Be self-confident, stay calm, be open to everyone and everything: Michael Werner on assignment in Berlin-Charlottenburg
Image: Julia Zimmerman
The tone becomes cheeky, men know everything better, you sometimes have to use a trick to keep the elderly parents away from the wheel: What a breakdown helper experiences.
Wdealing with cars also has to do with people. The training to become a car mechanic or car mechatronics technician does not prepare you at all for situations where someone is crying because the world is collapsing for you – and then the car as well.
When I switched from the garage to ADAC eight years ago, I was delighted: I thought I would help, I didn’t have to issue an invoice, everyone was happy. This is not always the case. Breakdown helpers are silent observers on the road and thus of society. When we’re out and about, we notice the atmosphere, and I often feel in Berlin: people are very tense, everything is getting faster, more hectic, and louder. Expectations of us are also sometimes high. Never before have I used the sentence as often as in the last two years: “But I didn’t break your car!”
