that I shop, Wegman's, has this system. This system at Wegman's is also used for loose grains, nuts, candies, etc.
Good news this week. I declared Tuesday to be a holiday and rode Houston city buses to several places I wanted to visit (restaurant, friend, grocery store that is not near me). Riding the bus allowed me to look at the city much better than driving a car would have allowed. Riding the bus had much less stress and worry about safe driving and wear and tear. The somewhat longer time was fine because being able to look around as I traveled, was as good as taking a trip to a foreign country.
Here in Finland people also weigh fruits and vegetables themselves. I've never heard of anyone adding stuff to the bag after weighing it. What I've heard of though is that sometimes people take a more expensive product and then weigh it as a cheaper product. A lot of vegetable and fruits are available in two different varieties; one is normal and the other is organically farmed and/or fair trade. The latter is obviously more expensive. So what some people do is that they take fair trade bananas and then weigh them as normal bananas. Bananas are bananas, so it is difficult for the cashiers to see which one is in the bag. The bananas have different stickers on them but I would think that a dishonest customer would just take the stickers off before placing the bananas in the bag. As far as I know though, this is not something that grocery stores would consider a big problem; it doesn't happen that much. People stealing beer cause them much more harm.
I worked at a gas station in Germany. ALL pump and runs I had where people forgetting to pay but we had a police man we just gave the license plate taken from the high number of cameras. He then went to them(all in the area) and told them to please come back and pay. All of them came back but if they wouldn't have, they would have been fined hard.
I guess those flower and vegtable fields are still profitable, because they don't have to pay someone to sell them and guard the produce. I once lived in a shared flat and they didn't seperate their trash. I felt really bad, but I only lived there for three months, so i wasn't in any position to challenge them on how they handle their trash. The student residence in Austria I live in has seperate trash containers behind the building and the trash from the community kitchens is collected in seperate bins, but every room just comes with one bin. So I brought two extra ones to sperate plasic, paper and waste. Some of the cleaning women don't care though, so I have to take the bins to the containers myself.
Well ... at least in a city you can easily get away with not spererating your trash. Or ... uh ... so I have heard. From a friend... As for the gas stations, I have seen the system you described in many scandinavian countries as well. I think the main reason why it's different in Germany is our love for cash and even more importantly the fact that gas stations want you to actually enter the shop as they make most of their revenue with whatever other products they sell. Sometimes they actually resemble a small grocery store. As for weighing your veggies, both systems are common with larger stores usually depending on you weighing it yourself while smaller ones and the cheap discounters wheigh stuff at the register.
7:45 I think it strongly depends in which chain of store you buy. I live near Cologne and all "Rewe" and "Edeka" I have been to weigh at the register. "Kaufland" on the other hand still has the system were the customer is responsible for it.
In Belgium, we used to have to weigh our produce ourselves, but nowadays, at least where I live, shops I know have ditched the system and switched to weighing at the cash register. However, the supermarkets where you had to weigh yourself often had another scale closer to check-out, so you don't have to go all the way back to the produce aisle. Pick-your-own farms are a thing, here, but most prefer to have a little automat shop. I often buy strawberries at one of those.
My Parents have both Gas Stations in Germany and both have security cameras at the gas station. So yeah, most times the police find you, but in a few cases the people have stolen license plates on their car, that mades it difficult to found them. But these are the exemptions. Fun fact, actually most of the people who don’t pay just forgot it because they had a phone call or something.
Certainly seems to vary regionally or where you shop at. In our area there are certainly places that still have you do it, some that do it at the cashier, and some that still have the old machines in the produce section with a sign on it telling you not to use it anymore as if it is a museum and that is a relic form the past 😂
@@facht Yep, real,- and GLOBUS still cling to the self-weighing-system, whereas REWE and Edeka (the two biggest companies in Germany) have weighing systems at the check-out. In these supermarkets you'll find as well a scale in the produce section where one can check the chosen items. If the scale has a huge "keyboard" with lot of figures (and a printer attached) you definiteley know you have to weigh by yourself. ;-)
I didn't know that there are still supermarkets where you have to weigh your fruits on your own. I remember that from my childhood in the 90s but nowadays I go to Rewe, Lidl, Netto, Aldi and everywhere they weigh fruits and veggies at the checkout
German here. I have lived in many places all over Germany, and have never seen a grocery store with the self-weighing and sticker system. All grocery stores I've been to had the cashier weigh at checkout. Which stores do this?
My father, who lives in Germany, but visited me in the US, liked the way American supermarkets pack your groceries for you, while the shopper has to do this in Germany. So he once asked the owner of a small supermarket chain, why there were no baggers in German supermarkets. The response he received was that because of the much higher costs/employee (health care for all, insurances, social security, paid vacations...), it was not economically possible to hire anyone for such a menial job in Germany. I suspect that the same principle applies to the weighing of produce. It's time spent by the customer, not the cashier. For the same reason, you won't find park house assistants, and have to bring your shopping cart back with the 'coin trick', because it's too expensive to hire someone who collects shopping carts.
Please do not forget, that a German would never trust someone else to back his items. Maybe they will put the eggs on the bottom? Or they will not separate between frozen stuff for the cooler back and the normal stuff? And they will give you new bags, but you brought your wholle collection of reusable bags with you! They were tests with this system, but mostly, they got their bags taken away from them and were told: I´d better to this myself.
@@PassportTwo you wondered about people in germany (not) cheating with weighing food, but what about the usa where "self checkout" seems to be widely available to do it yourself not only for a few fruits and vegetables, but for the entire purchase ?
About the gasstations, it is risky to pump and run, legally. Gas stations have usually betwenn 10 and 20 security cameras and they do call the police on pump and runs. The selfweighing becomes less and less, you mor often have a scale build in in the checkout.
8:49 this is depending on the area you live. In my area I just grab my vegis go to the checkout and then the cashier weights it and he/she knows what to type in to the Register and I prefer this System because you are not confused in what button you need too press if there are different vegis etc And of course you can’t cheat them anymore :)
What you put in the grey (you called it "black") trashcan you have to pay for. What you put into a yellow bag or you bring to a recycling station is free. So you can use a smaller grey can or have it emptied less often (the garbage truck reads electronically the information from the trashcan (RFID I believe) when emptying it and books it on your account). That is the system in my home county anyway (Lörrach).
I like you getting expert kowledge of the german trash system. There are even more aspects to this: Try throwing away an old washing maschine or a desktop pc. Find the "Entsorgungshof" in your area. (Humble suggestion for a future video :-)
In my Landkreis ist like you have FREE Sperrmüll. You call, give them a list and you get a date. On this day you have to put the Sperrmüll in front of the house until 7:00 in the morning.
I wished that taking your shoes off before you go into someone else's home would be the same in America as it is in most German houses. One time a German guy living in the States, entered my home with muddy shoes. I have some white carpeting and did not appreciate him coming into my home with filthy shoes. Mud prints where seen on my floors. He seen me looking at them and said, what's the big deal, when it dries you can just vacuum and it will come back off. I was shocked hearing a German guy say that to me. I wont enter someone's house without asking if I should take my shoes off. Not one person ever said yes, take your shoes off. To me that shows respect to that persons home.
