The reality is that these letters are written in a kind of pseudolegalistic language, where a phrase like “the employee was punctual” means they were usually late. If they were actually punctual, you'd see something more like “the employee consistently demonstrated exceptional punctuality”.

You usually need the reference letter to be reviewed by the works council or by an employment lawyer.

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johnisgood 6 days ago | parent [-]

sighs. Seriously?

Good to know though, if true.

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mafuy 6 days ago | parent [-]

German here. Absolutely true, and has been for many years now. Some examples:

- grade D, poor performance: "We were satisfied with his performance" - grade C, meh: "We were entirely satisfied with his performance" - true grade A+: "We were always satisfied to the utmost degree with his performance" plus highly positive and extensive in the rest of the reference letter.

- "was sociable": alcoholic - "was always striving for a good relationship with colleagues": was gossiping instead of working - "sociability was appreciated": had sex with colleague - "was very empathic": had sex with customer

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eru 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> - "was very empathic": had sex with customer

This would be very funny to see on an Arbeitszeugnis for a prostitute. Remember prostitution is legal in Germany.

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5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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etoulas 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I wonder why there is no LLM that can decode this. Tried many times but it seems the models don’t pick up the nuances.

	▲	johnisgood 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		The perfect test for LLMs!