Physical fitness is also important in order to be able to keep up with suspicious people on foot or on a bike. Sometimes you have to climb over walls to get the best viewing position. Good deduction skills are required for research and you should be able to create legends for surveys. That means you invent a pretext and play a fictitious person in order to get access to information on the one hand and not to be exposed on the other. To get fingerprints, you can disguise yourself as a technician, engage people at the door in conversation and ask them to sign a document. As soon as they take the clipboard with the document, you have their fingerprints. It takes creativity to invent such pretexts.
What the job does to private life
In the beginning I was a workaholic for many years. I worked 12-hour days, slept little and often even worked at night. I hardly ever had any time with my partner. In addition, the job is sometimes stressful because you are always confronted with the suffering of the client. Sometimes you have the feeling that you are a pastor on the phone. But I learned relatively early on to be happy with being able to help people. From time to time I therefore also carry out small research such as address or license plate investigations for family members or friends, provided I can take responsibility for it.
Which jobs I would never take
There are cases that I feel are too dangerous. These include assignments in problem areas, in mafia structures or in criminal clans. When friends, relatives or acquaintances ask me for help, there are sometimes conflicts of interest. Once I should observe the partner of a friend; but I wouldn’t do that. Conversely, it can also be the case that clients want to have people observed that I know personally. In that case, I have to turn down orders and I’m not allowed to talk about them with those affected.
What I’m always asked at parties
When I introduce myself as a detective, many people don’t believe me at first because they think it’s not a real job. Then come the usual questions about everyday work and whether the cliché that we mainly uncover secret affairs is true. In fact, about every tenth order from us deals with it.
How imagination and reality differ
There are detective programs in Germany that give a completely wrong picture of our profession. For example, you can point a microphone at a suspicious person not a few meters away without him noticing. In addition, our day-to-day work is not as action-packed as shown on television: in theory, we are allowed to detain suspicious people for the time being, but in practice this almost never happens. As a result, clients often have a wrong idea of how observations should be carried out.
How much does a detective earn?
As a detective, I earn about 5200 euros gross per month. But the big players in the industry are millionaires. How an order is billed varies from detective agency to detective agency. Depending on the location, we have a minimum working time of four to six hours and an hourly rate of between 74 and 89 euros. There is also a basic fee and the costs for the observation report and the kilometers traveled. As a rule, an order costs at least 550 euros.