To the scale-situation. I was in a pet store a few days ago cause I got a new pet and they have this setion where you can put herbs, dryed vegtables, snacks,.. and other food for pets in containers or bags and than you have to wieght them and I literally had no clue how their scale works cause my item was the number 65 and the scale had only on the screen the numbers 1-9 and 0 and when I pressed the 6 it automaticly made a sticker for dog-treats and I was wondering why it didn't noticed me typing 65. I did it again and got a sticker for dogtreats and a sticker for herbs and I was confused. They literally had a button to switch numbers wich was sooooo tinny you couldn't really see it... I guess thats why there were soooooo many stickers on the scale of products from the cathegorys 1 to 9 cause many people got the same problem before xD
Concerning the black bin question: Yes you can get away with doing that, but it will cost you money, as you end up having to pay for a bigger black bin (As you explained later; I halted the video while writing.). (Paper bins are free, for plastic to be collected you pay indirectly when you buy the products, bringing things to the municipal recycling site is also free (As private citizen, not for businesses.)) The other question about separating trash: No, I do not know anyone outrightely refusing to separate trash, but nobody is perfect, almost anybody does not always sort perfectly out of lazyness.
Our garbage removal trucks weigh the trash and you pay only what you have disposed of in the black bin. The bins are coded with RFID tags for that. So separating does pay off as the yellow bin (recycling stuff) is free.
Yeah, there isn't THAT much trust at the gas station. There are cameras installed, so if you really get the idea to pump and run, they can easily find you based on your number plate. With the fields, they basically price in the dishonest pickers, but people who bother to pick their own stuff are usually more on the honest side anyway. Plus, the few flowers or fruits or vegetables which are stolen are still worth less than what you would have to pay to ensure that nobody steals at all.
You can look up the information online and see that many gas stations actually don't put up any surveillance or very limited. The reason being 1) an increased rate of people putting fake plates on their car to fill up and drive off and then removing the fake license plate. 2) Many police offices won't investigate gas theft because the amounts are too small and petty for them to look into. Therefore, most gas stations accept this loss and don't invest the money in surveillance equipment. The data is in the neighborhood of only 22% of gas thefts are ever solved, but that again is only the crimes that are reported. one source: www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article154425682/Das-dreiste-Business-der-organisierten-Sprit-Diebe.html
Weighing your own vegetables at supermarkets. A report from England said that one supermarket found it had sold more carrots (cheap) than it had ordered but had run out of avocados (expensive) without checking any out. Umm?
We loved buying Sprudel und Bier in the ingenious, stackable plastic crates. Germans visiting us in the US felt sorry for our forests given that so many six packs and 12ers come wrapped in cardboard.😔
Trees are the original recycled product and can be grown again and again. Cardboard is easily broken down by composting and can often be used as a fuel source. Plastic on the other hand is one and done that uses oil, which is non-renewable and plastic takes up to 2000 years to break down in nature.. Longer in the airless landfills. I think your German friends are a bit confused.
I'm a German beekeeper and can tell you, that I'm selling my honey also on a trust basis. We have a self-service box by the road. There is a money box, a price list and honey jars inside. Whoever wants to buy honey, takes his honey jar and throws the money into the money box. It works quite well. But I also think it works so well because we live in the country. I wouldn't do that in a city. But it's not like honey is never stolen. So 2 to 3 times a year a jar is stolen. Or it is not paid appropriately. The alternative would be sale at the front door. But we are not always there and beekeeping is not my main profession, only a sideline. Therefore, I accept the few stolen jars. In return, I sell more on average, with less work.
Separation of waste is great but not always practical. We had a party where we at the end of it around midnight got the barbecues going and served sausages etc. on paper plates and using paper napkins. We tried to get rid of the waste the following week but they wouldn’t take it. It had to be recycled with the paper and cardboard. Great idea on paper, but that would mean storing paper plates with food leftovers in our barn for three months until next pickup. The rats would have had a party if we had done that.
Did you make it to the end and see our special request?? 😃
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try "fill up and run", and you will see what happens.... once i somehow forgot to pay, next day i had the police at my door.... could explain everything and paid for the gas the next day. gas stations got cameras all over the place.
U ask for positive things check out the Miniatur Wunderland and their positive vibrations incl a new worldrecord. Btw they are no one ranked loved attraction from foreign tourist.
My personal good news is: My Corona bonus has finally arrived! I used to do a small teaching job in adult education, which I currently can't due to the virus, so the state of Bavaria pays me a small compensation. By "small" I mean really, really small, but it's better than nothing. And, no, it's not a loan, I won't have to pay it back.
Good News? Well the actual US President seems to do a good job - from oversees. Seems COVID vaccine is going on.
On the trash topic: there is another way to enforce trash separation. The trash can is weighed, you pay for every gram of trash. There is a flat fee for each individual emptying and a price per kg of trash produced. On the contrary plastic, paper and organic is not priced, so if you separate, you save money.
At Gas Stations in Germany you and your Car get scanned by cameras and when you left without paying the police are standing in front of your door the next day.
You can look up the information online and see that many gas stations actually don't put up any surveillance or very limited. The reason being 1) an increased rate of people putting fake plates on their car to fill up and drive off and then removing the fake license plate. 2) Many police offices won't investigate gas theft because the amounts are too small and petty for them to look into. Therefore, most gas stations accept this loss and don't invest the money in surveillance equipment. The data is in the neighborhood of only 22% of gas thefts are ever solved, but that again is only the crimes that are reported.
source: www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article154425682/Das-dreiste-Business-der-organisierten-Sprit-Diebe.html
Would love to see where you got your information though!
There is a third way: Enter the station and hand the clerk cash (say, a twenty) and they will authorize the pump to dispense the equivalent quantity of fuel. One pumps until the tank is full (say, after fifteen) and then returns to the clerk to collect one's change (a five). This works with a card also; especially if one wants to top off the tank and not simply purchase a fixed quantity. Many stations in the U.S. used this system prior to pay-at-the-pump becoming near universal.
@@PassportTwo Whether super market or gas station, stolen things are covered by insurance. Prices for gas are rather low, it`s the tax that`s 64%. So if gas costs 1,569 per liter, it`s 1 Euro tax only.
edit: Apologies, I mistook that. SoI have to remedy: Insurances just pay for burglary.
@@atconnys8786 I actually have no idea what happens with things like VAT and gas taxes when something gets stolen. With VAT, the gas station might still have to pay it (at least on the price they themselves pay their suppliers) but with other taxes I don't know at which level in the supply chain they are charged.
@@PassportTwo Hmm, welt.de is not necessarily a reliable source for information. At least I’d double check anything before taking it for granted.
For those Mom&Pop gas stations in the countryside, it’s not always that economically viable or feasible to install much more of a simple CCTV system with limited capabilities and less good image quality for a few grand. For about anything else, it’s a major difference.
The gas station franchise owners rarely receive noticeable commissions from gas, their most important business is anything else: their shop. Also, gas stations are “popular” with robbers: so these owners are used to invest in security systems like CCTV and automatic cash registers (who act like an “operated” ATM). So: a CCTV system is installed anyway, why not hook up a few extra cameras?
The gas supplier is strongly interested against any theft, as the tax offices aren’t willing to write off their gas taxes that easy, and insurance companies do demand premiums close to the actual damages. Think about it from the tax offices view: the gas station might be selling untaxed gas for a huge profit, so the tax-accepted thefts are pretty low.
At medium to larger gas stations, unpaid bills account for up to 7% of total revenue, so an investment in a decent CCTV system for tens of thousands of euros does often pay off in much less than two years and so is a no-brainer decision.
Gas stations nowadays are often running FullHD cameras, and newer systems are even recording in 4K at 30 FPS whenever motion is detected: you’ll have a perfect image of the driver’s face and many car details aside of just the license plate… While there are still ways to defeat those systems, it’s getting harder and so usually about 50-70% of unsettled bills can be recovered by those systems.
In the US salad is typically first, almost as an appetizer, in Germany it usually comes after the soup with the entree. But as a German I must add that I never had the criminal "intelligence" to even think about "gas theft" or "under weighing" my fruit or veggies.
In our local Edeka the fruits and vegetables are weighed at the cashier. I think that is better because it does not require a label to be printed (lower impact on environment).
@@johncatty6560 Yeah I normally buy my stuff at Edeka and yesterday in another shop I forgot to weigh my vegetables. It's emberassing to me to block the line with such things.
@@4Astaroth Yeah, I can imagine that...
If we " love our neighbors", like we want to be treated...
And I think in stores where you should print it yourself, the cashier still weights it and checks.
As a university student I worked as a cashier of a gas station in German for some years. Each Sunday…
It happened only once that someone drove off without paying.
And I even knew the guy… my professor in theoretical physics.
He came back about 20min later.
On his way home he realized that he forgot to pay.
Christtian S-P! That indicates to me that Germans basically are honest people. That applies to most Germans. Why put yourself in a spot when found out that you cheated. It will cost you quite a bit more then having been honest in the first place. The kind of people that cheat will almost all found out. Eventually you will get caught. Then the fine you have to be pay is steeper then the original cost. Things have defiantly changed since I lived in Germany. When I lived there we didn't have giant super markets. When I needed bread, I went to a bakery, when I needed meat, I went to a butcher store. The same took place if you needed milk. Yes being able to buy those items, its nice, safes you time, when you now can now go to a store where you can purchase all those items in one store.
Yes, it happens to me once, too. I was in such a rush and had things on my mind, that I when I drove out, and looked at the seat next to me that I realized that my wallet lay there untouched. I turned around and payed. No complication
Its strage for me, that at the time you left, you didn't have "gigant" supermarkets. I am 29 and grew up with them my entire life. We still have bakeries and stuff, especially if you want something special or high quality. But we always gad supermarkets too. Of different sizes.
May I ask you, how old are you? You have to be perhaps as old as my parents 🤷🏼♀️
I am german and I have honestly never thought about weighing less then I will actually buy😂 When you said it I was thinking „omg right you can do this haha“
I think about this every time I'm at a supermarket where you still have to weigh the stuff yourself (they have become rare in my area anyway) but I've never actually done it 😂
Exactly!
lol everybody did that.
But the self scaling is gone for years now, at least in my area.
When I know I only has a certain amount of cash with me and no card, I weight exactly how much I can buy, and if it's some g too much, I put one tomato back. I never thought of after weighting putting it back in
I only did this one time. Our supermarket is fucking expensive and they tend to take way too much money for certain fruits. So I put the expensive strawberries in the bag, but put in the number for the cheap ones (that taste awful)
I have a strong opinion on the "everything is closed in Sunday"-thing : it is amazing, I would flip my shit if my friends weren't regularly free Saturday night
In Austria, it is being regarded as a bit rude to walk into someone's home without taking your shoes off. It was only at the very end of my year abroad in Canada that I found out that taking off your shoes gives many hosts across North America the feeling that you're making yourself more at home than you should, especially if you don't know them too well.
That's a great cultural difference! It definitely is very true as well. It has been interesting as we travel in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, etc. and this holds true for all of these cultures as well.
It used to be like this in Belgium, but it seems it's getting lost here. Most people just keep their shoes on, especially since the rapid urbanisation of Belgium. Let's be honest, we carry in a lot less dust than when we worked the fields. At my parents, I get them off because I often have to walk through mud, but elsewhere?
@@beatrixpastoors1104 maybe in your part of germany. Here were i live i most of the time needed to take my shoes of. In german houses. Ofc generally u ask first "Soll ich die Schuhe ausziehen?" and the answer is mostly "Kennst anbehalten." or "Ja, tu deine Schuhe hierhin."
personally I always take my shoes of when I'm visiting people and I like for people to do that as well when they're visiting me. Mainly foremost because of cleanliness.
I hate to walk with my street shoes (that I may have stepped into godknowswhat with) into someone's home.
Here in the Netherlands it's quite rude to take your shoes off in someone else's house, especially when you don't know each other that well. And even when you do, you should still ask for permission. It's even rude to not wear shoes in your own house when you have visitors.
PSA: for all the non germans in Germany, tomorrow saturday the 1st of may all shops are closed!
We have already had many conversations asking what all is going to be open and what all will be closed tomorrow and people panic trying to make their plans 😂
@@PassportTwo restaurants are open (at last in the way we define open in these times) also Tankstellen and shops in train stations, normal shops and supermarkets are closed.
Thanks, forgot that actually :) ... might have to go out today then
upps ... I'm a German but since I'm self employed, I often miss the holidays. 😄
@Tagedieb true, but sometimes there’s no way around it
As far as i know, the cashiers do weigh them, too. Every checkout has a scale built in, so they can check if the Sticker checks out with the actual weight. Edit: Well, I guess I should wait until you finished the topic before commenting xd - Edit end
Fun Fact: When cashiers open your egg-boxes, they don't do it to check if all eggs are unbroken but if you have put something else in there.
Haha, no worries! You were just a little too quick for us but we eventually caught up to what you wanted to say 😉
No, we were told to guess whether the weight could be correct. You can easily steal a few lychee, but not an apple or a banana .
Over here (NRW) almost all shops have switched over to the chashiers wighing the produce.
@@korfi2go748 This is true for Rewe, but at Edeka you still have to weigh them on your own.
@@markusschmitz6056 and thats a big problem... the EDEKA in my place allways has wrong outcomings... you press let's say 5 for bananas cause the price-tag says 5 is for bananas and you know 1kg would be let's say 99cent but than the 1kg switches to 1,29€ or instead of bananas the sticker has the price and name of tomatos on it ... I told the store once about this as my sweetpotato was a onion cause I wondered how a sweetpotato was that cheap till I realised the scale showed me the name and price of an onion ... they apologized and said it happend a few times before allready and no they are not using one with a touch screen so someone working in the store has did it and not a program-error or something since its maybe a over 10 year old scale with buttons
All the ways you point out how I could steal everything and nothing... It never occurred to me I could do it.
When I was a kid, I actually caught a carrot thief in a small bio store. She weighted the carrots, put the sticker on and then put in even more carrots. I (well, my mum) told it to the cashier, they reweighted the carrots and charged the right amount of money.
I got a banana as a thank you (which my mum estimated to be roughly as expensive as the stolen carrots would have been). But I was really proud.
As for your question: Social pressure will probably pay a big part in not cheating.
Lately at a red light: person walks on red. An entire kindergarten group present yells: "VERY BAD ROLE MODEL." Impressive upbringing for adults.
Lately at a red light: me walking while red light. Person on the opposite: "Now if by chance a child sees this!" - ""They better be in bed by now!"
true story :-)
@@MegaBorusse1900
I hate people who are walking while red. That means that I have to hate you now. There is no wiggle room.
@Gunther H.G. Geick Because pedestrians can't run over cars.
@Gunther H.G. Geick ..because walking is a very fundamental right and the only natural mode of mobility. You cannot take away somebodies right to walk - or generally expect anything of anybody walking.
Driving a car on the other hand...
Most stores in the area in Germany where I live are weighing the produce while checking out here’s only one store where you have to do it yourself!
Regarding the black trash bin , over here people go around and inspect the trash bins before they come over to collect the trash bin and if it’s not sorted right you’ll get a sticker on the trash bin that says that the trash isn’t sorted correctly and that they won’t collect it !
We certainly see those stickers on a lot of the plastic yellow bags in our area for people who don't sort those correctly!
I once worked in such a store. So many people forgot about it and me, the cashier, had to run through half the store to do it for them...
@@lmn6023 yes they run all the time to weigh the produce
Hamburg doesn't really enforce separation of trash. You COULD theoretically dump everthing into the black residual bin.
But hell, are you gonna pay up for that luxury.
Merely 800€ per year?!? If you add a zero to that number you might, possibly, reach the true cost for your house if EVERYTHING you produce in trash is dumped in there.
So, yeah, all people I know get the idea really quickly that separating your trash really helps save your personal money.
