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At Large
Suicide Countdown
The French are reacting tragically to efforts to introduce “Anglo-Saxon” economic reforms.
(Page 2 of 2)
A group of five men and women in Bordeaux, where I live, went public recently to describe their urgent meeting with human resources to explain their frustrations. “Three of us were in tears,” one of them reported to a local journalist.
Another employee, recently forced into early retirement, told the newspaper Sud-Ouest that he was harassed during his last year, forced to occupy an empty office with no formal workload as managers attempted to wear him down by ignoring him. Lately he has been going for long walks in the nearby woods, he said, carrying a length of rope in case he can work up the courage to take his life. So far, he has resisted the act because of his family.
Many French companies have already undertaken reforms to meet the challenges of international competition. But the large ex-monopolies such as the remnants of the old PTT find themselves in a peculiar bind — a workforce clinging to the past while managers confront globalized competitive pressures.
Painful as the adaptation is proving to be, competitive pressures dictate that the workforce eventually will have to bend.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (45) | Leave a comment
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Steve| 10.5.09 @ 7:23AM
This is a joke, right? This is satire, right? This cannot possibly be reality in a nation of ostensible adults, can it?
owyheewine| 10.5.09 @ 9:03AM
Meanwhile back at the home of Anglo-Saxon work ethic, we are trudging toward the Franco model. Charles Murray is shuddering, as is the soul of Laurence Peter.
Galen| 10.5.09 @ 10:11AM
Gives new meaning to the prhase,"going postal" N'est Pas?
Appleby| 10.5.09 @ 10:30AM
As someone who has had to deal with France Telecom, I say it's about time.
As Daddy would have said, "Why now drown them all and raise pigs instead?"
In fact, dealing with the French in any form or fashion is like trying to push a string.
Etiquette Man| 10.5.09 @ 10:50AM
There is no such thing as customer service in France.
When I lived in Paris, I quickly learned that I would have to choose between having an aneurysm and simply accepting routinely poor service at the hands of quasi-civil servants at the many ostensibly private service companies (like France Telecom).
I'm sorry that people are taking their lives over this, but am also shocked. If this report is accurate, they're an even weaker people than my personal experience taught me.
I guess they'll still trying to get over Agincourt. Call it "long term, culturally embedded PTSD"
The Frogs should take a hint from Obama. Just as everything wrong here is Dubya's fault, those sensitive souls on the Seine should just blame Henry V, demand reparations from the UK for the pain and suffering caused, and be done with it.
Souris de Kentucky| 10.5.09 @ 11:30AM
After reading this, I think I'll stop envying the French for their 30-day annual paid vacations.
Pingback| 10.5.09 @ 11:35AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Suicide Countdown [spectator.org] on links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Son Of Sam | 10.5.09 @ 11:52AM
Historically, France has been considered a great nation. Right up until World War Two, it was one of the "Great Powers". The French people have recorded magnificient feats of arms, have been at the forefront of exploration and discovery and, have been a nation which has produced and supported great works of art. Maybe the people living there nowadays should ask themselves how this was all accomplished. Was it done on a 35 hour workweek? Was it done by having a crybaby hissyfit when the real world made demands upon them? Or was it done by faith, hard work and sacrifice?
Geez, you'd think people besides the dreaded "Anglo Saxons" could answer that question for them
stand strong until freedom dawns
Son Of Sam
http://www.samadamssos.bravehost.com
L. Ross| 10.5.09 @ 12:34PM
I have stayed for many months in France, and by and large it is a beautiful country. Frankly, in Provence, the people are friendly and polite as well. However, as a nation, they are just not very motivated. They enjoy life more than we do here in the U.S. The month of August off is not a joke. Going out for a meal is a three hour affair. Work days start late and end early. I have no doubt that the idea of a 40 hour work week would drive them to distraction, much less the increasingly common 50-60 hour work week we have here in America. They love to denigrate our suburban lifestyle and our fast food, but honestly, these are things that have grown here out of necessity. You can't have a meal take 3 hours here. We just don't have the time. If they can't keep up with our work ethic and labor laws, God help them compete with the Chinese and Indians.
KyMouse| 10.5.09 @ 4:06PM
Mark Steyn often writes about this European malaise, with much attention paid to the French, at his Web site, www.steynonline.com. I encourage y'all to read his observations for yourselves. They're eye-opening.
