A couple of weeks ago, Radio Derb reported on this Agence France-Presse story about the productivity of bureaucrats in Egypt. From the RD transcript:
If you think our federal bureaucrats are bad, listen to this. Quote from an Agence France-Press report: “According to an official study, Egypt’s six million government employees are estimated to spend an average of only 27 minutes per day actually working.” … What are all those bureaucrats doing for the other 453 minutes of their working day? Praying, apparently. A pious Muslim is supposed to pray five times a day, and two of those sessions — the noon prayers and the afternoon prayers — fall within regular office hours, bringing work to a standstill. A prayer generally takes an average of 10 minutes, but it can be extended if the worshipper chooses to recite one of the longer verses of the Koran. And before the prayers, there’s a mandatory washing of the face, hands and arms, feet and head. In an office building, people have to line up at the bathrooms to do these ablutions, so you see where the time goes. This actually explains a lot about the Muslim world.
That phrase “the Muslim world” can be taken to include Minneapolis, if this story from the Star-Tribune is anything to go by.