I’m pretty excited about the prospect of this. If you’ve ever spent any time in Western Europe, it’s easy to get the impression that people don’t actually work very hard over there. Or, more importantly, they fail to constantly complain about how demanding and stressful their jobs are and the long hours they feel compelled to put in. The general topic of conversations among adults runs along the lines of: Where we went last on vacation, and where we’re going next.
Yeah, the free university education for everyone? And health care? Who’s not for that?!
May 6, 2009: I stand corrected. I’m amending this post with the help of the NYT’s most-emailed article for the last few days, “Going Dutch: How I Learned to Love the European Welfare State” by Russell Shorto.
In his closing paragraphs, Shorto writes:
“I used to think the commodious, built-in, paid vacations that Europeans enjoy translated into societies where nobody wants to work and everyone is waiting for the next holiday. That is not the case here. I’ve found that Dutch people take both their work and their time off seriously. Indeed, the two go together. I almost never get a work-related e-mail message from a Dutch person on the weekend, while e-mail from American editors, publicists and the like trickle in at any time. The fact that the Dutch work only during work hours does not seem to make them less productive, but more. I’m constantly struck by how calm and fresh the people I work with regularly seem to be.”
