Amelia Gentleman in Paris
Wednesday July 28, 2004
The Guardian
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Hello indolence, goodbye job?: "Hello indolence, goodbye job?
Those who dedicate their professional lives to idleness should do so with discretion if they hope to keep their jobs.
This is one useful message in Hello Laziness - The Art and the Importance of Doing the Least Possible at the Workplace, an anarchic anti-business bible published in France.
It is advice the author, Corinne Maier, a senior economist at Electricité de France, failed to follow. She faces a disciplinary hearing next month, accused of attempting to "rot the system from within".
The book, Bonjour Paresse (a nod to Françoise Sagan's 50s novel, Bonjour Tristesse or Hello Sadness), pledges to explain why it is in your interest to do the least work possible and will tell you how to damage the system from within "without appearing to do so".
An antidote to the recent rash of US-import, career-enhancing self-help books by business management gurus, it rails against corporate culture and preaches a philosophy of active disengagement.
It is an elegantly written call to arms to the "neo-slaves" of middle management and the "damned of the service industry", condemned to dress up as clowns all week and waste their lives in pointless meetings.
Maier cites the recent wave of financial scandals in French business, and argues that since careers are at risk and pensions under threat, employees should shake off their shackles of loyalty and start "footling around" during office hours.
Her publisher, Editions Michalon, said that the book did not target EDF, and its hyper-sensitive response only served to confirm the totalitarianism reigning in big business.
Maier, who works part-time, has been with EDF for 12 years. She said she wrote the book on her days off.
France's unions yesterday rallied to her cause, saying EDF was threatening free speech.
"They cited the pettiest offences in the letter summoning me to face a disciplinary review," Maier said. "The real reason is that they don't like my book."
EDF refused to comment on "an ongoing disciplinary procedure", but indicated it was angry at the book mentioning that Maier was an employee.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Telegraph | News | Civil servant faces sack for book on being lazy
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"
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"
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