Civil servant faces sack for book on being lazy
By Colin Randall for the Daily Telegraph
A French civil servant who wrote a fly-on-the-wall account of office life advising workers on how to get away with as little as possible has been threatened with disciplinary action.
Corinne Maier's book depicts a business culture more reminiscent of the British television series The Office than the corridors of corporate power.
She describes how the least effective people rise to positions of senior management where they are most harmless while no one ventures into a corridor without a clipboard.
"The corporate culture is nothing more than the crystallisation of the stupidity of a group of people at any given time," she said. "If you have nothing to gain from working, you have nothing to lose from doing nothing."
Mrs Maier, 40, wrote the book Bonjour Paresse (Hello Laziness) while working part time as an economist for Electricite de France, the state electricity body, which is in the middle of a bitter dispute with unions over privatisation plans.
Chapter titles include "The cretins who sit next to you", "Business culture my arse" and "Why you lose nothing by resigning".
Her observations will fuel the debate in France about the 35-hour week, with some employers beginning to demand longer hours for the same pay as a condition for not relocating to the new EU member states.
Mrs Maier, who has a doctorate in psychoanalysis, said yesterday that while she had drawn on her experiences at EDF, her book was based mainly on her observations, and those of friends, of the private sector.
"I do not believe I have any reason to fear disciplinary action," she said. "I have done no wrong. Like Edith Piaf, I have no regrets."
EDF declined to comment pending disciplinary proceedings. It has ordered Mrs Maier to attend an internal hearing next month.
But in a letter it accused her of reading newspapers during meetings and "spreading gangrene through the system from within".
Telegraph | News | Civil servant faces sack for book on being lazy: "Business culture my arse"