That's how you incentivize most people: make 'em recognize where it hurts most people most: in their wallet.
Weighing groceries: my favorite supermarket is Famila. Until roughly a year ago they had the "weigh in the fresh produce section yourself with a sticker and have it scanned at the check out" system. But then they changed to having a scale at the check-out line in the cashier's scanning area with the cashier weighing. I once talked to a cashier about that.
They told me it's got nothing (or at least very little) to do with reduced trust in customers but rather with the speed.
They had far too many customers who either failed to understand the previous system and held up the check-out line because they had no sticker.
Or who accidentally picked the wrong number when weighing;
or who did not remember the correct number,
yada-yada-yada.
Recently reusable cloth bags have become a thing instead of plastic bags for fresh produce in an attempt to phase out plastic bags for every fresh item of produce.
These weigh more, thus the standard tara for the scales with a fixed amount calculated for standard size plastic bags could not be used anymore but required a true tara button.
But many customers failed to understand that they had to place the cloth bag on the scale first, tara it, add the fresh produce, etc. In effort to pre-eminently prevent any kind of court cases for making customers pay more due to higher weights of the cloth bags they simply decided to move it into the scales at the cashier check-out again.
Also many customers didn't want to add loads and loads of difficult to peel off stickers to their reusable cloth bags or nets, so they often wrapped them around the draw-strings, making them unreadable at the check-out.
I sometimes get confused when buying fruits and vegetables too, because not every store does it the same. I look for the scales when there are none or forget to weigh my things when I have to :D
good news: my grandmother celebrates her 90th birthday today :)
Happy birthday to your grandmother! That's awesome! 😃
Tell your Oma that the whole Internet celebrates with her!
Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag! Omas rule! 🎂🥳
Most people do respect the trash separation. As you point out, I think you can put more in the black bin, put you pay for it. In our region, it is about 10 Euros per collection. So if we put more in the black bin, it has to be emptied more often, so more expensive. We are a family of 4 and we have our 80l bin empied once every 4 weeks. We could empty it every 2 weeks, but instead of 120 € per year it would be 240 €. Everything else (like organic, paper, etc. ) is free.
I wish we had trash separated from recycling here but instead we have a big green bin and everything goes into it with once per week service.
You can of course do your own recycling and not empty your bin as often but the charge is monthly, per bin and there's no incentive to reduce its use.
Only business are required to separate for recycling.
They say our local waste transfer station hires people who manually separate all household waste for recycling, but in reality it all likely goes to the incinerator.
My experience is that you have to weigh yourself only in big supermarkets outside the cities, while at the smaller ones (Edeka, Rewe etc) they are weighted at the checkout desk.
In welchem Supermarkt muss man sich selbst wiegen?😉 ( weigh yourself)
@@humanbeing1675 Im Weight Watchers Supermarkt
In Berlin where I live some bigger grocery stores are moving back to your weigh your own produce. I really like weighing my own stuff because it is easier to see how much you are buying.
Where I am our stores put a small coded sticker on most of the produce, then it is weighed and scanned at the checkout counter by a built-in scale. There's also several scales in the produce department for customers to check weights before they buy.
Only "wet" items like unbagged lettuce is left for the employees to deal with at the checkstand.
That's odd, reverting back to the old system where customers weigh it themselves seems kinda counterproductive to me...the main reason many stores switched over to cashiers weighing the products was because of efficiency. There's so many people who forget to weigh their stuff, it just makes more sense for the weighing to be done at the till, especially since they have scales there anyway for cashiers to check the weight.
In northern Italy, alongside walking trails, there are self-service stands for lemonade, working like you have described. Sometimes you will even find local produce like honey sold the same way.
Here in rural northern Germany there are similar self-service stands for potatoes.
Yeah, this works out fine for low cost stuff like lemonade and most produce.
The money you lose by people not paying is more than offset by not paying for someone to sell your stuff.
It obviously doesn't work for 1.000€+ TV's.
But local lemonade and flower? That makes a lot of sense.
the point for giving this flowers for free is: when the people are cool and pay for it, its allright, when to many people dont do that and pick the flowers without paying, the owner will change his system and will watch, so the people have the disadvantage from the selfishness of others. Most of the People are knowing that. They want this trust and dont pickup without paying.
We like honest people because it means fun flower fields for us 😊
My parents have a plant nursery, and while not pick-your-own, there's still occasional theft. There's no guaranteed solution, I'm afraid. And taking care of your plants or prepare orders takes time, all those hours aren't free. That's why my sister, who wants to take over the family business, is thinking of having a part pick-your-own, too. All in all, if it saves you time, it saves money, too.
I also think they would change if their too many thieves and what thought after I hear that it could be person how watch over felt and than get some flowers as pay. I know from Newspaper vending machine that have signs that are monitor in some case they let one take own before, and I think case cost more have pay to get open.
@TUX LINUX cameras are heavily regulated, you can't just put up a camera, even on your private property, leave alone the images are acceptable as evidence...
@@barvdw
Where do you live that cameras on your private property are regulated?
I work for a Food Bank. Last week my Flat Manger allowed me to bring 6tons of Produce & giveaway,Free to any Family. I never asked my Manger in 2 years,if I could do this. I was pleasantly surprised when she said ,”Yes.” & “I could do this at least twice a month.” Wow. My Leader was very excited with this News,also.
Always learn so much from your videos! So in our Edeka, there’s no weighing or labeling system for our produce section - it’s done like it is in America. And even though we live in the countryside we haven’t come across any flower picking fields yet! But maybe that’s because we’ve had a super cold winter and everything is behind in blooming...but hopefully we will find one soon! And trash sorting is a freaking beast and we are finally just now figuring it all out 😂.
The classic: In which trash can does a tea bag belong? Here's how to do it right: The bag with the tea belongs in the "bio garbage can", the label belongs in "the paper garbage can" and the little clip that holds both together belongs in the scrap metal.
I have seen this comedy clip before 😅 Maybe you were the one that shared it with us in the past? For sure a classic!😂
@@PassportTwo There's a deep glimpse into german soul within this clip. It's soothing and consoling in a way
Some examples of the "trust system" where I live (Leoben, Austria):
Of course there is the typically Austrian way of selling newspapers: You will find just a bag attached to a streetlight with a small box to throw coins in, so you take a newspaper and throw in your coin. If nobody watches, nothing keeps you from taking the paper without paying, or even the entire bag and the coins already paid.
A local beekeeper sells excellent honey and related products. It's in a showcase near his beehives, so if you come by there you just open the case, take what you need and pay into a box. There is even a box with coins for exchange money so if you get something for 6€ and pay with a 10€ bill you can take two 2€ coins.
In the next town a farm offers milk, eggs and other agricultural products, you can find them in a refrigerator at the entrance to the farm and at any time of the day or night you can go shopping there. Again you just throw your coins into their savings box (which in this case has the shape of a little tractor).
On a nearby mountain (Mugel) the restaurant has to be closed due to covid regulations. They still offer a room as weather protection which is always open, with a table, a bench, heating and a fridge full of softdrinks and beer. There too you take one and pay. On the way there you come by a fountain of the type frequently found in the Alps (a hollowed tree trunk with a constantly running water supply) filled with submerged bottles of drinks so you can always have a cold drink as you come by. Pay into a little locked box with a coin slot.
Yeah those things really are quite popular here in Austria. I think I have seen a fridge with drinks along a popular hiking trail and a we also have those little shops at a farm were you just walk in, get what you want and leave the money there. And that's even pretty close to a big city and near student housing, so I do wonder how often people walk out without paying there.
I hat my best note in a Math "Arbeit" which is a big test. It was an E1+. The E stands for "Erweitert" which means advanced the 1 is the best note of 1 to 6 with 6 the worst and really hard to get, because then you wouldnt respect the teacher and haven't done anything during class and also no homework and the + means, that it's good rated or at the high end of the note. There is also as an example the G3-, and there the G means "Grundschulniveau" which is worse than an E the 3 means, that it's a normal note for a "Grundschule" (pre-school) and is actually bad. the - means, that it is nearly a G4+. The worst ost a G6- and the best a E1+. In pre-school there is only 1 to 6, with 1 the best note, the 6 the worst, as explained earlier, that you have to be very disrepsectful and stuff. And a normal note is a 3 which is about "It's not bad, but also not very good." But witch a 3 you can be happy.
In my city the penalty fee is only charged for putting non-recyclables into the yellow bin or non-compostables into the bio-bin. For putting recyclables or compostables into the normal trash bin there is no penalty but of course it costs more standard fee if you need additional or larger bins as you said. However, since I found a German yellow bag full of German trash in Kenya‘s nature, I‘m not sure if Germany should continue with this separation system.
wow, I'm sure that experience gave you a great insight into what the system really is versus what people think is being done with trash in some cases 🤔
Normally in 99,99% of the stores I visited in Germany you do not weight your own vegetables anymore. This was a thing of the past and is generally only used in stores with old equipment. In the future this will become rarer and rarer as all new shops do wieght at the end
Easy with the black bin (at least where I live): You should not do but are allowed to throw everything (except electronics and harmful materials) in the black bin. You simply will not have a bin big enough so it is indirectly enforced (you only get 60l per fortnight).
In some areas you also pay extra per black bin.
Well, in our region most supermarkets do weight the stuff when you checkout! Only smaller supermarkets with older technique still use the sticker method! It was quite common in the past, but now the systems get more and more modernised for checkout scales!
When we lived in my small hometown in Southern Oklahoma, my husband would get frustrated at the lack of recycling in the area. Coming from Germany, he was accustomed to recycling. We purchased a home in the Upper Harz in September, and opted to clean the house out for a reduced sale cost. We have been emptying trash every two weeks for months. I can't wait to see our end of year trash bill. Yes, we have made some changes recently. Mike and I just began our own channel about village living, "Village Life in the Harz". It is in its fledgling stage, but we hope to get more videos out soon. Thank you for sharing your experiences.
That`s what most foreigners get wrong about the german trash system: It `s not forbidden to throw an empty jar or an old newspaper into the black bin occasionally. Especially single housholds are having a hard time to store several bins and boxes in their tiny appartements to seperate the waste. However: it would be an administrative offense to put regular trash into the paper / glass / "yellow" bin.
Point 1: The "Honor" principle. Children are taught at a very early age that stealing etc. is wrong. Now you might think, "Hey, the owners of the flower fields or pumpkin fields are fooling themselves. This will never work out". Well... it is simple mathematics and/or probability calculation. If you have a flower field, someone will ALWAYS come and pick flowers just like that. If you then also have to hire staff to pick the plants, it all becomes very expensive for the farmer.
However, if he simply has the cost of sowing and then after a few weeks puts a money box and hopes that the people themselves throw money in, precisely because they might otherwise have a guilty conscience, then it pays off very quickly for the farmer. So it's more a social-cultural reason coupled with common sense why the system works - at least for plants that are cheap to grow.
Point 2: Again, a socio-cultural reason why, for example, gas stations work the way they do here. If you let customers pay first and then open the pump station, you would indirectly imply that the customer is a thief and would take advantage of the system, it would work differently. Customers would be pissed off just thinking about it and would avoid that gas station. However, should someone actually steal and be caught, he/she would be met with disgust. "We all adhere to the simplest social norm...why can't you manage that? What's wrong with you?".
Back when prepaid cell phone cards came along, they also directly advertised that that was for having TOTAL COST CONTROL. So you, as a responsible German, are not being ripped off by the phone provider, because if you invest 20€, then you can only make calls for 20€. Practical also for the cell phone of the teenage daughter... no 200€ bill etc. Of course the reason for prepaid was rather that the phone providers didn't want to sit on open bills, especially with younger customers ;)
Point 3. the scale. A separate scale in the store is easier and cheaper to maintain than a scale that is built into a POS system, for example. If the scale in a cash register breaks down, no one who wants something weighed can shop there either (and scales have to be calibrated regularly). So it is much cheaper for a store owner to have the cash register in the customer area and let the customers do the work of weighing. Is there cheating going on? Sure, but that's all factored in.
From the first second of the video: It sometimes sucks when its sunday. My worst sunday memory was from as I was 18 and ran out of period pads and my mom foreced me put a kitchen-cloth you use for cleaning dishes in my pants. A few months later the nearby gasstation begun to sell stuff like toilet paper and period pads in case people run out of it on a sunday
Yes, those convenience stores at petrol stations and in train stations are a godsend.
A pharmacy would have sold this hygiene stuff also at night and on sunday.
@@Stoffmonster467 tell me any "pharmarcy" who has open after 8pm and on a sunday
@@ACEsParkJunheeWreckedMeHard any who has emergency shift, one in every area
@@Stoffmonster467 they probably would, but at least here (Belgium), the pharmacy on guard asks for a premium, a quite hefty one, I add, especially at night.
Gas stations: In Europe, there are also some gazoline automata. But they work differently insofar, as when you put in your debit card, they first "make a reservation" for the possible maximum amount (eg. EUR 200,00), but then they only book the money you have to pay. But this reservation can lead your bank account be "charged" (not booked) anyway for the additional money, and you might pay credit fees for this money even it has never been "booked".
In city stores rewe and Netto there are self checkouts. There you could cheat in terms of put all on the cashier scale but klick a wrong button for a cheaper price. I never did that on purpose, but when I put my bread on it, I couldn't find this exact bread in the system so I took something similar. Apperently I payed more that I had to lol
All grocery stores in my town have a weighing scale at the checkout but there is this one Edeka that does not. Sometimes, on my way from the gym, I go to that Edeka but forget that it does not have the weighing scale and I have to endure the embarrassment of holding up the line. Funnily enough, that does happen very often at that Edeka and people in front of me sometimes remind me that I forgot to do it by forgetting themselves. :D
Haha, that definitely adds to the confusion when some do it that way and some don't!
Me too, as a German.
I’m used that the vegetables are being weighted by the cashier and almost every time when I’m shopping at Kaufland I forget it and then I’m upset, that I have to do it by myself.
same over here (berlin - pankow). It's totally annoying when you forgot to weight and have to run...
In our village it's the K+K that does not have the scale. All others do.
In some cities you only get charged a fee if you put your black bin out to get emptied ( IIRC e.g. Grevenbroich) and other cities have garbage trucks which scan and weight the trash bin and charge you accordingly (St. Tönis or Tönisforst does this). So that definetly stops one from trowing everything in one bin.
I remember when I worked at a cash desk serveral years ago, there was a bunch of young children with a bag full of fruits and a 50ct weight sticker on it. After a hard stare they ran away.
Recycling in our city is also punished if you don't do it correctly, but on top of fines, there are controls and if it only happens once in a year or something you won't be fined, they just won't empty the can. Hasn't happened to our house because most of us actually look out for these things.
Yes, this is the most stupid thing: they don't empty your thrash can and you can separate the old stuff yourself....
