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Vive La Loafing!
theodp writes "Bonjour Paresse, an anti-corporation slacker manifesto whose title translates as 'Hello Laziness,' has become a national best seller in France and made a countercultural heroine of its author, who encourages workers to adopt her strategy of calculated loafing in response to dimming prospects of success for rank-and-file employees. Could a translation find a Silicon Valley audience?"
Let the weenies that hate their work slack away. When the annual review comes up the people that take pride or work hard will move ahead. Then the weenies will bitch about not being liked, etc. ANYTHING but looking in the mirror and taking responsibility for their place on the ladder.
Trolling is a art,
This mostly pertains to France, which is similar to other European countries whereby employees stay at one job, for life, and very rarely get fired.
I think US citizens should focus on different things, like getting 3 or 4 weeks of vacation per year, not just two.
Also, some professions are not equal in the USA. Medical residents, for example, are under the same employee laws as everyone else, but routinely work 100 to 120 hours per week. Only *now* are they starting to get tired of it and fight back.
Good for them, because that kind of thing is outrageous and needs to change.
Instead of focusing on "Bonjour Paresse", people should focus on working to live, not living to work. Or, how to be a good employee and not slack off, bringing down the system.
You have to remember, back in the 50's and 60's the automotive industry had a LOT of capital tied up in foundries, assembly lines, parts plants and logistics. I hail from the former heart of GM, Ford and Chrysler where cities grew with the fortunes of these companies and saw first hand the stranglehold the unionized workforce had on this investment. With nowhere else to go for labor (a strike would idle their lines and the competitors would reap those lost sales, and damn few would cross a picket line in a company town) and much of their investment located where the attitudes were complacent, GM, Ford, Chrysler and AMC were sitting ducks for the japanese automakers. The pendulum has swung very far to the other side, now as the companies have considerable strength in negotations (don't ratify the agreement, we'll move to Mexico or China)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If you'd bother to read the (very short) article at all, you'd know that actually part of the reason she proposes slacking is in fact to get ahead!
It's very dependant on the French business climate, but basically she says that since you have no chance to advance through good work (becaue the system is very rigid and based on tenure or diplomas), instead slack off in ways that few people notice - since the system makes it almost impossible (or very unlikley) to fire you, a boss will more likley move you up somewhere else than try to deal with you!
Now for an American slant - could you please let us all know where you work where your review determines how much you move forward? I have had a great carreer but any movements up have been more about me forcing the issue than being moved up because of good reviews. And I've seen plenty of people move up the ladder without good reviews to back them. Reviews, and pandering to them, are possibly the most pointless waste of time ever invented by humanity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>>US citizens have higher disposable income than EU citizens because US citizens work 40% more hours
>So, Americans are more successful after all.
Perhaps when you turn forty and get tired of working your butt off you will realize that there more to success than having more disposable income than your neighbor, who can actually spend some time with kids and perhaps teach them something worthwhile.
What good would that do? I'm still a competent engineer, no matter how much butt I kiss. That means I can't be promoted, or they'd have to find soemone else to fill my slot. It also means I'm ineligible for pay commensurate with my abilities, because management doesn't consider anyone a "real employee" unless they're involved in hyping stock.
Trying for middling promotions is just polishing the brass on the Titanic. We're not going into economic collapse in the US because of slacking. We're collapsing because management is viciously incompetent, and Wall Street insists on keeping them that way.
Let's see, you read this, you get like 1-2 months off every year, then you piss-and-moan about Americans being more successful.
You really don't hear many Europeans moaning about Americans being "more successful". We could be more "successful" (if your definition of success is having more money) here in Europe if we wanted to just by working more.
However, the culture is very different here. Whereas someone like Bill Gates is looked up to in the USA, in Europe very rich people are not socially looked up to very much. In fact, they are generally looked upon as being greedy.
Believe me, the main reason Europeans "piss-and-moan" about the USA is because of your foreign policy, especially under Bush.
So a Frenchwoman, an economic adviser to the electricity industry no less, does something similar and it's:
- Jokes about the French (rather than useless management) on
/. - A disciplinary hearing.
My conclusion: We're all much the same. And my other conclusion: I hope she makes as much money as Scott Adams. It would go some way to show there is some kind of justice in the world.Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Slacking must be principled. If you have a pointless job and are going nowhere, ok, slack. On the other hand, if you have a white collar job that allows you to sit in a padded adjustible height chair and browse the internet, you are probably already better off than the vast majority of humanity. It means that some other chump has to pick up the slack because you decide to take out your ennui about the dismal nihilism of life in your workplace instead of confining such gestures to solitary binge drinking on weekends, like the rest of us schmoes do.
