Skip to main content

We do 40% of our business in Germany. But does that mean that on a public holiday we suddenly cannot help our customers in France or England? Why should a customer in Belgium have to wait longer for his order? Normally the customer does not even know that our warehouse is in Germany.

Even worse is when the public holiday does not affect all of Germany, as is the case with this coming Thursday. Hesse is closed, and of course, the shipping companies in Hesse. Should we let our competition take our customer from Hannover away from us, just because he needs his delivery on Friday? I think not.

If we tell a customer in Luxembourg or Poland that Jarltech delivers everything the same day, than we need to do so. Effective immediately our warehouse is open on public holidays with a smaller workforce, and our Sprinter fleet (trucks are not allowed to drive on public holidays!) delivers the packages simply to the shipping companies' foreign hubs. After France and Austria we are already on the go daily with several vehicles.

On such days our technical department has an emergency crew who speak the languages of the countries which are open, plus our sales departments in the open regions are also on duty.

This all costs a lot of money, especially when the public holidays are not the same throughout. Why aren't there a few general public holidays in Europe that (almost) everyone could agree to, like Christmas, for example? If the six other public holidays would be taken away, then by law every employee would automatically receive six additional vacation days... which would already give us better results, not to mention an increase in economical productivity.

However, it could be embarrassing for the church, if hardly anyone takes the day off on Ascension or Easter Monday, but the church would certainly survive. When it comes to globalization it becomes increasingly difficult to always have to deal with special national rules and regulations.