Maschinenfabrik Berthold Hermle AGMaschinenfabrik Berthold Hermle AG

From Gosheim into the big wide world and back – interviews

Please briefly describe your position at HERMLE – before going to the USA, while you were there and currently.


P.H. (Peter Hauschel): Before I left for the USA I worked as an in-field service technician for HERMLE, solving customers’ technical problems on their premises. That is also what I did in the first part of my time in the USA from 2012 to 2016. The customers were spread right across the country. From 2017 until I returned in 2019 I was a Service Manager for HERMLE USA. When I came back to Germany, I first worked in the export support service section (technical foreign business hotline). Since April 2021 I have been working in sales on a regional basis, and currently I am learning the ropes with a view to working for the newly founded subsidiary HERMLE SEA providing sales support for South-East Asia.

T.W. (Thomas Witt): Before going to the USA I was a member of the User College group in the AWT. My main task area involved training customers on our machines and plant. I provided support to the application technology team in Franklin from March 2017 to May 2020. The team consisted of five application technicians, which is comparatively small compared to the department at Gosheim with 45 colleagues. That meant that the team was not subdivided into specialist groups, and my task area was large, ranging from hotline support to customer training, to feasibility studies, to time-and-motion studies and to milling trials. The sheer size of the USA, and also the fact that support for Mexico and Canada are also provided from the USA, meant a lot of travelling. I have been back in application technology in Gosheim since May 2020, and now I conduct milling trials for our customers. What prompted you to take on a post in the USA?

P.H.: In 2010 I helped out in the service team in the USA for two months. That gave me the opportunity to visit many different customers in very different parts of the USA and Canada. I gained a wide range of impressions about the country in a very short space of time. In addition to the open and friendly attitude of our customers, I was also especially inspired by the diversity of the country – from huge conglomerations to unique national parks. The local customers were always particularly keen to welcome a German technician. The positive experience of this visit, my enthusiasm for the ‘American way of life’ and the opportunity to develop in a personal way all contributed to me accepting an offer from HMC and moving to the USA.

T.W.: I wanted to use the opportunity to find out what it is like to live in another country, getting to know the customs, ways of doing things, mentality etc. better than is possible during a holiday, for instance. I also saw it as a way of intensifying my technical and linguistic capacities. On top of that, I already knew a little about the USA, because we have family there and I like the country. What obstacles did you have to overcome (language, culture ...)?

P.H.: I’m basically very open, so I found it easy to get acclimatized to living in the USA. At first my English wasn’t perfect, and that sometimes led to amusing misunderstandings. But the Americans are generally very open and interested in other cultures. My German accent was often the reason why I got talking to Americans while travelling around, and then struck up acquaintances.

T.W.: The first thing was to sort out administrative things: First comes the Social Security Card, and that opens up the way to everything else. Opening a bank account, finding a permanent place to live, getting a driving licence and ID card etc. One big difference was in how creditworthiness is established. In Germany, your creditworthiness goes down if you default on a credit. in the USA, you have to take out small loans, e.g. using a credit card, and pay them back quickly in order to build up a positive ‘credit score’.  That increases your creditworthiness. As far as the language is concerned, it’s one thing to hold a conversation about professional matters, and quite another to engage in small talk or chat about everyday things. And of course your social life gets totally reset. You have to make new contacts, new friends etc.
What was behind your decision to come back? 

P.H.: We wanted to have a family and reckoned that that would be easier if we were near my family. 

T.W.: The family was the whole reason, otherwise we would have stayed. How would you describe life in the USA compared with Germany? 

P.H.: I can generally confirm the stereotype image that Americans are mostly more open and friendly and start chatting more readily, and on the other hand that these contacts tend to be more superficial. In the USA I always lived in quite large cities, so for me the biggest difference is not so much between the cultures as such, but between city life and our more rural surroundings here. In most cases, the range of different kinds of restaurants and bars is generally much bigger in the USA. Whereby service and customer satisfaction across all sectors have a significantly higher priority than they do here (excepting HERMLE service, of course). For instance, restaurant staff are much more friendly and they are much more prepared to satisfy the patrons. 

T.W.: People there are more open, more friendly, more considerate and more helpful. Of course, it also depends on the region and the state, just as it does in Germany. For example, if you’re out on your own in the evening you easily strike up an acquaintance. People are less envious of each other and there is considerably less bureaucracy. Also, the priority is more to ‘work in order to live’ rather than to ‘live in order to work’. The USA are way ahead in terms of service. Everything seems to proceed in a more relaxed way, and that goes for all walks of life. But it is difficult for us to make an overall comparison, because we moved from a quite rural environment to a big city. That meant that we had access to a much bigger range of leisure activities, concerts, sporting events etc. We really took advantage of that and enjoyed it. What were the most important insights that you gained from your stay in the USA?

P.H.: Well, it wasn’t so much an insight that I gained, but rather what happened: I met my wife Annie in Miami, and she came back with me to Germany two years ago. 

T.W.: Wherever you are in the world there are clichés about other people. You have to let some things just happen, and you can’t plan everything no matter how much you think about it. I also got the impression that a German in the USA enjoys a certain prestige, because Germany is regarded as being a very progressive country from the technological point of view. What was the funniest, most dangerous, most interesting experience during your stay?

P.H.: I’m sure there were plenty, but what immediately springs to mind: We planned my move from Milwaukee to Miami over a long period. The journey time is about 24 hours. As I moved at the same time as my colleague Gunther Schnitzer, we decided to do the trip in one go in a removal van. We wanted to share the driving and use the passenger seat for sleeping. We picked up the van in the early morning and loaded it up with our furniture etc. during the whole morning. We only set off for Miami Beach in Florida in the afternoon. The only stops that we had scheduled were to refuel the van about every three hours. After several hours driving we did have to drink one or two Red Bulls, and that had negative consequences for the planned sleeping phases on the passenger seat. After a whole morning loading the furniture and what turned out to be a 25-hour, almost sleepless drive, we had just one hour to unload the van in 40° C of midsummer heat. In retrospect we reckoned that it would probably have been safer and more relaxed to include an overnight stay.

T.W.: I was with a customer in Alabama for two weeks. I stayed there over the weekend and one of the employees took me kayaking on the Sunday. When I got to the meeting place, I realized that we weren’t just the two of us, but a whole group of 12 people – two families and myself. We explored tributaries of the Tennessee River, and it was just like in the TV documentaries: pure nature. There were tortoises sitting on logs, snakes swimming through the river etc. The experience of nature was indescribable. What impressed me most, though, was the hospitality that I experienced. I would rate the winter of 2019 as being the most ‘dangerous’ experience. It’s not unusual that the winter months in Wisconsin are cold. But during one week of that winter we had a cold weather period in which the temperature went down to -49° Celsius. A state of emergency was called, and people were warned to stay home, because you could get frostbite in your face within minutes. What would you say to someone contemplating taking a similar step? 

 

P.H.: Enjoy the time, travel as much as possible and use the time to develop your personality. The country and the inhabitants are so diverse, and there is a huge amount to discover. Find out about the health and pension systems in the USA in good time, because these areas are organized very differently than here.

T.W.: Enjoy it to the full and gather as much experience as you can. Take the plunge into situations, even despite your pet preconceptions (and not just the negative ones), and take decisions then. In some cases you have to experience something in order to be able to decide whether it really represents a problem or not.

arrow up