So did you vote for your worker council representative today? If so, can you tell me who to pick? ‘Cause I have no freakin’ clue.

Oh, that’s right — you don’t have worker councils back there in the States. I know this because I was harangued about this fact for 10 minutes by one of the candidates for the position here. (OK, I know that everybody who reads this thing doesn’t live in America. Just go with me here.)

German companies are required by law (I’m sure there’s some information about this on the web, but, really, do you care?) to have councils of workers — hence the name “workers council” — who serve as a sort of union representative, mediating between the worker bees and the queens. The candidates for positions on the council have been parading in and out of my office for the past few days, handing me flyers and asking for my vote.

Now, I’m no expert on politics or anything, but I figure you’re doing a pretty poor job of campaigning when you don’t realize at any point during your get-out-the-vote spiel that you’re delivering it to someone who doesn’t really speak your language.

My understanding of German is actually pretty good, enabling me to figure out what the candidates are saying and respond (“ja,” say I, while trying to project some sort of “I am not the voter you seek”-type vibe) in an more-or-less appropriate fashion. But I have some sort of mental buffer space: After about three minutes of listening to German, the buffer overloads and I end up smiling and nodding randomly.

I’ve only had one candidate who’s actually noticed this, forcing me to fess up to the fact that a) I’m American; and b) as a short-term employee I can’t vote. The others simply tromped in, shoved badly-designed pamphlets at me, nattered for a bit and left. I’m not actually complaining about that, mind you: The one guy who did strike up a longer conversation felt that a helpful campaigning tactic would be to explain why employers in the United States are all evil and must be destroyed. Now, I’ve have individual bosses who I’d cheerfully coat with honey and stake over a fire ant nest, but everybody? That just seems to be taking it too far.

I wonder when the next election is and if they have any campaign finance guidelines. If I’m around, I think I’ll run for a position; all I need to do is accumulate a batch of soft money, run some cool television spots and dazzle the workers with proper campaign rhetoric — I’d end up running the place.

Bwahahaha!

So what do you want to do tonight, Tim?

The same thing we do every night: Try and take over the German publishing industry!

It does have a ring to it, nein?