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

> - "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.

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.