The Deutsche Bahn & Adopting Work as an Antidote to Alienation

04 Apr, 2026

The Deutsche Bahn, the almost monopolistic, state-backed company running trains in Germany, is notoriously unreliable, terribly often late etc. A constant source of shame and anger for Germans. The usual story goes to say that a lack of investments, compounded over decades, has made this reality a necessity with huge investments over long time-periods being the only possibility to ever improve things in a far away future. A new study severely doubts this narrative, making a bunch of relatively simple suggestions to improve the punctuality of the trains.¹ Three highlights: First, training train-drivers better as mechanics, enabling them to perform simple repairs of their trains on the spot; second, reviving the role of the “Streckenläufer”, a role that had existed earlier –the job is basically to walk along the tracks, cut back any impeding bushes or plants (apparently one of the most common sources of closed tracks), repair minor damages of the track and report major ones; third, and I mean what the heck?, to at least keep on driving very slowly if there appear to be persons or animals on the track instead of coming to a complete halt until the police has officially cleared the track. All three are very simple to a point of self-evident, the first two point towards giving the employees more responsibility and agency.

I immediately got interested in these points because for years it bugs me to witness how un-responsible many employees of the Bahn seem to feel for their trains being on time, reliable and so forth. For instance, I once got to listen to an announcement over the loudspeaker that blocking the doors to smoke would cause severe delays – “I don’t care, I get paid for my extra time – you don’t”, so the conductor. That is a pretty mean thing to say to a few hundred innocent passengers and, say, three people who delay everybody else. More importantly, the message speaks of a complete neglect of the actual responsibility this employee should take for the train-ride. While I find this particular instance unacceptable, I can relate to many of the Bahn’s employees having a hard time taking up personal responsibility for matters they are not directly responsible for. Whilst I would argue that this is principally an employee’s basic responsibility, the sheer frequency and often severity of things going badly that lie completely outside of these employee’s powers, makes taking up this responsibility a task difficult to swallow. There are conductors that will excuse themselves for the terrible delays, and I always feel a bit sorry for them. How often do they have to excuse themselves for things outside of their control? What thus emerges is a vicious cycle of a whole organization letting not only its customers but also its front-line employees down and subsequently many of these front-line employees feeling completely powerless, thus giving up on even trying – thus letting even more customers and colleagues down, and so forth.

I believe this to be a common cause for big organizations doing an unbelievably shitty job. There is always a lot of complexity to blame for, always good reasons for shunning personal responsibility – and as long as these reasons prevail and are common sense within that organization, there is hardly any way out. Unhappy customers meat unhappy employees and both make each other feel even worse. The propositions put forth by these studies are therefore surely not enough to ‘solve’ the underlying issue, but a step into the right decision.

The issues described here remind me of a canonical text of the sociology of work, William Foote Whytes *The Social Structure of the Restaurant, published in 1949. Whyte’s observation of the functioning and malfunctioning of typical (large) restaurants of his time focus on the staff’s ability to make the work their own, to move into a proactive instead of reactive mode of working. The typical stressed waitress is described as purely reactive, always behind the wave, behind the wishes of her customers. “The skilful [sic] waitress who maintained her emotional equilibrium”, on the other hand,

“did not simply respond to the initiative of customers. In various obvious and subtle ways she took the play away from customers, got them responding to her, and fitted them into the pattern of her work. She was also more aggressive than the emotionally insecure in originating action for other waitresses, service pantry people, and supervisor.” (William Foote Whyte: “The Social Structure of the Restaurant”, in The American Journal of Sociology, p. 304)

I find this description fitting when thinking of my own restaurant visits as a customer. Whyte further offers a concrete description of one such way of adopting the work. The background of it is the observation that one of the most frequent reasons for trouble within staff stemmed from men having to take orders from women – a hierarchical setup uncommon and frowned upon in the 40’s. Whyte hence describes a practical solution to this problem, as he observed it:

“One bartender and one counterman not only enjoyed their work but were considered by waitresses to be highly efficient and pleasant to deal with. Both of them had independently worked out the same system of handling the job when the rush hour got under way. Instead of handling each order slip in turn as it was handed to them (thus responding to each individual waitress), they would collect several slips that came in at about the same time, lay them out on the counter before them, and fill the orders in whatever order seemed most efficient. For example, the bartender would go through the slips to see how many ‘Martinis,’ ‘Old Fashions,’ and so on were required. Then he would make up all the ‘Martinis’ at once before he went on to the next drink. When the work was done this way, the girl first in was not necessarily first out with her tray, but the system was so efficient that it speeded up the work on the average, and the girls were content to profit this way in the long run. The men described the system to us simply in terms of efficiency; but note that, in organizing their jobs, they had changed quantitatively the relations they had with the waitresses. Instead of responding to each waitress, they were originating action for the girls (filling their orders as the men saw fit and sending them out when the men were ready).” (William Foote Whyte: “The Social Structure of the Restaurant”, in The American Journal of Sociology, p. 306 f.)

