paris

I hate the French working culture.
There are many things I liked about living in this country. It would be a great place to retire….or be a student. But the work contracts are horridly restrictive and the corporate culture is absolutely lethal. Managers obsess over ultimately very petty issues which have little relevance to performance (the type of shoes worn by an employee, for example) and lots of time is wasted stupidly. Most of all there is an annoying disconnect between what the French claim their work culture is about and its reality. For example, officially French workers enjoy a 35 hour work week, which many French claim passionately they support and will defend. They claim to reject the “anglo-saxon” workaholic model which they blame for all sorts of social ills. Every time any politician (like Sarkozy) attempts to allow for something as gentle as an opt out possibility in the 35 hour work week, unions got crazy and people flood the streets. But this is a total misrepresentation. The French public sector might get away with 35 hours at their desks, and they do amount for a hefty 20% or so of the workforce, but I really believe they are the unsustainable exception. All the French I know in private sector jobs work long hours, often longer than their counterparts in London as lots of time is lost on the stupid and petty. No one here leaves the office before 9pm here, and they are all back again at 8 the next morning. Then on top of that are the two hour lunches. Again, while I lived in France, I was repeatedly assured of the social value and importance of having a “proper lunch” in order to “relax” and “change your ideas.” Again, maybe this is the case if your work for la poste, but I find French lunches a twisted form of torture. They last forever, and people talk about business the whole time! Every day I spent in the paris office, I was taken for a lengthy lunch, and forced to attempt concentration as some analyst babbled on about various figures while munching on his chips. I would have preferred to eat a sandwich at my desk and leave the office 2 hours earlier. But, no, that is not possible in a highly rigid society where everyone is expected to do the same thing at the exact same moment of the day. French people often ask me about the supposed dictatorship that has (re)installed itself in Russia. But freedom depends on how you define it. France undeniably has more political freedom than Russia. But what about civil liberties?? The freedom to eat cheese at four in the afternoon? The freedom to smoke in a restaurant? The freedom to eat lunch when and where you want to? The freedom to suggest a new strategy to your boss? By those measures Russia, and much of eastern Europe along with it, would certainly emerge as the more free society, France is imprisoned by a collective mental dictatorship. It is a great pity, the country could be so much more.