My department actually did a field trip to a steel mill the other day (during paid working hours). Steel mills are so fascinating and I can only recommended visiting one at least once. The sheer sizes of everything is just breathtaking and molten steel just looks glorious. I would say that these kind of events are not unusual in German workplaces.

I‘ve actually when something like this will happen. A few years ago German energy providers and distributors needed to split, because it gives you an unfair advantage if you own both. Whole companies were split in two. People working for years together would no longer work together. In the end consumer were much better off after the split. I feel the same way with internet browser. It is unfair if you own the infrastructure (Chrome, energy grid) and the services that run on it (YouTube, power plants).

A reference to Starship Troopers

I once taught private lessons in math on calculating the area of a circle and I wanted to show the students how much cheaper per area a larger pizza is. So we of course got the diameters of pizzas from their favorite restaurant and started calculating. Then we found out that the normal sized pizza was actually the cheapest per area. It wasn‘t quite what we expected, but a very good math lesson for the attendees nonetheless: The owner lost money, because they were bad at maths.