e-Claire

Bonjour Laziness

"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. ...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. ...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." ...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."

Not precisely -- what she's done is spit in their soup. heh.

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