KyMouse| 10.5.09 @ 4:11PM
If you haven't read Mark Steyn's April 2009 remarks at Hillsdale College, "Live Free or Die!," please look it up. You can find it at the college's site or on his site.
BritWit| 10.5.09 @ 10:07PM
Mark Steyn... mmm mmm good!
james wilson| 10.5.09 @ 12:45PM
Tocqueville--
I have met men in New England prepared to abandon their homeland, where they might have gained a comfortable living, to seek their fortune in the wilderness. Nearby I saw the French Canadians crowded in an area too narrow tor them when the same wilderness lay close at hand; the Canadian paid as high a price for land as he would have done in France, whereas the United States immigrant obtained a whole estate for the price of a few days work.
Thus, nature, in presenting Europeans with the empty lands of the New World, offers them something they do not always know how to use. I see other peoples of America enjoying the same physical conditions of prosperity as the Anglo-Americans but without their laws and customs, and these nations are miserable.
It is impossible to pretend that the English have not won a huge dominance over all the other European races in the new World. They are much superior in civilization, industry, and power. Anglo-American laws and customs represent, therefore, the particular and predominant reason, which I have been seeking, for their greatness.
fundamentalist| 10.5.09 @ 1:19PM
I think everyone is being to hard on French workers. In the US, we have the option of jumping ship for a different job most of the time, though not in a depression. That option keeps a lid on supervisor abuse, which can get pretty bad here. At my current job, turnover was very high because the supervisor was an SOB. His boss gave him a year to get the turnover down to reasonable levels. He ignored her and she finally fired him. The quality of life is much better now that he is gone.
French workers don't have that luxury. They have a choice between SOB management and no work at all because decades of socialism prevents job growth. I would hate to think how bad American managers would become if they didn't have to worry about turnover. It would be hell! Of course, I wouldn't kill myself; I'd kill the SOB managers.
Ranchera| 10.5.09 @ 7:07PM
Great article! Finally, I have been trying to find an article in the U.S.that deals with this issue. How ironic? Obama is trying to nationalize our HealthCare and Sarkozy is privatizing the Post. There is a lot more behind this story.( I read Figaro and LeMonde). The next country to look at closely is Greece after electing PASOK. How can France and Germany be heading towards more conservative governments and the Greece, Spain and Portugal becaming more "progresive"?
Frank| 10.5.09 @ 7:12PM
Don't get too teary eyed about the suicides. The French have to complete a year of military service. I remember being told by one of my French acquaintances that if one of the company of inductees committed suicide then everyone else got sent home. Therefore the trick was to identify the weakest member of the group and make his life so intolerable that he would in fact kill himself.
A naton that would abandon 30,000 of their elders to die in Paris without prompt burial, as they did in the summer heatwave of 2005, rather than discomode themselves by returning early from their month long vacances, is hardly going to care overly about a few weaker citoyens going postal on themselves. "Vive l'indifference!"
JanineC| 10.5.09 @ 7:36PM
I am not surprised...these are the people who invented gawd-awful mayonnaise...(oil and raw egg whites) and who invented perfume instead of bathing.
Sorry, but I have no sympathy for them. My customer service ethic would drive their whole nation to suicide! We are not just customer focused...but we are proactively customer focused!!!
Mark| 10.5.09 @ 9:23PM
May the muslim invasion of France hurry up. These people are too pathetically weak to survive as a nation any longer.
Ken| 10.5.09 @ 10:51PM
Obviously our Franco in Chief wants the same for us. Of course he's succeeded with his 'community organizing' so we've got a head start. What with his flitting about and date nights I'm guessing he puts in a solid 35 hour week, sometimes.
Christopher Holland| 10.5.09 @ 11:20PM
Jesus Christ, what a bunch of snivelling wankers! These bed wetters are afraid to sleep with the lights out, they give surrender monkeys are bad name. The next time the Germans invade, let them have them.
passer| 10.6.09 @ 1:30AM
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steve| 10.6.09 @ 9:28AM
The French are soft. This comes from many years of being cheese-eating surrender monkeys!
JamesJ| 10.6.09 @ 11:03AM
No wonder they're called "cheese-eating surrender monkeys"
Coco| 10.6.09 @ 1:30PM
How bizarre. Just get a different job!
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