The French Predilection

This post is dedicated to a friend of a friend. You know who you are…

Team America is about to unload a can of whoop-ass-sized Freedom Fries ™ on your Roquefort. Yeeeeeeee-haw!

U.S. CEO Blasts French Work Habits
–A frothy headline from the “We Hate Obama’s Guts” edition of the Wall Street Journal

Can I re-write the headline?

U.S. Money Eater Blasts Cheese Eaters, Claims Currency Is ‘Ten Times More Delicious’ Than Fromage
—The Daily Abyssian Union Picayune Herald Register Times Tribune Weekly

Roquefort is under attack. Roquefort will be defended!!!

It all started when the CEO of a U.S. tire manufacturer published a letter in a French newspaper criticizing the work habits of French workers and, responding to the notion of buying a former Goodyear tire plant, stating: “How stupid do you think we are?”

To be honest, I’d happily respond to that question but I doubt he’d be able to understand the answer. Héh héh héh héh héh!!!

A lost piece of Americana from the defunct How Big Is The Spill blog. The math here is old and busted.

Are the French high on Roquefort? Or do they have a valid point? I resolved to get to the bottom of this. Mmmm. Roquefort. I resolved to not be biased by delicious little veins of blue.

“I have visited that factory a couple of times. The French workforce gets paid high wages but only works three hours.

They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that’s the French way!”

–Morry Taylor, letter dated February 8 and obtained by French business daily Les Echos

Mr. Taylor, a man who once fancied himself a Republican presidential candidate, is aghast that there are some people in the world who don’t want to work as hard as Americans. Go figure.

Based on my apocryphal observational data, I glean that a typical work week in the U.S. is lumbering mass of 40 hours while in France it is a fleet, swift of foot gazelle leaping to and fro at 35 hours.

Five mere hours and what a difference they can make.

I’ve done some experimentation in this area and I think I know what I’m talking about.

A 40-hour work week is like outhouse bunk beds. And your boss has already called dibs on the top bunk if you know what I’m sayin’.

A 35-hour work week is intoxicating nectar of the gods. That missing hour is magically transformed into pure energy and light. For a brief moment of time you fall into that light, are joyously consumed and become one with the universe.

Way back on Nov. 4, 2009, I attempted to illustrate these weighty concepts with a pie chart. (See inset above-right.) Reviewing that data, though, I found a fundamental math error that no one caught. Thanks a lot. Now I am certain that not even my reader actually looks at this blog.

Since I love playing with myself so much, however, I decided to fix, update and revise the graph for the sake of accuracy.

After work and sleep, barely anything is left for “Other” where, presumably all the fun stuff takes place. You know? Family. Love. Enrichment. Personal growth. Awareness. Community. Love. Freedom. Fun. The occasional jolly shake of ye olde twig and berries. The stuff that actually makes life worth living in the first place.

Look at the size of the slice. “Other.” For simplicity’s sake it isn’t broken down further. It doesn’t shrink for things like time spent on the toilet, waiting in line, working on taxes, attending weddings and funerals, etc. In all actuality, the realistic size of that slice would be too small to be seen with the naked eye.

I say fuck that CEO aka greedy elderly white man. I think the French are on to something. If we can only pull our heads out of our asses long enough we just might learn something truly important. Oui oui!