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Work Emails After Hours Finally Banned in France (fortune.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the oui-oui dept.

An anonymous reader quotes Fortune: A new French law establishing workers' "right to disconnect" goes into effect today. The law requires companies with more than 50 employees to establish hours when staff should not send or answer emails. The goals of the law include making sure employees are fairly paid for work, and preventing burnout by protecting private time. French legislator Benoit Hamon, speaking to the BBC, described the law as an answer to the travails of employees who "leave the office, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash -- like a dog."
The BBC reports that France already has a 35-hour work week, while Fortune adds that many European companies have already taken steps to curtail after-work emails. "In 2012, Volkswagen blocked all emails to employees' Blackberries after-hours," and "Daimler took the step of deleting all emails received by employees while on vacation."

43 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Slippery slope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    It starts with vacation emails, next they'll be deleting first posts. Who would want to live in a world like that?

    1. Re:Slippery slope by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      I think the attitudes towards worker rights are with the two extremes with the United States and France. Americans tend to work too hard, and are generally afraid of being labeled lazy, so they work so hard that they miss out on opportunities in life. The French have so many regulations to curve how hard they can work, that they tend to take the easy lifestyle for granted, which then causes them to not be as ambitious or succeed, as they are more or less set on where they are at the time.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Slippery slope by Tamerlin · · Score: 2

      Americans tend to work too hard, and are generally afraid of being labeled lazy, so they work so hard that they miss out on opportunities in life.

      They also tend to accomplish a lot less. The ones who work the most hours are invariably the ones creating the most negative work, and they're also the ones getting promoted, leading to a downward spiral. More asses in seats, but less getting done. That's why the US is no longer a leader in many fields, other than how warm we keep our seats.

  2. Sorely needed in the US by waspleg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    along with that 35 hour work week - without a pay reduction.

    I'm hourly and required to carry a work cellphone 24/7 despite not being paid to do so in any way (money/comp time/whatever).

    But the demonization of unions by big corporate money has been very successful in fucking shit like this up for the US.

    1. Re:Sorely needed in the US by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But the demonization of unions by big corporate money has been very successful in fucking shit like this up for the US.

      Well, it's a trade-off. In the US it's easier to have more and bigger "stuff", but we work harder and longer for it, not always by choice.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:Sorely needed in the US by waspleg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm in IT and not a teacher and I work K-12 and in my (red) state the legislature completely gutted the teacher's unions but people think they're amazing and that teachers barely work get summers off and have hot tubs in the lounge; couldn't be further from the truth.

      The benefits get worse every year and it's standard operating procedure to keep people in fear for their jobs and to expect plenty of unpaid OT.

      Teachers get shit on and everyone who supports them gets shit on worse (except managers, of course). The only thing their union does at this point that's worth anything at all is maintains legal counsel and usually they're toothless since the laws are.

    3. Re:Sorely needed in the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So you want to earn the same money for fewer hours? In what world is that fair to your employer?

      Don't want to carry the work phone, don't. If they fire you find a job with an employer that doesn't require it.
      A couple years back I was told I could no longer work from home (company was purchased, new policy). Okay but I work 7:30 to 4:30. I do not check email after that time and will attend one evening meeting a week. Given I'm part of a team that is spread overseas that did actually matter and I work less now. Didn't get fired and am still working 7:30 to 4:30.

      This is not something that requires laws. If you do not want to be tied to your work phone at all hours, don't do it.

    4. Re:Sorely needed in the US by waspleg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Their work is dealing with your shitty kids. Some are glorified babysitters and they're scared to do anything because the law favors the kids and the kids know it and most of those shitty kids are shitty because their parents are worse.

      Good teachers are doing lesson plans long in to their personal time and doing shit for their classes while "off" over the summer. I've seen many pay for basic school supplies for kids in their classes out of their own pockets because the kid's shitty parents won't or can't.

      I suggest you actually go to the school and see how it is before judging from across the street. If you're in an affluent area it's a different set of problems but still a shit load of work dealing with helicopter soccer moms.

      They couldn't pay me enough to be a teacher. I've been in enough classrooms to know I'd go to jail, my patience and temper aren't suited for it.

    5. Re:Sorely needed in the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you understood how life actually is in France... US salaries for technical fields are nearly double those in France, for one. Having lived and worked in both, I'd caution you to not fetishize the European lifestyle... one's not better than the other, they're just different, based on very different cultures.

      There's a good book some years back from some Canadian journalists who lived in France for a while... the main point being, since the US/Canadian and French demographics are relatively similar, both in the West, you might think that the cultures are similar, but this is not at all true. The French are no more similar to Americans than people in Thailand.

    6. Re:Sorely needed in the US by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 3, Informative

      The teachers do barely work.

      I always love these statements. Perhaps you live near one of the few public schools in the U.S. where ALL of the teachers are lazy bums. When I actually worked in public schools for a few years (a little over a decade ago), working at least 8-9 hour days was standard, because there was no possible way to get your grading, planning, and other random administrative work done during school hours... unless you were a terrible teacher who never assigned anything or did anything in class. (And yeah, there were some of those people I knew who were out the door with the bell every day. Most of the other teachers looked on them as slackers. The only other teachers who weren't hanging around in their classrooms for at least a couple hours after school were generally those that coached afternoon sports and activities.)

      Anyhow, sure, you can doubt me or maybe your school district is different or whatever. I'd just note that there are MANY states that have major teacher shortages -- estimates are that we're now short by tens of thousands of teachers nationwide. And attrition rate is HUGE -- roughly half of new teachers leave the field within 5 years, and ~2/3 of vacancies are due to "pre-retirement attrition," i.e., people who leave the field early in their careers.

      So -- here's my question: if it's such a "sweet deal" to be a teacher, why do we have so much trouble finding them, and why do so many teachers leave the field so quickly? (And, by the way, the median salary for teachers in many states is much less than 60K -- in some states median salary is barely above ~40K. Starting salary in many states is frequently in the low 30s or even high 20s.)

    7. Re:Sorely needed in the US by youngone · · Score: 4, Insightful
      The demonization of the Unions has been hugely successful where I live also, begun largely by a small number of influential journalists in the 1980s.

      The factory workers where I work stayed united and never lost any of their benefits. The non-union office people moan and whinge about all the "perks" they get, I say good on them.

      Company profit last year? Approx $16 billion.

    8. Re:Sorely needed in the US by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      No. Tenure does not keep bad teachers in schools. It is not the same as college tenure. All high school and elementary tenure does is mean you don't have to negotiate your contract every year, but you still can be fired for incompetence or poor performance. Schools don't want to do that because it's hard to get replacements, not because tenure binds their hands.

    9. Re:Sorely needed in the US by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Informative

      My father was a teacher and he saw the changes over his thirty years teaching. Restrictions on discipline, not even talking about corporal punishment but not even being allowed to raise a voice or keep a student after hours because the parents would bitch and whine about it. Even grabbing a child to keep him from running into the street got the parents furious. Then the school hours got shorter and the classes got bigger. And the "experts" coming in and saying how everything was being done wrong, so that every couple of years there was a new set of curriculum and workbooks to buy. And a school board easily manipulated. And students more unruly, parents not caring, and so on.

      On the other hand I still have people coming up to me telling me what a great thing it was to have been in my father's class. He earned more respect in one year teaching a student than I can ever earn in an office job.

    10. Re:Sorely needed in the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So you want to earn the same money for fewer hours? In what world is that fair to your employer?

      In the same one that says anything over 40 hours is overtime? At some level we've come to realize that we should work to live, not live to work. So if we decide that 35 hours is a reasonable upper limit on hours, even possible to the point of removing the option of overtime, so be it. With all the discussion of increased automation, we shouldn't be making moves towards greater overtime and yet that seems the major push for a lot of places because it's easier for them to pay more than to deal with more regular employees.

      Seriously, the only "unfair" thing is if an employer is given no notice or the rules quickly and frequently change. A lot like employees already suffer from employers who quickly go from voluntary to mandatory overtime. Employers, of all people, should recognize "this is business" and just deal with it. Very few employers, by comparison, are as forgiving about the fairness or needs of their employees.

      This is not something that requires laws. If you do not want to be tied to your work phone at all hours, don't do it.

      And if employers don't want to abide by the laws of their country, they can just not do it. Given that employers have much more power over their employees than the reverse, it's a necessity that laws enforce working conditions. Some people will be unhappy because they'd prefer to be on-call because it excludes others from employment there. Well, sucks to be them.

    11. Re:Sorely needed in the US by haruchai · · Score: 2

      My father taught at the high school level for over 30 years - English, Spanish, Geography, History - the stress of dealing with other people's ill-behaved, entitled oversized brats nearly caused a nervous breakdown. For about 1/2 those years, he also coached soccer & taught night classes to adults to make ends meet.
      I'd sooner sell weed than teach high school. And there are a fuckton more hours spent working outside the classroom that in it.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    12. Re:Sorely needed in the US by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Informative

      The teachers do barely work.

      Yeah. They totally don't spend all day with your children, all of their lunchtime and break time supervising your children. They don't prepare lesson plans after hours, or mark your children's exams on the weekend. They don't have a requirement for professional development, they don't supervisie your children multiple times a year for 24 hours a day while they are on camp. They most definitely don't spend much of their holidays preparing for the upcoming semester.

      So behalf on my middle school teaching wife who works far longer than my 40h per week + on call roster, FUCK YOU.

    13. Re:Sorely needed in the US by schnell · · Score: 2

      But without a good solid education, moving to new jobs becomes hard. So if the local job dries up how do you get a new one if you don't have a decent education?

      Here's the problem. The issue with jobs in the US today is not about education per se, but about fungibility of jobs.

      A "fungible" job, or item, is one that can be exchanged equally at no loss or differentiation. (A US dollar bill is fungible, for example, because any dollar bill is equal to any other regardless of its source, condition or owner.) If one mechanical piece or the person who produces those pieces can be swapped out without any loss of productivity or quality then it is fungible. And as such it can be produced anywhere at a lower cost.

      Education is not necessarily a defense against fungibility. If you have a theoretically white collar job of IT tech support but that job can be done equally well by someone with equivalent education/training in Hyderabad, then your job is still fungible despite your education.

      Some jobs cannot be fungible because the quality of the person doing the job. Think of jobs where one person's talent is appreciably different than another's, like athletes, corporate strategists, artists, rockstar programmers, artists, musicians, financial advisors/fund managers, writers, architects or academics. Other jobs can't be fungible because of their requirements to be local, such as healthcare workers, local retail/tourism, or service providers (automotive/building/plumbing/contracting/cleaning/professional services).

      So the bottom line here isn't whether you got a C in high school or not, it's whether you left high school early to take an apprenticeship in plumbing - which will probably get you lifelong local employment - or whether you got As in high school and a scholarship that led to a MFA in Medieval French Literature, which will probably get you a lifelong series of Starbucks barista jobs.

      Advanced education is absolutely definitely important to a person's likelihood of future earnings. But not everyone is suited to (or wants to) have a college education. If everyone did, then college graduates would have no employment advantage, right? So the obvious conclusion is that it's not so important how much education you have - rather, it's what education you have in a field that people actually have jobs to hire for.

      --
      "95% of all Slashdot .sig quotes are incorrect or completely fabricated." -Benjamin Franklin
    14. Re:Sorely needed in the US by archmedes5 · · Score: 2

      I don't know of a whole lot of other jobs out there that require a 4 (or more) year degree yet pay just about enough to live on. Add to that, many teachers put in unpaid hours at home. The 3 months off? That isn't paid, so they either have to find work over the summer, or some districts allow them to spread their pay over 12 months, which trades the amount of the weekly paycheck for at least getting one every (2) week(s).

      --
      Stupid is as stupid dies.
  3. Re:More time for TV by waspleg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is it becomes expected that you be working/in touch 24/7.

  4. Re:Good luck getting contracts! by ffkom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If your selection criterion for whom to contract with is their desperateness to get a contract no matter under what conditions, then chances are you'll contract with the worst botchers amongst their profession. Those who are competent have no need to ruin their private lives by being available for you 24/7.

  5. Re:Cue the incredulous comments from the Americans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Americans really have no idea how hard they let their work fuck them in the ass. I work for a multinational corporation and last year when they rolled out the new time tracking system they had a conference call on its features. That's when the Americans all found out their German colleagues were required to work only a 7.5 hour day instead of 8. The system, designed by the Germans and presented to us by them, also had a cap of 10 hours a day you could enter. The first question from the Americans was what to do when you work more than 10. There was a long awkward pause while the German presenters tried to grasp the question and eventually suggested that you enter any hours past 10 on the weekend.

    In meetings with the Germans they can't understand why no American ever takes more than two weeks of vacation in a row while they routinely take the entire month of August off. They have less hours, have better pay, vastly superior vacation time, vastly superior benefits, and they have job security unlike our right to work for less/fire at will states...but look Americans! There's some dude on food stamps buying a potato with MUNNY DA GUBMINT STOLE FRUM U!

  6. I disagree by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm hourly and required to carry a work cellphone 24/7 despite not being paid to do so in any way

    Can you really not find other work? That seems unlikely for a technical worker these days. To put up with 24/7 duty with no extra pay is not something you should put up with. You should demand extra compensation, or leave.

    Sorely needed in the US...along with that 35 hour work week

    I disagree. When I was younger I worked 50-80 hour (or longer) weeks. But the thing is, I enjoyed it, a lot. More than that it set up a great base for a career to follow, because I had essentially got an extra year or two of experience over people who worked "regular" hours, indeed probably 2x the experience over people who worked 35 hour weeks...

    It's not like i never take time for vacation, then or now (sometimes a lot). But I don't think there is any value mandating a cap on possible work, I feel like that is the best way to ruin and country and economy and frankly, a whole generation of people.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  7. Re:More time for TV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I hate receiving emails because I'm lazy and incompetent.

    Fixed that for you.

    I was calling for this, so you nailed it :) But seriously - not wanting to work on weekends when my contract is for a 40h week is not lazy nor incompetent. Everyone looses if we all compete in this game except for the company shareholders.

  8. Re:More time for TV by Luthair · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't work for free because I'm not a slave.

    Fixed that for you.

  9. Re:No surprises here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Work has never been popular in France.

    Slave work has never been popular in France.

  10. Re:Good luck getting contracts! by SirSlud · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Companies who give a shit about their customers and their employees can have enough people not to require people to be available 24/7. Note how this only applies to companies over 50 people. If you do business with people, your comment doesn't apply. If you do business with companies, nothing prevents a larger sized company from being available 24/7 without their employees being available 24/7.

    Anyhow, what the OP says is mostly true. The minimum is doing no work. The maximum is being "at work" every minute you're awake. It's amusingly naive to believe that those who make themselves available all of the time are inherently better at what they do, or are more valuable. Anybody with a decent amount of experience in life and exposure to different working environments and disciplines knows this.

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  11. Re:Good luck getting contracts! by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've had clients like you who felt they should be able to buttonhole my developers whenever they had a brainwave. As far as I'm concerned people like you can find yourselves another victim to work out your personal dominance issues. Hire me and I'll do a great job for you, because I know how to manage a friggin' development team. You don't.

    The seldom-mentioned corrollary to "the customer is always right" is that you should be picky about who you work for, if you can manage it. I almost said "if you can afford it", but really the question is actually whether you can afford to work for an obstreperous, intrusive client who doesn't understand boundaries. Customers like that will eat up your slack then bleed you dry every... single... time.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  12. Re:More time for TV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The problem is it becomes expected that you be working/in touch 24/7.

    That happened to a friend of mine. HIs employer kept calling him out at all hours of the night so we just told him to ask to be paid to be on call. He came back and told us the answer was, 'sorry, no budget for that'. So we advised him that since his wife was giving him a hard time and he was thinking about quitting over this anyway he should just shut his work phone off when he left the office. It took about a week before there was a major emergency and the shit hit the fan. Hours upon hours of downtime, the upper management started riding lower management about what the fuck had happened. He gets called into a meeting with management and he tells them 'pas d'argent pas du Suiss' I'm not on call so I figured it's only fair to shut off the work phone. Next thing you know there is alluvasudden money in the departmental budget for keeping him on call. So come end of the month he checks his pay-slip, no pay for being on call so he goes and asks payroll what's wrong and they send him to the department head. It seems when they said that they had found money in the budget to pay him for being on call, what they meant to say, it was as of the following quarter but of course they expected him to be on call until then, sans pay. So he turns off his work phone again after work hours, shit hits the fan *again* and he finally gets his on-call money, paid retroactively. Give an employer an finger and they will devour your entire arm.