Again, the most important aspect lies in appropriating the work, adopting it, gaining some freedom of action.

Thinking back to the frontline staff at the Deutsche Bahn, the lack of practical ability to adopt the work becomes painfully obvious. This is not to say that no staff are able to do so – on the contrary, I am absolutely certain that a sociological field-study would reveal similar coping mechanisms. The point I want to make is rather that it is structurally extremely difficult for these employees to get ‘ahead of the wave’, to make their actions their own. A majority of the issues arising during their shift are completely out of their control. As described earlier, however, my hunch is that the relatively strong lack of control is exacerbated by an organization that does not work hard enough at giving their employees as much power and control as possible. Hence my enthusiasm about proposals to better train the mechanical skills of the drivers as well as reviving the role of the ‘Streckenläufer’ as a sort of independent person in charge of keeping the tracks in order.

It is not difficult to apply Whyte’s historical insights from observing restaurants to all kinds of contemporary work environments. There is, however, a more structural point to this discussion: For almost since capitalism’s birth, the Marxist criticism of alienation follows it like a shadow. The criticism focuses on the effects of capitalism’s division of labor, be it Adam Smith’s famous group of workers significantly increasing their productivity of putting together a pin by each one of them focusing on one single step, be it David Graeber’s “bullshit-jobs” that seem to be completely stripped off of any meaning or productivity.

Whyte’s observations lead to a potential solution not from a critical outside position, but from within these work settings. Because what I called ‘getting ahead of the wave’, or ‘adopting the work’ is exactly the opposite of being alienated by it. This can be achieved by means of how even small groups of people practically organize their work. These setups do not only make the respective work much more enjoyable and reduce conflict, they also significantly add to its efficiency, as Whyte already notes.

In fact, there is a host of companies that deliberately make use of such strategies to enable their employees to take more responsibility and therefore do a better job. The most striking example I know of is Constellation Software, a holding company that buys small, vertically integrated software companies. These companies offer attractive valuations, often being too expensive to purchase for the layman investor but too small for the typical big holding company. As Constellation Software grew at a frantic pace, the founder Mark Leonard could in no way keep track of the growing number of acquisitions. The usual route to take would lead to redirecting the investment focus to increasingly larger acquisitions. But as those do not offer the same compelling valuations, Leonard rejected this move, instead building a highly decentralized organization that offers large amounts of liberty and responsibility to frontline managers.

“We trust our managers and employees and hence try to encumber them with as little bureaucracy as possible. We encourage our managers to launch initiatives, which in our industry, often require 5 to 10 years to generate payback. We are comfortable providing them with capital to purchase businesses that won't be immediately accretive, but that have the potential to be long-term franchises for CSI. We nearly always promote from within because mutual trust and loyalty take years to build, and conversely, newly hired smart and/or manipulative mercenaries can take years to identify and root out. We incent managers and employees with shares (escrowed for 3-5 years) so that they are economically aligned with shareholders. In return we need and want loyal employees… if they aren't planning to be around for 5 years, then they aren't going to care much about the outcome of multi-year initiatives, and they certainly aren't going to forego short-term bonuses for long-term profits.” (Mark Leonard: Letters to Shareholders of Constellation Software, May 2012)

Empowering employees to make their own decisions in fact often seems to go with a culture that puts emphasis to hiring from within and often from the lowest ranks instead of from, say, prestigious business schools. I think of Les Schwab who made a point of making his store managers the best paid employees in his tire-selling firm but required them to start at the very bottom. If you wanted to become one such well-paid store managers, you had to start by changing tires. When asked about his few business-school headquarter employees’ complaints about earning less than these store managers, he replied that they too were absolutely free to start changing tires and working their way up this. I also think of Costco that is the lowest cost retailer in the US, absolutely dedicated to penny-pinching – and yet pays by far the highest wages to their frontline employees as compared with any other US retailer. In turn, they receive a significantly less turnover and happier employees who do a better job at serving their customers. Mark Leonard again on Constellation:

“While we have developed some techniques and best practices for fostering organic growth, I think our most powerful tool is using human-scale BU’s. When a VMS business is small, its manager usually has five or six functional managers to work with: Marketing & Sales, Research & Development ("R&D"), Professional Services, Maintenance & Support and General & Administration. Each of those functional managers starts off heading a single working group. If the business leader is smart, energetic and has integrity, these tend to be halcyon days. All the employees know each other, and if a team member isn't trusted and pulling his weight, he tends to get weeded-out. If employees are talented, they can be quirky, as long as they are working for the greater good of the business. Priorities are clear, systems haven't had time to metastasise, rules are few, trust and communication are high, and the focus tends to be on how to increase the size of the pie, not how it gets divided. That's how I remember my favourite venture investments when I was a venture capitalist, and it's how I remember many of the early CSI acquisitions.” (Mark Leonard: Letters to Shareholders of Constellation Software, April 2017)

Sounds like heaven. Also sounds like a good inspiration for the Deutsche Bahn.