12:32 I lived in an apartment for 3 years with 2 roomates and later as it ws only 1 she refused to seperate trash. I asked her whats the purpose of having 2 trashcans when she would trow all trash into 1 bag, but all she said was "IDK we allways did this" and as I asked her if she could seperate the trash she ignored me. We had big containers in front of our building (cause 2 houses with 40 apartments each were using them) and she said since people were trowing stuff in the containers without looking she said she cares zero for the recycing into where it belongs. And oh boy... someday a paper was hung on the front door of the building saying since people trow trash away without looking they would punich the whole building by locking the containers between 6pm and 10am even tho its legally allowed in Germany to trow trash away from 7am to 7pm
The gas stations make a lot of their earnings not by just selling gasoline but by other items selling inside the cashiers room . Therefore, they are interested that people walk in for paying and then do additional buying. There are some gas companies thinking of using video plate number surveillance, but this is not allowed in Germany yet according to data protection laws.
You can look up the information online and see that many gas stations actually don't put up any surveillance or very limited. The reason being 1) an increased rate of people putting fake plates on their car to fill up and drive off and then removing the fake license plate. 2) Many police offices won't investigate gas theft because the amounts are too small and petty for them to look into. Therefore, most gas stations accept this loss and don't invest the money in surveillance equipment. The data is in the neighborhood of only 22% of gas thefts are ever solved, but that again is only the crimes that are reported.
one source: www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article154425682/Das-dreiste-Business-der-organisierten-Sprit-Diebe.html
You guys are so good! I love all your videos! Good news; we’re having fantastic weather here and I just got my first peony! I’m so excited! 😂
11:41 waste management is regional - rather locally organized, there are really no central rules and every municipality has different rules. For example, the neighbouring municipality (Landkreis) has different colour coding on its waste bins. The Paper bin here is green in the next village it is blue. One has really to check. In our area, only 2 collections (per year!!) of the black bin (Restmüll) included in the yearly fee. If you are not interested in separating waste one can just put everything in the black bin, hence the name Restmüll, but each time it is emptied after the 2nd collection per year is charged separately. In fact, when you separate your stuff it is really next to nothing left for the black bin, last year I had it actually only emptied once and it was not even full.
here in spain we have supermarkets using both systems --- event a third one, when an employee will do the weighting for you in the produce section
scales in Germany are obliged to be offically calibrated by the organization called "Eichamt". Businesses are not allowed to use uncalibrated scales by law and could be fined by doing so. Look for a small sticker at the scala indicatiing the due date of the re-calibration. it must be visible on the scale
I like how they dropped the "small" before describing Oklahoma xD
i used to live together with flatmates during my early days at uni and we recycled only like 60% of the time, sometimes we just couldn't be bothered and we never had to pay for anything, i did however started to feel increasingly guilty and have been recycling dutifully ever since haha
I have to say: I really like the SB-Kassen that are becoming more and more popular. It's a really easy and swift way to checkout from a german supermarket if you just can scan everything by yourself although the terminals will sometimes refuse to work on specific items if their actual weight is not in the corridor of acceptable weights.
Often in the US, these lanes are definitely the most popular and there will be lines for those before they go through the manned checkout lanes. I know the impact this has on some people's jobs if they are the cashiers, but self-checkout does offer speed and convenience!
I refuse to use the self-serve check-out. I hate to have a machine talk to me, the constant loud beeping is annoying. Nah, I definitely prefer people.
@@lanamack1558 there was a "switch off sound" button on the self check out's touch screen at our real,-market. I liked muting it while telling the stupid thing to shut up :D some form of stress relieve after a long day at work. They closed this supermarket for good, so no self scan check out near me anymore.
Also refusing to use them. I go shopping, i´m collecting the goods i want to buy, i put them on the checkout belt, i put them back in the cart, i lift them in my car. I honestly cannot be bothered to do also the cashier´s job by myself.
pump & run: the gas stations have cameras => your licence plates are known. The gas pump is locked as long as the pumped gas was not payed => if somebody did not pay, this will be recognised pretty soon. The licence plate is reported at the police and they will find you. I recently heard that somebody just forgot to pay, completely in his own thoughts he got in the car and left the gas station. He was pulled over by the police on the Autobahn some 10 minutes later. He immediately phoned the gas station and promissed to pay. The police believed him, that he had just forgotten to pay and he went back to the gas station and payed the bill. But if somebody really tries it with "criminal energy", pump & run might be succesful now and then. I guess all gas stations have an insurance for those things.
weighing in grocery stores: usually the cashier has a scale. I can't remember when I last had to weigh the vegetables myself - except for on vacations in Spain maybe 10 years ago...
garbage cans: people are trusted, that they recycle their stuff, just because recycling makes sense - and you have to pay for the garbage collection anyway, no matter if you put something into the can or not.
Generally I think: if you trust people, they will be honest. If you mistrust people, you will get licked.
Good news: the beautiful green leaves are finally out and the trees start blossoming....
i have worked as a cashier myself in germany, and most registers have a scale build in
onece had a guy trying to get 3KG of nuts during christmas with the sticker saying it was 1KG
we dont check if the amount seems about right but cashiers in germany generally also work in the store, thus know the price of an item and can make an educated guess if the price on the sticker is correct for the amount
In my building in Germany, I'm the only one of ten tenants who puts out a yellow recycling bag...
Good news - my parents and my brother (who's becoming a dad again) have been vaccinated.
All supermarkets (Rewe, Lidl, Aldi Nord) I frequent weigh at the cashout, but I still know the older system. You'll have to look around for the scales. I never really thought about not separating my trash but there are always some items where you're not sure and they might end up in wrong bin or bag. I live in three appartment house, so any officials would have to really investigate who did it wrong or just fine the whole house, which also wouldn't really work. I guess if you grow up with the "honor" systems, you really don't question them and don't see them as a burden, but it's really cool to get a glimpse into some "newcomers" perspectives
In rural Texas or outside of city limits, there are many people who will not pay for private trash service but will burn everything including plastics. Burn barrels simply piling stuff together and igniting it wafts toxic fumes into the air. On the other hand, recycled materials are being rejected by China and other countries now; it's hard to say whether much material is free of contamination and is actually recycled in the United States.
We definitely know a lot of rural Texan and Oklahomans that do this as well. It really is interesting once you look into where trash goes for those that do use trash services and find out about the complexities of getting rid of trash as well as the international disputes over it.
In New Jersey we do not fill our gas tanks by ourselves. We have attendants do it for us. So no pump and run and no paying inside first or at the pump with your card.
Mittlerweile wird das Gemüse immer häufiger nur an der Kasse gewogen. Hab schon in mehreren Läden erlebt, dass nach einer Renovierung nicht mehr selbstgewogen wird, andersrum hab ichs noch nie erlebt.
Stimmt! Wir sehen es auch mehr und mehr auf diese Weise
For both the self-weighing in grocery stores and the unmanned flower and vegetable fields, the reason is simple: Time is money, specifically employee time is money. The cost of wages is relatively high in Germany compared to the US, where companies often pay untrained workers in the service industry minimal wages with no social plan attached (in germany, costs for social insurance are mostly organized stately in that sector of wages and the employer has to pay a fixed mandatory share). So companies "accept" a certain percentage of easy fraught by the few dishonest customers, because they would lose much more money if they paid a cashier to do all the weighing respectively to sit beside a flower field all day, charge the customers and watch for thieves. It works well with anything that is generally low in price, because most people wouldn't want to deal with the bad conscience of being thieves just to save a few cents.
I may age myself, but when I was a kid, I remember my parents paying after pumping gas. But that was virtually gone when I started driving at 15.
Speaking of personally discipline. We separate out trash in the house, even though virtually none of it gets recycled. It’s called living with a German in America 😂🤣
And our good news of the week was James Bray’s reaction video of our Döner episode.
Doner ❤️👍
Regarding the black-bin question: You most certainly can. We actually had to for the past 8 years, because our apartment complex did not have a Yellow or Brown bin. We had Blue and Black. Now we also have a yellow one but that is so small, it is full not even a day after it was emptied, so in other words, you still need to throw your plastics into the black bin.
Separating trash is so ingrained in me that when my British landlady tried to explain the British system to me, I looked at her confused and asked "But where do I put paper?"
"In recycling."
"But there is plastic in it?"
"Yeah?"
That day I learned that not every country separates as much as we do. And I really needed to get used to throwing away plastic bottles again. I was a child when the current Pfandsystem was introduced, so yeah I remember throwing plastic out but it feels very weird when it is a soda or water bottle.
About the selfservice fields: About 10% of the people steel the stuff. This is included in the calculation of the owner and is usually cheaper then employing someone to guard the field and sell the stuff.
Black bin: In some areas people only have black bins and indeed throw everything in and don't separate or recycle. So yes, you can get away doing it and you might save some money on the flat rate for other bins, but afaik in some municipalities at least they weigh how much "black bin trash" you put out - or how frequent - and charge you extra.
Sometimes there's a code on the bin that get scanned or they weigh it on the truck before emptying.
I even lived in a town where they had a metal detector on board their Müllwagen to detect any metal in the paper waste bin.
If they detected something they would leave it there for you to sort through again, put a sticker on top that says that you haven't recycled properly and you had to try your luck again next time.
I have a migrated neighbour from Tunis/Tunesia, which disposes more black bin trash than other neighbours, but thats typical when starting 1st own household/appartment as you buy things for your household like furniture, kitchen stuff etc. and this normally decreases after few years. I'm refuse teaching people about uneffective strict trash sorting as long as the system tunnels itself when burning all sorted collected trash finally together in Eschweilers power plant.
My good news: start my new job that got delayed due to the “panorama” next Friday. It only took a year and moving across the country, lol
Congrats and good luck!! 😃 Thanks for sharing the good news!
Hier oben in Norddeutschland wird das Obst/Gemüse an der Kasse gewogen. Im Edeka gegenüber jedenfalls ;)
Es scheint tatsächlich mehr und mehr zu passieren!
Bei Kaufland in Hamburg muss man das auch selber machen. Viele vergessen es und laufen dann zu einer Waage, die für solche Fälle extra bei den Kassen aufgestellt wurde. Ansonsten wiegen das die Kassiererinen.
@@CK-xk8ut Kaufland in meiner hessischen Kleinstadt lässt auch die Kunden wiegen...
Ich hasse das.
its very common to have small non seperated trash cans, that just get emptied in the black can, in the rooms but to have separated cans in the kitchen/living room.
Also non seperated cans are very common in public while seperated ones in public just being in crowded spaces like parks, highway rest stations or train stations/airports/etc.
There are grocery stores in the USA that have the same produce weighing process that you have in Germany. One such store that I shop, Wegman's, has this system. This system at Wegman's is also used for loose grains, nuts, candies, etc.
Good news this week. I declared Tuesday to be a holiday and rode Houston city buses to several places I wanted to visit (restaurant, friend, grocery store that is not near me). Riding the bus allowed me to look at the city much better than driving a car would have allowed. Riding the bus had much less stress and worry about safe driving and wear and tear. The somewhat longer time was fine because being able to look around as I traveled, was as good as taking a trip to a foreign country.
Thanks for the tip on how to steal the fourth banana. I had never thought of that. I am going to try it. Thanks.
Here in Finland people also weigh fruits and vegetables themselves. I've never heard of anyone adding stuff to the bag after weighing it. What I've heard of though is that sometimes people take a more expensive product and then weigh it as a cheaper product. A lot of vegetable and fruits are available in two different varieties; one is normal and the other is organically farmed and/or fair trade. The latter is obviously more expensive. So what some people do is that they take fair trade bananas and then weigh them as normal bananas. Bananas are bananas, so it is difficult for the cashiers to see which one is in the bag. The bananas have different stickers on them but I would think that a dishonest customer would just take the stickers off before placing the bananas in the bag. As far as I know though, this is not something that grocery stores would consider a big problem; it doesn't happen that much. People stealing beer cause them much more harm.
I worked at a gas station in Germany. ALL pump and runs I had where people forgetting to pay but we had a police man we just gave the license plate taken from the high number of cameras. He then went to them(all in the area) and told them to please come back and pay. All of them came back but if they wouldn't have, they would have been fined hard.
I guess those flower and vegtable fields are still profitable, because they don't have to pay someone to sell them and guard the produce.
I once lived in a shared flat and they didn't seperate their trash. I felt really bad, but I only lived there for three months, so i wasn't in any position to challenge them on how they handle their trash.
The student residence in Austria I live in has seperate trash containers behind the building and the trash from the community kitchens is collected in seperate bins, but every room just comes with one bin. So I brought two extra ones to sperate plasic, paper and waste. Some of the cleaning women don't care though, so I have to take the bins to the containers myself.
Well ... at least in a city you can easily get away with not spererating your trash. Or ... uh ... so I have heard. From a friend...
As for the gas stations, I have seen the system you described in many scandinavian countries as well. I think the main reason why it's different in Germany is our love for cash and even more importantly the fact that gas stations want you to actually enter the shop as they make most of their revenue with whatever other products they sell. Sometimes they actually resemble a small grocery store.
As for weighing your veggies, both systems are common with larger stores usually depending on you weighing it yourself while smaller ones and the cheap discounters wheigh stuff at the register.
7:45 I think it strongly depends in which chain of store you buy. I live near Cologne and all "Rewe" and "Edeka" I have been to weigh at the register. "Kaufland" on the other hand still has the system were the customer is responsible for it.
In Belgium, we used to have to weigh our produce ourselves, but nowadays, at least where I live, shops I know have ditched the system and switched to weighing at the cash register. However, the supermarkets where you had to weigh yourself often had another scale closer to check-out, so you don't have to go all the way back to the produce aisle.
Pick-your-own farms are a thing, here, but most prefer to have a little automat shop. I often buy strawberries at one of those.
My Parents have both Gas Stations in Germany and both have security cameras at the gas station. So yeah, most times the police find you, but in a few cases the people have stolen license plates on their car, that mades it difficult to found them. But these are the exemptions. Fun fact, actually most of the people who don’t pay just forgot it because they had a phone call or something.
I haven't seen a grocery store where you weigh your produce yourself in Germany in years. This was a thing 20 years ago.
I can't speak for all of them, but in our local Real, you still have to weigh the produce yourself.
Certainly seems to vary regionally or where you shop at. In our area there are certainly places that still have you do it, some that do it at the cashier, and some that still have the old machines in the produce section with a sign on it telling you not to use it anymore as if it is a museum and that is a relic form the past 😂
Combi/Jibi in Northern Germany and some Edekas still make you weigh your produce yourself
Most shops allow you to weigh yourself, but Aldi/Hofer does it at the cashout.
@@facht Yep, real,- and GLOBUS still cling to the self-weighing-system, whereas REWE and Edeka (the two biggest companies in Germany) have weighing systems at the check-out. In these supermarkets you'll find as well a scale in the produce section where one can check the chosen items. If the scale has a huge "keyboard" with lot of figures (and a printer attached) you definiteley know you have to weigh by yourself. ;-)
I didn't know that there are still supermarkets where you have to weigh your fruits on your own. I remember that from my childhood in the 90s but nowadays I go to Rewe, Lidl, Netto, Aldi and everywhere they weigh fruits and veggies at the checkout
The residual waste bin is so expensive, everyone is happy to put as much of their waste in recycling bins as they can.
German here. I have lived in many places all over Germany, and have never seen a grocery store with the self-weighing and sticker system. All grocery stores I've been to had the cashier weigh at checkout. Which stores do this?
My father, who lives in Germany, but visited me in the US, liked the way American supermarkets pack your groceries for you, while the shopper has to do this in Germany. So he once asked the owner of a small supermarket chain, why there were no baggers in German supermarkets. The response he received was that because of the much higher costs/employee (health care for all, insurances, social security, paid vacations...), it was not economically possible to hire anyone for such a menial job in Germany. I suspect that the same principle applies to the weighing of produce. It's time spent by the customer, not the cashier. For the same reason, you won't find park house assistants, and have to bring your shopping cart back with the 'coin trick', because it's too expensive to hire someone who collects shopping carts.
Please do not forget, that a German would never trust someone else to back his items. Maybe they will put the eggs on the bottom? Or they will not separate between frozen stuff for the cooler back and the normal stuff? And they will give you new bags, but you brought your wholle collection of reusable bags with you! They were tests with this system, but mostly, they got their bags taken away from them and were told: I´d better to this myself.
My good news I was able to have breakfast with my sister at a restaurant since we both are fully vaccinated !
That’s awesome! Congrats 😃
In most grocery stores they weight the fruits and vegetables at the checkout.
It definitely is moving that way these days!
@@PassportTwo yes, every time I'm in a grocery I wasn't before, I check if I have to weigh the fruits and vegetables or not.
@@PassportTwo you wondered about people in germany (not) cheating with weighing food, but what about the usa where "self checkout" seems to be widely available to do it yourself not only for a few fruits and vegetables, but for the entire purchase ?
About the gasstations, it is risky to pump and run, legally. Gas stations have usually betwenn 10 and 20 security cameras and they do call the police on pump and runs. The selfweighing becomes less and less, you mor often have a scale build in in the checkout.
9:10 They have a "Waage" built in the register(the English word[i think] for "Kasse")
8:49 this is depending on the area you live. In my area I just grab my vegis go to the checkout and then the cashier weights it and he/she knows what to type in to the Register and I prefer this System because you are not confused in what button you need too press if there are different vegis etc
And of course you can’t cheat them anymore :)
In Canada too...you full your tank..than you go inside to pay....but special since Covid...is suggested to prepaid than full ..to avoid contacts
What you put in the grey (you called it "black") trashcan you have to pay for. What you put into a yellow bag or you bring to a recycling station is free. So you can use a smaller grey can or have it emptied less often (the garbage truck reads electronically the information from the trashcan (RFID I believe) when emptying it and books it on your account). That is the system in my home county anyway (Lörrach).
I like you getting expert kowledge of the german trash system. There are even more aspects to this: Try throwing away an old washing maschine or a desktop pc. Find the "Entsorgungshof" in your area. (Humble suggestion for a future video :-)
And if you are want to be safe,
Bring the hard drive to a place where they get destroyed
In my Landkreis ist like you have FREE Sperrmüll. You call, give them a list and you get a date. On this day you have to put the Sperrmüll in front of the house until 7:00 in the morning.
I‘m glad that I seem to live in an area of Germany where I never had to weigh my stuff by myself 😄
Haha, it certainly gets complicated when some do and some don't have you do it yourself and you have to remember which ones have what systems 😅
@@PassportTwo Simple rule: If there are scales in the fruits and vegetables section, weigh by yourself...
I had to weigh it once or twice at Real. Every other chain I know weighs it at the check out.
I wished that taking your shoes off before you go into someone else's home would be the same in America as it is in most German houses. One time a German guy living in the States, entered my home with muddy shoes. I have some white carpeting and did not appreciate him coming into my home with filthy shoes. Mud prints where seen on my floors. He seen me looking at them and said, what's the big deal, when it dries you can just vacuum and it will come back off. I was shocked hearing a German guy say that to me. I wont enter someone's house without asking if I should take my shoes off. Not one person ever said yes, take your shoes off. To me that shows respect to that persons home.
In Minnesota you rarely have to pay for gas before pumping.
To the scale-situation. I was in a pet store a few days ago cause I got a new pet and they have this setion where you can put herbs, dryed vegtables, snacks,.. and other food for pets in containers or bags and than you have to wieght them and I literally had no clue how their scale works cause my item was the number 65 and the scale had only on the screen the numbers 1-9 and 0 and when I pressed the 6 it automaticly made a sticker for dog-treats and I was wondering why it didn't noticed me typing 65. I did it again and got a sticker for dogtreats and a sticker for herbs and I was confused. They literally had a button to switch numbers wich was sooooo tinny you couldn't really see it... I guess thats why there were soooooo many stickers on the scale of products from the cathegorys 1 to 9 cause many people got the same problem before xD
Concerning the black bin question: Yes you can get away with doing that, but it will cost you money, as you end up having to pay for a bigger black bin (As you explained later; I halted the video while writing.). (Paper bins are free, for plastic to be collected you pay indirectly when you buy the products, bringing things to the municipal recycling site is also free (As private citizen, not for businesses.))
The other question about separating trash: No, I do not know anyone outrightely refusing to separate trash, but nobody is perfect, almost anybody does not always sort perfectly out of lazyness.
Our garbage removal trucks weigh the trash and you pay only what you have disposed of in the black bin. The bins are coded with RFID tags for that. So separating does pay off as the yellow bin (recycling stuff) is free.
On the day the video was uploaded, my son turned 7 years old. Despite the current situation, it was a nice birthday.
I never heard that one got a fine for not recycling correctly…As long as it is by accident and not by purpose, you should be fine.
Yeah, there isn't THAT much trust at the gas station. There are cameras installed, so if you really get the idea to pump and run, they can easily find you based on your number plate. With the fields, they basically price in the dishonest pickers, but people who bother to pick their own stuff are usually more on the honest side anyway. Plus, the few flowers or fruits or vegetables which are stolen are still worth less than what you would have to pay to ensure that nobody steals at all.
You can look up the information online and see that many gas stations actually don't put up any surveillance or very limited. The reason being 1) an increased rate of people putting fake plates on their car to fill up and drive off and then removing the fake license plate. 2) Many police offices won't investigate gas theft because the amounts are too small and petty for them to look into. Therefore, most gas stations accept this loss and don't invest the money in surveillance equipment. The data is in the neighborhood of only 22% of gas thefts are ever solved, but that again is only the crimes that are reported.
one source: www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article154425682/Das-dreiste-Business-der-organisierten-Sprit-Diebe.html
Weighing your own vegetables at supermarkets. A report from England said that one supermarket found it had sold more carrots (cheap) than it had ordered but had run out of avocados (expensive) without checking any out. Umm?
We loved buying Sprudel und Bier in the ingenious, stackable plastic crates. Germans visiting us in the US felt sorry for our forests given that so many six packs and 12ers come wrapped in cardboard.😔
Trees are the original recycled product and can be grown again and again.
Cardboard is easily broken down by composting and can often be used as a fuel source.
Plastic on the other hand is one and done that uses oil, which is non-renewable and plastic takes up to 2000 years to break down in nature.. Longer in the airless landfills.
I think your German friends are a bit confused.
I'm a German beekeeper and can tell you, that I'm selling my honey also on a trust basis. We have a self-service box by the road. There is a money box, a price list and honey jars inside. Whoever wants to buy honey, takes his honey jar and throws the money into the money box. It works quite well. But I also think it works so well because we live in the country. I wouldn't do that in a city. But it's not like honey is never stolen. So 2 to 3 times a year a jar is stolen. Or it is not paid appropriately. The alternative would be sale at the front door. But we are not always there and beekeeping is not my main profession, only a sideline. Therefore, I accept the few stolen jars. In return, I sell more on average, with less work.
Separation of waste is great but not always practical. We had a party where we at the end of it around midnight got the barbecues going and served sausages etc. on paper plates and using paper napkins. We tried to get rid of the waste the following week but they wouldn’t take it. It had to be recycled with the paper and cardboard. Great idea on paper, but that would mean storing paper plates with food leftovers in our barn for three months until next pickup. The rats would have had a party if we had done that.