  13. Re:Good luck getting contracts! by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Those who give a shit about their customers and try to do their very best for them DO make themselves available 24/7. These are the people I will do business with. In my experience, the most important selection criteria for anything is the quality of the product itself, and the second close behind is the type of support you'll receive.

    Of course usually you expect to pay premium price for premium service. In MY experience, the world is full of shitstains who want 24/7 availability but don't want to pay for it.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  14. Re: Good luck getting contracts! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A better analogy is that Americans keep buying lottery tickets because they believe they will win, while French people understand they will not win at a tricked game and keep their money.

  15. Re: Good luck getting contracts! by Dahamma · · Score: 2

    How is that a better analogy? There are over 8M millionaires in the US, and less than 500K in France. And while the American number is increasing, that French number is *decreasing* - http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/0...

    What these policies are accomplishing is to get the entrepreneurs to leave France for other countries. Now, you might argue (as many in France do) that quality of life is more important than money. But for some quality of life it to be left the hell alone and not have your life run by a nanny state.

  16. Re: Good luck getting contracts! by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You keep insulting me, the customer. I will not be doing business with you and will slander your name.

    Dickhead clients will slander you anyway because they use up all your reasonableness until you have to put your foot down, usually in the middle of a big mess they've created. You will always be the villain, but keep the story small and it'll soon be replaced by lamenting their next "useless" contractors.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  17. Re: Good luck getting contracts! by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I actually feel sorry for clients like that -- although preferably from a safe distance. The thing is what they're up to isn't business, it's working out their intractable personal issues. What they need is not a vendor, it's a therapist.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  18. Re:Good luck getting contracts! by hey! · · Score: 2

    The danger with indulging clients like that is that you end up focusing on them and short-changing your reasonable (and more profitable!) customers.

    You're much better off making a reasonable customer delighted than making an unreasonable customer less disgruntled.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  19. Re: Good luck getting contracts! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What these policies are accomplishing is to get the entrepreneurs to leave France for other countries.

    I live in San Jose, California, and I know four French tech entrepreneurs just in my neighborhood. All of them left France with the goal of starting a company here.

    Now, you might argue (as many in France do) that quality of life is more important than money.

    Having plenty of leisure time is not as important to quality of life as having a job. Unemployment in France is over 10%, twice the American level, and youth employment is over 25%. They are funding their budget deficits by borrowing from the Germans, and that is not sustainable. They are demanding more and more benefits without being able to pay for those they already have.

    Oh, and one other thing: California wine is better too.

  20. Re: Good luck getting contracts! by Dorianny · · Score: 2

    How is that a better analogy? There are over 8M millionaires in the US, and less than 500K in France. And while the American number is increasing, that French number is *decreasing* - http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/0...

    What these policies are accomplishing is to get the entrepreneurs to leave France for other countries. Now, you might argue (as many in France do) that quality of life is more important than money. But for some quality of life it to be left the hell alone and not have your life run by a nanny state.

    In other words you have a %2.6 chance of being a millionaire in the U.S vs a %1 in France. Well I guess %99 of France is smarter then the %97.4 of the U.S in demanding policies that work for them instead of hoping that one day they will get lucky and be one of those tiny percentages

  21. Re: Good luck getting contracts! by ranton · · Score: 2

    In other words you have a %2.6 chance of being a millionaire in the U.S vs a %1 in France.

    Note quite. If you work both hard and at least a little smart in the US you are almost sure to become a millionaire by retirement. It would take less than 10% of median income in retirement savings over a 45 year career to reach millionaire status (in 2017 dollars). Either way for it to be nearly 3x harder to become a millionaire, which is by no means rich for a someone in the developed world, in France vs the USA is a serious problem.

    Well I guess %99 of France is smarter then the %97.4 of the U.S in demanding policies that work for them instead of hoping that one day they will get lucky and be one of those tiny percentages

    As long as the 97.4% don't need salaries paid for by millionaire owners your logic is valid.

    --
    -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
  22. Re:Good luck getting contracts! by Cmdln+Daco · · Score: 2

    You're generally better off dumping said 'customers' in the lap of your competing suppliers.

