[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: A French Employee' s Work Celebrates the Sloth Ethic

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A French Employee's Work Celebrates the Sloth Ethic

August 14, 2004
 By CRAIG S. SMITH 



 

PARIS, Aug. 13 - Finally, instead of dissembling behind
ambiguous notions of Gallic joie de vivre, someone in this
leisurely land has declared outright that the French should
eschew the Anglo-Saxon work ethic and openly embrace sloth.


Corinne Maier, the author of "Bonjour Paresse," a sort of
slacker manifesto whose title translates as "Hello
Laziness," has become a countercultural heroine almost
overnight by encouraging the country's workers to adopt her
strategy of "active disengagement" - calculated loafing -
to escape the horrors of disinterested endeavor. 

"Imitate me, midlevel executives, white-collar workers,
neo-slaves, the damned of the tertiary sector," Ms. Maier
calls in her slim volume, which is quickly becoming a
national best seller. She argues that France's ossified
corporate culture no longer offers rank-and-file employees
the prospect of success, so, "Why not spread gangrene
through the system from inside?" 

The book is a counterpoint to efforts by the country's
center-right government to repair the damage done to French
work habits by decades of Socialist administration, which
enacted a 35-hour workweek. It is gaining in popularity
just as the International Monetary Fund is urging Europeans
to work longer and harder to stiffen their soft economies. 

The French already work less than people in most other
developed countries - on average, nearly 300 fewer hours a
year than Americans, according to one study. 

In many ways, Ms. Maier is typical of France's
intelligentsia, overeducated and underemployed. She studied
economics and international relations at the country's
elite National Foundation of Political Sciences, or
Sciences-Po, before earning a doctorate in psychoanalysis. 

But she works just 20 hours a week writing dry economic
reports at the state electric utility, Électricité de
France, for which she is paid about $2,000 a month. Sitting
in the living room of her Left Bank apartment, decorated
with colorful abstract art, huge stereo speakers and a
bicycle, Ms. Maier, 40, insists that her polemic, though
tongue in cheek, has a principled point. "Can we work in a
corporation and contest the system," she asks, "or must we
be blind and docile and adhere to everything that the
corporation says?" 

Part of the problem, according to Ms. Maier, is that French
companies are frozen by strict social norms. 

"Everything depends on what school you went to and what
diploma you have," she said, arguing that advancement is
slow and comes less from ambition than from endurance.
"French corporations," she says, "are not meritocracies." 

Workers remain at their jobs until retirement, stymieing
the promotion of those below them, she argues, yet a system
of patronage and stiff legal protections make it difficult
for employers to fire anyone. Years of such stagnation in
France's hierarchy-obsessed society have produced elaborate
rituals to keep people busy. 

"Work is organized a little like the court of Louis XIV,
very complicated and very ritualized so that people feel
they are working effectively when they are not," she said. 

Her solution? Rather than keep up what she sees as an
exhausting charade, people who dislike what they do should,
as she puts it, discreetly disengage. If done correctly -
and her book gives a few tips, such as looking busy by
always carrying a stack of files - few co-workers will
notice, and those who do will be too worried about rocking
the boat to complain. Given the difficulty of firing
employees, she says, frustrated superiors are more likely
to move such subversive workers up than out. 

The book's title is a play on "Bonjour Tristesse," the
title of the 1954 best-selling novel by Françoise Sagan
that recounted a worldly young woman's cynical approach to
relationships and sex. Ms. Maier's book, subtitled "The Art
and Necessity of Doing the Least Possible in a
Corporation," is concerned with a more mundane malaise. 

With chapters titled "The Morons Who Are Sitting Next To
You" and "Beautiful Swindles," it declares that corporate
culture is nothing more than the "crystallization of the
stupidity of a group of people at a given moment." 

Her employer of 12 years was not amused. Irritated that she
identified herself as an Électricité de France employee on
the back cover of her book, company officials wrote her a
stern letter accusing her of inattention at meetings,
leaving work early and "spreading gangrene from within,"
just as her book advocates. They demanded that she appear
for a disciplinary hearing, though the original Aug. 17
date has been pushed back to September. That's because Ms.
Maier is going on vacation. 

"They want to make an example of me," Ms. Maier said.


When she received the letter from her employer, she did
what any French worker would do: she took it to the company
union and asked them to help in her defense. The union,
already engaged in a bitter battle with management over a
partial privatization scheme, took the case to the news
media, where it received instant and widespread attention. 

Without the company's maneuver, Ms. Maier's book would
probably have quietly gone out of print. Instead, her
publisher, Éditions Michalon, sold out the first printing
of 4,000 copies and has ordered three successive reprints
in the past three months: 15,000 copies have been printed
so far and, having apparently struck a chord with the
country's work force, demand only appears to be growing. 

She said the reaction of co-workers has been mixed, with
some outraged by her thankless attitude. "They think it
scandalous," she said, "like I spit in my soup." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/international/europe/14france.html?ex=1093509585&ei=1&en=f6ab817fc15db4ec


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