Attention European Embassies in America: Use American Style Dating on Your Official Notices!

The BBQ Pit
1

Well, this is the Pit, so excuse me while I get the preliminary cursing out of the way…

Dear goddamn motherfucking Kraut (or any applicable European ethnic slur) shitheads…

Now on to the story:

My mom is 86 years old, and she gets a monthly pension from Germany. Not a lot, about $100 a month, but every bit helps.

Anyway, she has to show up every year at the German Counsulate to prove she’s alive so they won’t cancel the pension. On the notice that they sent her, it said the deadline was 10/08/2012. So, we showed up in late August.

Now, getting my mom out of the house and into the car, going downtown and into the Consulate is quite a chore. Mom suffered a stroke some years ago, and has mobility issues. But I thought this was a job completed.

So, today my mom gets a letter from Germany saying that she missed the deadline for confirming her pension. They sent a form to fill out, and now we have to do the whole thing over.

My mom was like WTF? Or she would be if she wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness, and above such worldly vulgarities like swearing. Anyway I noticed that the new deadline was 28/09/2012. Then I knew.

You stupid, stupid Kraut bastards! If you’re writing to Americans, use American dating! The first fucking deadline was supposed to be written 08/10/2012! What the fuck’s wrong with you?! You’re always obsessed with paperwork being perfect, so get with the fucking program. When dealing with American paperwork, use American dates! :mad:

P.S. I can use the word Kraut because I am one. By the way, we really need newer ethnic slurs for Germans. Kraut is just lame.

2

The Embassy is German, and all the people in it are German. Your mother is German, you know she is German. And yet it never occurred to either of you to take 10 frickin’ seconds to consider that the date format might be what, you know,** the entire rest of the world other than the US uses**?

And this has happened every frickin’ year, and it’s still news to you? What exactly is the matter with you?

Welcome to how the rest of the world has to think, every single frickin’ time they deal with any bloody American. I’m bloody grateful when they remember that timezones even exist, let alone how they work. Welcome to my world of being woken up at 2am because some stupid American has failed to realise that the rest of the world lives somewhere that isn’t the Rocky Mountains. The German consulate aren’t the parochial shitheads, just so you know.

3

If the notice was in English, then it should have used the local date format. If it was in German, then the OP’s complaint is without merit.

Frankly, everybody should just switch to the YMD format. Then there’s no confusion.

4

Was the letter in German? No? It was in English? So the OPs mother was supposed to see that they had made one major concession to being in America, and still automatically assume that they hadn’t made a much smaller one? The OP’s 100% right. An embassy located in America, sending letters to people in America, should use American style dating. It’s just common sense.

5

10Aug2012

6

This.

I work for a multinational company. While I actually do live in the Rocky Mountains, I take great pains to make sure it is very clear precisely what I am referring to, because I frequently communicate with individuals on at least four continents. It takes little extra effort. And frankly for something like an embassy it is embarrassing. The fundamental purpose of an embassy is communication (with the host country and with their own nationals). You should be competent at your job.

7

Actually they shouldn’t be refering to the month numerically at all in formal writing. There’s much less potential for confusion when the month is spelled out or abbreviated. That being said with it’s not American paperwork the OP is dealing with. It’s German paperwork, issued by a German government agency, that they just happen to be translating into English.

8

I moved from the USA to a country that uses month first numerical dating, oh my god what a mess! I make a real effort to remember but I still slip up when not thinking about it, it just happens.

My file has been lost because of it numerous times in immigration, I think something official has my birthday wrong because USA birth certificates and passports of course use day/month style dating, I have caused mess ups in office filing, mix up after mix up.:smack::smack:

9

This rant would be more compelling if you linked to the US government’s guidance telling US embassies to use normal dating when corresponding with foreigners (and Americans abroad).

10

The American Date Pyramid.

11

Sooo… the US government does not use the format the OP expects, in its birth certificates and passports? If that’s so, then the problem isn’t with the German’s format.

12

Why? I guess I missed the part where the OP said “Unlike our clearly superior American embassies…” If some European somewhere got screwed over or just inconvienced by some bureaucracy of the U.S. government using an ambiguous dating convention on a time-sensitive communication, then by all means let 'em post a pissed off message about it somewhere on the Internet. Right here on the Dope even.
I would agree that the solution is not “adopt local conventions for writing dates”, but rather use an unambiguous way of writing the date. “August 10” or “8 October” are both perfectly fine (as are “Aug 10” and “8 Oct”). 'Cause even if the Germans start using “8/10” to mean “August the tenth” instead of “the eighth day of October” in communications to Americans, I mean, how the hell will you know?

"It says 8/10, so it must mean August 10–but wait! It’s a letter from the German embassy, so it must mean the eighth day of October. But–it’s a letter to an American, and they would know how Americans usually write dates, so it does mean August 10!

“Hm…or maybe that’s just what they’re expecting me to think!”

13

In the USA for whatever reason dates are written month/day/year, in every other country(maybe?) dates are written day/month/year.

So say I was born on 06/12/82, that is read totally differently.

14

Your original post, underlines mine:

That’s why I asked, because your information contradicted the OP’s assumptions.

15

Hah hah. Good show on the kraut bastards. That’ll teach the stupid yanks how to list dates in a civilized and cultured manner. Sucks for your kraut mother though. But that’s the price you pay for going native, and forgetting your superior European background.

16

I prefer the 10 March 2011, 4 August 2014 style myself. It is perfectly clear despite my handwriting quirks. I also cross my sevens and Z’s because I like the way it looks.

17

Did it say 10.8.2012 or 10/8/2012? Because the latter is not how we format a date in German, and this alway tips me off that the MM/DD/YYYY format is being used.

18

Yes. Every country in the world except the US does it wrong. So you should have known that the German Consulate office would do it the wrong way.

19

Indeed. YYYY-MM-DD, I refuse to use anything else. Easily machine sortable too.

Luckily Sweden pretty much uses it all the time, although you see the occasional old-style DD/MM - YYYY.

I always find it amusing that the usual reason for the US using MM-DD-YYYY is that that is how they say the date (“September 7, 2012”) and yet the US national day is always referred to in the international way (“The fourth of July”).

20

I thought this was going to be about using internal notes in embassies to hook up.

12/10/12? :stuck_out_tongue: