Ich Chef du nix (2007)

The young Turkish couple Mehmet Yilmaz and Leyla Aydin are accompanied by their families on outings to the lake and on picnics, to make sure that Mehmet and Leyla do not get too close before they are married. Mehmet then decides to propose to his girlfriend. Her father, however, insists that Mehmet first find a job so he can provide for his daughter. At first, things do not look good for Mehmet, as he loses one job after another. In the end, the brother of his future father-in-law, who runs a Turkish restaurant, throws him out because Mehmet has been more pushy than helpful, harassing two German businessmen instead of serving them. At his next job as a window cleaner, Mehmet runs into Johann Gerold again, the businessman from the restaurant. Gerold speaks to Mehmet and offers him a job. The next morning, Gerold’s chauffeur Fred picks Mehmet up in his new company car and takes him to work. At the headquarters of MHG—Munich Household Appliances—he meets Johann Gerold, who introduces him to his new secretary, Mrs. Mayer. Gerold also shows him to his spacious office and instructs Mehmet to come directly to him with any questions. After a while, Mehmet grows suspicious about why he is being paid a monthly salary of 50,000 euros without having to do any work. Gerold tells Mehmet that he is a representative of the company, tasked with appealing to young customers and families. Secretly, however, Gerold has entered into put options and hopes that, with Mehmet as the new boss, he can drive the company into insolvency more quickly. Mehmet begins to enjoy his new job when, at his first press conference, he unexpectedly manages to win the press over. As a result, the company’s share price even makes short-term gains. He invites his friends to his office and throws a party there. But his girlfriend is not at all happy with the changes Mehmet is going through. The sudden wealth, which he had never been able to enjoy before, goes to his head and leads him to treat his fellow citizens with condescension. Leyla then distances herself from him. When Mehmet discovers that among the documents he has signed over the past few days were termination notices for 300 employees, his conscience kicks in again. He tears up a check for one million euros that Gerold had slipped him on the golf course to buy his loyalty, so Mehmet would keep playing the boss until the company went bankrupt and not thwart Gerold’s plans. Instead, Mehmet now does everything he can to avert the looming insolvency. But he has only the weekend left, because the company’s supervisory board is due to meet the following Monday to initiate insolvency proceedings. Mehmet contacts Cheng, a Chinese businessman who had come to his office just a few days earlier to buy the patents for innovative washing machines that can automatically reorder detergent over the internet when supplies run low. Rather than sell the new machines to China, Mehmet demonstrates his mother’s washing machine to the businessman. Cheng is impressed by how little maintenance the machine requires and orders 1,000 washing machines, which he plans to receive at the Port of Hamburg. Mehmet now faces the problem that, over the weekend, he can no longer hire a shipping company to transport the machines and save his company. So he asks his father, who works for Deutsche Bahn, to use his connections to arrange a freight train for the shipment. He succeeds, but the washing machines still have to be moved from the company grounds to the railway station. Mehmet therefore rallies his friends, relatives, and acquaintances, and with their help the shipment is finally delivered and the company is saved. The magazine Wirtschaftswochenende names Mehmet Manager of the Year. After this success, he steps down from his post. Nothing now stands in the way of Leyla marrying Mehmet, the now-successful businessman.