I had to go to the airport twice yesterday (séquelles de Thanksgiving) and saw this book in the bookstore as I was hanging around. It's become quite famous in France and got its author (Aurélie Boullet, whose nom de plume is Zoé Shepard) fired. Actually only suspended with no pay for six months, because Aurélie, like the ridiculous characters she depicts, is a fonctionnaire of the French government and for all intents and purposes cannot be fired.
It's a world in which people claim they are "swamped" [débordés] with work, but work "35 hours... in a month"; where most jobs are filled with relatives or friends of the people hiring; where meetings and telephone calls, long lunches, chatting, vacation planning and birthday parties take up most of the week, and where a short report that should take an hour to write exhausts someone and is not expected to be finished before several weeks have passed... nor ever read.
Aurélie said in an interview that she had tried to disguise the names and location of the office, but that a colleague and friend from work had read the book and said, "T'es foutue, tout le monde va te reconnaître, c'est exactement ça." ["You're screwed, everyone is going to recognize you, it's exactly like this."]
But she would have been fired if some people, during the disciplinary council, had not read the book and had not said that firing her for that would be very unfair. So the council proposed an expulsion for two years. And her mighty and generous boss, who is *not* the government, finally expulsed her for 10 months (including 6-month suspended sentence).
The case is now awaiting for proper judgment (from the "tribunal administratif")
Posted by: hergeloffeni | 30 November 2010 at 15:55
Interesting! I just got told to work slower at my job...
Posted by: Chandighar | 22 December 2010 at 22:21