"Active Disengagement - or - Calculated Loafing"

From MeFi:

Corporate culture is nothing more than the "crystallization of the stupidity of a group of people at a given moment", says Corinne Maier, the author of the slacker manifesto, "Bonjour Paresse". Better read this before clocking in Monday. (NYT)

From the article:

Finally, instead of dissembling behind ambiguous notions of Gallic joie de vivre, someone in this leisurely land has declared outright that the French should eschew the Anglo-Saxon work ethic and openly embrace sloth.

Corinne Maier, the author of "Bonjour Paresse," a sort of slacker manifesto whose title translates as "Hello Laziness," has become a countercultural heroine almost overnight by encouraging the country's workers to adopt her strategy of "active disengagement" - calculated loafing - to escape the horrors of disinterested endeavor.

"Imitate me, midlevel executives, white-collar workers, neo-slaves, the damned of the tertiary sector," Ms. Maier calls in her slim volume, which is quickly becoming a national best seller. She argues that France's ossified corporate culture no longer offers rank-and-file employees the prospect of success, so, "Why not spread gangrene through the system from inside?"

Perhaps the darker side of the so-called protestant work ethic familiar to the us and UK and Americans is that someone who makes a comfortable living and doesn't give her life to her job is apparently worthy of an article in the NY Times. I have been thinking about why it is people sacrifice so much for their employers, only to be discarded at some arbitrary whim of a corporate executive who needs to feel like he's doing something. How much of one's life should one dedicate to following orders and stymying your own creativity and potential for a wage proportional to the number of hours you spend in your chair? Is it not better for people's lives and families if they worked a little less and bought a little less to make up the difference?

If you ask a kid which he'd rather have, a brand new car and a 40" TV, or have mommy and / or daddy come home at 5 o'clock, I'm sure they would pick the latter.

PS. Go to BugMeNot to get around the NYT registration nonsense, or better yet get the BugMeNot Firefox Extension.