Make the workplace tolerable

Cited was a reference to a Chinese migrant in Paris who works 11 hours a day, six days a week, in a country that limits Sunday trading and enforces a 35-hour week.

One of my teachers used to ask, “What does that have to do with the price of cheese in Wisconsin?” Consider a Chinese-Thai shop-owner down the street who works more than 11 hours a day, seven days a week, and who seems to enjoy every moment of it. And consider an Isaan mechanic who works full-time days and part-time evenings and weekends because he loves being a mechanic.

Nothing against French workers, “the happiest in the world”, but people can be both happy and hard-working.

Maybe it is not so much “natural for companies and their workers to work more when consumers want to consume more” than it is in having an environment that is rewarding humanly as well as monetarily.

Guy Baker

Bangkok