  23. Re: Good luck getting contracts! by Dorianny · · Score: 2

    In other words you have a %2.6 chance of being a millionaire in the U.S vs a %1 in France.

    Note quite. If you work both hard and at least a little smart in the US you are almost sure to become a millionaire by retirement. It would take less than 10% of median income in retirement savings over a 45 year career to reach millionaire status (in 2017 dollars). Either way for it to be nearly 3x harder to become a millionaire, which is by no means rich for a someone in the developed world, in France vs the USA is a serious problem.

    In the U.S thanks to the disappearance of private sector pension systems, you better be a millionaire (in 2017 dollars) or soon after retirement you will be living just on the Social Security Income which is only supposed to be a safety net retirement income. In France the Social Security System is more like a pension system then a safety net

    Well I guess %99 of France is smarter then the %97.4 of the U.S in demanding policies that work for them instead of hoping that one day they will get lucky and be one of those tiny percentages

    As long as the 97.4% don't need salaries paid for by millionaire owners your logic is valid.

    Millionaires don't pay salaries, the companies they are shareholders of do, they end up making more in dividends from those shares, then all the salaries paid to the employees working hard for the company. Salaries have remained stagnant for decades now meanwhile Corporate profits have skyrocketed. Most of those profits have been paid out as dividends to the rich shareholders thanks to the "Shareholder Primacy" theory which holds the employees to be just Red Ink on the balance sheet

  24. Re: Good luck getting contracts! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    Well I guess %99 of France is smarter then the %97.4 of the U.S in demanding policies that work for them

    Sure, except that the policies aren't working. French unemployment is sky high, productivity is stagnant, and their public debt is unsustainable. So instead of dealing with any of those issues, they vote themselves more bread and circuses.

  25. Re: Good luck getting contracts! by Lennie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why is the number of millionaires a good measurement ?

    How about quality of life, longer life and overall higher standard of living, good education, less stress, easier to get healthcare, etc. ?

    --
    New things are always on the horizon
  26. Re:Good luck getting contracts! by Eunuchswear · · Score: 2

    If an American and a Frenchman both see someone drive by in a Mercedes, the American thinks, "Someday, I'll have a car like that". The Frenchman thinks ...

    The Frenchman thinks "oh, look, a taxi driver".

    Seriously, a Mercedes is not exactly an amazing status symbol here.

    The owner of the small business making electric window shutters near me drives a Maserati GranTurismo. Whenever I pass it with French friends they tend to say things like "Vroom! Vroom!"

    --
    Watch this Heartland Institute video
  27. Re: Good luck getting contracts! by dgatwood · · Score: 2

    Having plenty of leisure time is not as important to quality of life as having a job.

    Having experienced doing only a month or two of work-from-home contracting over the course of almost a year, I beg to differ. Having more leisure time, at least from my perspective, is far more important to quality of life than having a job unless you are in a financial situation where not having a job means constantly fretting about whether you'll be able to pay your bills.

    Having a job is only crucial to quality of life if you aren't highly creative. If you are, you'll find ways to fill up every minute of your time even without someone telling you what to do. In fact, when I took a job at the end of that ten-month period, I asked for almost an entire additional month before my start date (for a total of ~11 months) to wrap up personal projects. I have enough personal projects to keep me fully occupied for the next decade without coming up with anything new (Hah!), so that month was just enough to wrap up one big project that had been in progress for thirteen years (my trilogy of sci-fi novels).

    By contrast, having free time is always crucial, because it means you can take time to fly to wherever your family lives for the holidays. It means you can go on vacations during the year. It means you can spend time with friends. It means you can take the occasional day off for various church events. And so on.

    Now to some degree, there is a point of diminishing returns beyond which more free time is of less value because your friends have to go to work or school and you can't spend time with them anyway. Many of the sorts of things I enjoy doing do require other people, so it would obviously be better if everybody had more free time, rather than just me. But I decided that it was time to start earning some income again, so I went back to work (and then almost immediately regretted taking a job that provided so little free time).

    But everybody is different. For people who see their work as their entire life, not having a job means not having an identity, not having friends, etc. Those folks absolutely depend on work for quality of life, and having more free time probably doesn't benefit them much at all. This is why there's no one-size-fits-all answer.

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