From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,
I enjoyed your column on the French attitude toward work with gritted teeth. I
have observed the behavior up close myself.
I spent a year living in France as a post-doc in engineering at a Grande Ecole,
in the early nineties. One of my office mates was in the final year of his
doctoral studies in acoustics, and not many graduates of the program (a top
one) were gainfully employed. Recalling the scramble that was the final year
of my own studies — the birth of my son, finshing collecting and analyzing
data, finishing and defending the dissertation, and LOOKING FOR EMPLOYMENT, I
asked my office mate how his job search was going.
Oh, uh…., he replied, somewhat puzzled, I’m not looking. I asked him to
repeat himself, not certain I’d heard correctly. Yes, he continued, I’ll be
taking the follwing year off. How are you going to live, I asked, not yet
appreciating the all-encompassing beneficence of the French system. Oh, I have
a year of unemployment benefits accumulated, so I probably won’t even think
about looking for a job until, oh, maybe nine months after I finish. Everybody
does it….
I didn’t hear much more. Hearing a “top student” consider, without a hint of
shame, that unemployment benefits are essentially a year’s paid vacation made
my head spin. de Villepin’s new law required that kids would have to prove
themselves *after* they walk in the door of their employer…. And they
responded by rioting. I mean, wouldn’t you? It would have been the first crack
in the dam! Who knows — would our paid year off then be in danger?
I should of course make some disclaimers: not everyone I met in France has this
sort of attitude. There are many hard-working people there, etc., etc. But
the students who went through the Grandes Ecoles (the tip-top, elite track –
so much for egalite) seemed to be the ones most likely to think like my
office-mate.
There are many other anecdotes I could recount, but I can hear my boss in the
hall …
Take care!