Everybody's (Not) Working for the Weekend

When discussing cultural stereotypes with a student, I was shocked to learn that she wasn’t aware of one of the (in my eyes) most common perceptions of the French: their allergy to work. This stereotype is, of course, propagated by Anglo Saxons, and from that perspective, it seems rather irrefutable, what with the standard five weeks of vacation and 35-hour workweek.

When I moved to France last year, I decided it was time to put the jokes about French slackers aside and get to the bottom of what the work culture was all about. Stereotypes are only partially based in truth; surely, there must be more to the story. Well, nearly a year later, I’m here to tell you that there isn’t. It seems that certain forces have conspired to create a perfect storm of anti-productivity. This phenomenon is complex to be sure (I’ve boiled down book-length material to a handful of paragraphs, mind you) and not without exceptions, but from an American point of view, rather mind-boggling.

On the surface, working in France seems like one, long paid vacation. In addition to the aforementioned five weeks of annual holiday time, employees who work over 35 hours per week (which means practically everyone in the private sector) are entitled to reduction du temps de travail (literally: reduction of work time), more commonly known as RTT: one or two extra paid days off per month. This added PTO amounts to a grand total of seven to nine weeks of vacation per year. The French also grant employees with children three extra days off per year for each child if the child is sick and needs parental care (proof in the form of a doctor’s note is required for these and for employees’ own sick days, because employers apparently don’t trust their employees). Lest you think French companies are going overboard, not to worry—employees must use their vacation within a year, as PTO doesn’t roll over into the following year as in many American companies. Therefore, it’s totally natural to take off weeks at a time—it’s all in the spirit of making the most out of what the unions make sure is an employee’s right.

While Anglos may envy the French’s ability to take such advantage of work-life balance, there’s a dark underbelly to the French employment system. There is an exceptionally high cost of operating a business in France, as companies are obliged to pay a business tax in addition to exorbitant taxes on employees. Moreover, when a company wishes to dismiss someone, they not only have to provide a valid justification for doing so, but also pay a substantial sum to the government. These restrictions have created a climate in which it’s extremely difficult to get hired (see the nearly 10% unemployment rate) and even more difficult to get fired. Therefore, repeated tardiness, persistent loafing, and gross incompetence are not high on the list of reasons for getting fired—the companies just don’t want to go through the trouble of documenting the infractions and paying the fee. People can therefore coast and exploit a system just made for abuse.

To an Anglo, there are several things French employees seemingly “get away with,” yet these “abuses” are relatively benign and practically rote. A two-hour lunch is totally acceptable. It doesn’t mean that everyone regularly takes one, but anything under an hour is deemed unthinkable; don’t even think about telling someone that you’re so busy you need to eat lunch at your desk, unless you want to risk giving them a heart attack. Coffee breaks are also a stalwart feature of the French workday. It’s worth noting that the length of coffee breaks is totally disproportionate to the size of coffees people drink. The French have a knack for making a tiny espresso last 25 minutes—and do so several times per day. On sunny days, I’ve walked past office buildings where nearly everyone seemed to be outside “drinking coffee.” These frequent breaks aren’t clocked and while I’m sure managers notice, they may very well be engaging in similar behavior. Between all of these pauses (and including many employees’ weekly training in languages or tech), it’s hard to imagine that a lot of work actually gets done in a given day.

When the French are actually working, they often attend meetings—an aspect of work culture that is run in a manner far from Swiss-watch efficiency. From what I’ve gleaned from many students who work at a variety of companies, meetings can be quite the sore spot, annoying even those who may not have the most diligent work ethic. People show up late, which often delays the start time. There may or may not be a meeting organizer who runs the show, and if there is one, he/she may or may not have an agenda. Attendees often come unprepared and sometimes unclear on why they’re needed there. Meetings also usually go overtime because a decision can’t be reached, as the French have a tendency to scrutinize a situation from all possible angles—a level of analysis that can be admirable, if not done to a fault. Progress consequently gets halted, generating more and more meetings. Coming from America, where (for the most part) meetings are held to agendas, decisions are made, and action items are assigned, this molasses-like rate of “forward” movement seems CRAZY.

And as if all the above everyday behaviors didn’t seem bad enough, we then have the serious cases of work-sploitation—the ones that even your average glandeur (slacker) cannot tolerate. In fact, the French have invented a term for the type of worker who stretches the system to the limit. These ne’er-do-wells are called bras cassés (broken arms), and they exist at many a company. The bras cassé is either incompetent or just doesn’t care at all about doing a good job, and everyone in his department knows it. However, he can’t get fired (for the reasons delineated above), so he gets shunted into a series of bullshit jobs that have no real purpose or make no real contribution to the company and still receives a paycheck for showing up every day and doing, for all intents and purposes, nothing. Think Milton from the film “Office Space.” Here’s a prime example: my student had a former teammate who used to come in, no joke, at 5pm every day and work for about four hours. This tardy queen extraordinaire would also raise a huge fuss if her chair was being used in a meeting or if even one pencil was out of place on her desk. Then she started to come down with chronic “illnesses,” which caused her to intermittently miss “whole” (well, in reality, half) days of work. Her manager wanted to fire her, of course, but couldn’t. The young blood who joined the team in the midst of all this observed her behavior and felt, if she’s doing it and isn’t getting fired, then why shouldn’t we? And so a vicious cycle begins. We can wag our fingers at the bras cassé for being a bad role model, and I agree, but I also say, bad system! This story may seem extreme, and it is, but I’ve heard similar tales (albeit to lesser degrees) from many students.

While hurdles to getting fired provide employees with a sizable amount of job security, they sometimes take their sense of security too far. The feeling of “I can’t be bothered” has permeated the system. People have rigid definitions of what their jobs entail, and they stick to this script in way that throws the notions of efficiency and customer service out the window altogether. At my bank, only my account executive can assist me with certain tasks. You’d think there is someone else at the bank who’s trained to do those exact same tasks, and I’ve asked that very question more than once, but I’ve gotten the same response: “It’s not my job.” Excuse me? Isn’t keeping your customers happy every employee’s job? At at the local appliances depot, I was having a difficult time finding what I was looking for, so I sought out an employee’s help. I asked a worker in the dishwasher section if he could help me find the fans. I apparently mistakenly assumed that any employee would be able to assist me, because he told me I’d have to find someone else to help me, as fans weren’t in his jurisdiction. Read: it’s not my job. This tunnel vision is seeping into the minds of the future workforce as well. My husband and I were visiting his French relatives recently, and his cousin’s adorable four-year-old daughter was prattling on about cute four-year-old matters when she suddenly stated with utmost seriousness that the poor pigeons poop on the buildings and someone should build them bathrooms (aw, cute). My husband asked her, “Who’s going to build these bathrooms?” “Well,” she replied, “I don’t know—but definitely not me!” And thus, her generation’s aversion to work is given a voice.

You’d think this collective lack of urgency would result in almost nothing getting done, but ironically France was ranked number three on the world productivity index. Huh? Well, of course not all French workers are grand glandeurs. There are many people who are committed to their jobs and truly do work hard. But there are also many who game the system under the guise of diligence. A recent trend in French work culture has been to work long hours in order to be noticed as the last one still in the office. As I laid out above, people aren’t always assiduously working throughout the day. They could be surfing Internet porn after having taken the fourteenth coffee break of the day, but it’s 8:30pm and so therefore they must be dedicatedly chipping away at their gargantuan pile of work. These masters of illusion get recognition for their apparent diligence, while others who may work just as—if not harder—than the midnight-oil burners prefer to leave work at a reasonable hour (due to having young children at home) get passed up for promotions. This screams of a lamentable lack of critical thinking and a system of reward based on performance quantity rather than quality—the opposite of which is rightly valued in Anglo work culture.

Despite the logic-defying productivity index ranking, France has remained relatively uncompetitive on the world business stage for many of the reasons described above. Furthermore, anytime a reform to employment law is proposed, public outcry rages against the threat of France becoming “too Anglo-Saxon.” Oh, the horror! Mind you, a lot of the material for this piece came from long discussions with French people who detest the way the system works and lament the manifold abuses. However, it’s clear that the system is so ingrained that despite some of its denizens’ best intentions and efforts, not much will change and therefore, the French will live to (not) work another day.