And if you are going to slack, slack productively! Become an activist or a political grafitti artist or something so the rest of us slobs have something amusing to look out on through our windows.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The French drink more, smoke more and do less than most Westerners. Yet they are third in the WHO rankings for life expectancy behind Japan and Australia while the United States languishes in 24th place. All I can say is that the French must be doing something right.
Americans work harder for longer hours, get paid more but die earlier. The French work less hours, get more holidays and live longer. So who is really the most successful?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
I believe the goal here is to show bosses that giving the fruits of their workforces labors to the workforce and not to investors or themselves is the key to success. Infact, it is the key to making a capitalistic society go round. Unfortunatly, a corporation exists for the enrichment of investors, workers be damned unless they own voting stock. The workers revolt by working based on their pay; if they're paid minimum wage to stock shelves, they work slow and slack off. If they're paid $8 or $10 to stock shelves, then they work hard.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
regarding the epic scale slacking which contributed to the ills of the automotive industry
While the hairpieces in middle management heroically toiled late into the night to keep the business afloat, no doubt.
Funny how the slightest voice in support of workers generates a response of "they're just a bunch of lazy bastards who want more money for less work" along with the obligatory "they're all in unions too."
The article makes a very important point: that the possibility of success in the average corporate job is zero. That much is quite beyond dispute.
Now, let's all sing the company song.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Unions are only useful when a company has little or no other place to which to turn. Since labor markets started opening up overseas, the power of the Union has declined dramatically. Funny how the movement of labor to overseas started at about the 30 year-ago-mark that you cited for the beginning of the decline.
I agree with you that the power of the Union has declined. I agree that the wealthy have taken unprecedented advantage of it. However, I'd like to point out that the rise to power of Japanese automobile manufacturers is a perfect example of what happens when American companies try to "play ball" with the unions. The only reason that American automobile companies are beginning to compete again is because the cost of manufacturing has risen dramatically in Japan.
Eventually "white collar" workers will realize that unions are the only way to resist.
All this would do is move jobs to India and China at a faster pace. If you really want to fix the problem, you have to get people to start paying attention to the employment practices of companies from which they purchase goods and services. All of those on-strike unionized workers continued to buy products from other companies who were treating their employees pretty much the same way. If you don't break this cycle, your union has no power at all, and only serves to give the company a reason to start offshoring.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
the goal of a just, modern society is workers who work less for more. The idea that we should all be furious worker bees is crap pushed on us by staggeringly greedy bastards who have been living like kings off other people's backs for as long as human society existed.
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that's a nice personal perspective, but what about the (by definition) large majority of workers who are *not* "well above average"?
true, employment is driven by a series of sticks and carrots, and i don't think we can get away from that; but should human beings necessarily have their destinies dictated by the results of endless "cage-match" style antagonism with their fellow workers (competitors), having nothing but their personal, individual strengths to protect them?
i think there is a role for collective power in the labor force. sure, everyone wants to maximize productivity, but there is something to be said for smoothing out the distribution of wealth too, and coming to common understandings about what makes a humane, non-hellish work environment. even if you, personally, believe you would do better in a dog-eat-dog environment, you're still living the life of a dog, and consigning those around you (many of whom, admittedly, may have lesser talents than yourself) to the same circumstances.
organized labor is simply the counterweight to amassed capital in the hands of the economic elite. capital would love to deal with each worker-unit individually, and play one against the other. the role of labor is to realize labor's true worth as a unit.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
i cannot believe that this was modded up to 5. anyone arrogant and ignorant enough to believe that blue collar workers are just "human machines" and that white collar workers are somehow more intelligent and skilled either has a lot of growing up to do or desperately needs a visit from the down-sizing fairy.
the fact is, rare indeed is the employee who does not do the same task over and over again, white-collar/blue-collar be damned. my brother is an engineer with ford motor company. he graduated with honors from carnegie-mellon. know what he works on now, day in and day out? hood fasteners. they could just as easily replace him with another engineer to design hood fasteners as they could the union guy assembling them on the line. it is, my friend, the hallmark of working for corporate America. they do not want you to be indispensable, because then you are irreplaceable. they dedicate entire management training sessions to making sure that the enterprise is not exposed to that sort of risk.
unions protect their members against the amoral, artificial persons known as corporations. if you are not an executive with a high priced lawyer, or in a union that can protect your livelihood, then you are vulnerable. from the sound of it, your turn is long overdue, and mazeltov! redefining the meaning of "blue collar" and "white collar" to suit your current situation won't seem so cute then.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.