|
LETTER from LONDON |
 |
|
is My Middle Name  "Guess I should go write that column...as soon as I feel like it." |
Now everyone's talking
about how to avoid work
of TheColumnists.com
Confession time. One of the shameful secrets I have tried to keep hidden for many years is my natural tendency to be lazy. Yes, I work hard because I also like to eat. But I would much rather be a lounge lizard in the Mark Hopkins or lie around in an opium den floating in a multi-colored dreamworld. It’s a very un-American attitude, I know.
I wouldn’t admit to this weakness if it weren’t suddenly okay--at least in France. I have watched the French develop their anti-work philosophy for the past 10 years, and I think they’re on to something. It goes way beyond life balance.
At first, though, I was shocked. I had a management job in Paris a few years ago and was initially surprised to see that work was such a small part of my staff’s day. Their objective was to get out of the office as early as possible so real life could begin. Trying to manage them was like trying to control a bunch of squawking birds in a gilded cage.
What puzzled me was that some of the laziest staffers were the most talented, the most capable of producing great work. Where I come from, if you have talent you flaunt it.
One specialist in computer science, a perfectly competent reporter and an excellent writer, had a dubious recurring malaise and became what one of Frederick Exley’s characters in “A Fan’s Notes” was proud to call himself: “I’m a T to T man.” He worked from 10 to 2 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
A lively female journalist, probably the best writer on the magazine, managed to get a doctor’s note requiring her to be absent every Thursday morning for physical therapy. She had some allegedly incurable back pain, although I can’t imagine she ever strained herself. Thursday morning was my weekly editorial meeting. This was a brilliant ploy to avoid being assigned work.
The attitudes were hard to believe, coming as I did from a lifetime of journalistic sweatshops. I never liked the treadmill either. It’s amazing I was not fired from my job as a very approximate cub reporter for the Hayward (Calif.)Daily News where I first experienced the newsroom grind.
Reading local police reports, I had the bad habit of inventing details to fill in missing information. I remember one reader complaining to the city editor, “My car wreck didn’t happen like that at all!” Those words still ring in my ears 40 years later. My obits were a mess of fact and fiction, prompting more complaints from the bereaved. And taking a leaf from a famous James Thurber story, I once raised the Hayward crime rate 40 percent by miscalculating percentages in rape and armed robbery figures. The chief of police was livid. Math was always my weak suit, I explained. We corrected it with a short paragraph buried among the truss ads on page 37.
Say what you will, the French don’t take any crap. One of my staff explained the prevailing anti-work, anti-initiative attitude at my magazine: “We expect you to tell us exactly what you want us to do, and we’ll do it if we feel like it.”
His statement had a peculiar attraction. I have been thinking about it for years.
Then came the 35-hour work week as the state’s misguided way to reduce employment. It amounts to a four-day week and forces companies to hire more people just to keep the place going. It also drives costs upward. Most French employees love it but the results after 10 years have been mixed. A young Frenchman told me a few weeks ago when I was house-hunting near Bordeaux, “We have a lot more free time now but no money to enjoy it.”
But the philosophy continues to develop and expand. Now one of the hottest books in France is the wonderfully titled “Bonjour Paresse” (“Hello Laziness”), a reference to the 1960s smash hit from Francoise Sagan, “Bonjour Tristesse” (“Hello Sadness”). The new book, by a combative French female economist named Corrine Maier, carries the subtitle: “The art and necessity to do as little as possible in your job.”
She is right on target citing lack of trust between management and employees. This disconnect, she says, “spreads gangrene throughout the system.”
In her book she makes some rather bleak observations about professional life in France today. A few gems:
“You are a modern-day slave. There is no scope for personal fulfilment. You work for your paycheck at the end of the month, period.”
“What you do is pointless. You can be replaced from one day to the next by any cretin sitting next to you.”
“Never accept a position of responsibility for any reason. You will only have to work harder for what amounts to peanuts.”
I spoke to Corrine last week by cellphone as she was sunning herself on a beach in Brittany. She was full of brio, like most of her compatriots, some of it depressing, some of it amusing.
In France, she says, “The system is locked down, relying on ritual and hypocrisy.” In this environment, there is no point seeking professional satisfaction. She goes so far as to say that there is “no future” in a corporate job because cronyism is at the root of advancement.
Nothing is being done to loosen the structure, she goes on, because “we are tired--tired of fighting and lumbered with our past.”
Corrine works for Electricite de France, the state-owned power company that is notorious for coddling its workers, but her analysis is meant to apply broadly to all of French business and industry. Perhaps predictably, her superiors are bridling at her newfound fame at their expense. She has been informed she will be convoked for a disciplinary hearing in September.
She can hardly wait. “I look forward to it,” she says. “I plan to defend myself and attack them.”
©2004 by Michael Johnson. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Michael Johnson. To send
an email, click here: talkback@thecolumnists.com
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |