[atoav]

I just thought: maybe I don't care because my first language is German and there "sie" means "they" while the formal version of "you" is "Sie".

So if you ask a stranger in German you basically end up saying the english equivalent of "could they tell me what time it is?" for a english variant of "could you tell me what time it is?"

To make things worse "sie" is not only singular and plural depending on the context, it also is the equivalent of the female pronoun "her".