Are the British really lazy?

PERSONAL COLUMN JOHN ROWAN WILSON

Nations in times of difficulty easily develop neurotic attitudes towards themselves, and of recent years the British have become very mixed up on the subject of work. There is a general agreement that people don't work hard enough. The factory worker is interested in nothing but football and bingo, the typist spends her time painting her nails, the civil servant is everlastingly swilling tea and the telephone girl won't answer because she is talking to her boy-friend. If only, as the politicians so often plaintively tell us, we would all put just that little bit of extra effort into it, prices would go down and incomes up, the balance of pay- ments would right itself, and we would be a great power once again.

It must be hard for a Prime Minister who is on the go from morning till night and having the time of his life, to understand why his words make so little impact on a girl of sixteen who spends five days a week pulling a lever which fixes a crown top on a beer bottle. There is, to use a cant phrase, a certain failure of communication. And the reason is, of course, that they are using the same word for two entirely different forms of activity.

Are British people really as lazy as every- one makes out? They are certainly not inactive. either mentally or physically. They are passion- ately addicted to competitive sport. They expend vast quantities of energy on home decorating and gardening, and they rack their brains for hours following the form of race- horses or filling in the football pools. Once they have decided that any activity is a form of recreation and they are doing it of their own accord, there is no stopping them. Their prob- lem lies in fitting their inherent drive and ingenuity into the rigid pattern demanded by industrial society. The decay of work, which everyone is so concerned about, is really only a decay of interest.

This prevailing ennui with the kind of task which a man must perform to earn his living is a complication of our advanced level of, civilisation. The more educated and more intelligent we are, the more easily we become bored. And as education improves, the problem will not become better—it will become worse. It will not be exorcised by calls for patriotism or increased self-discipline. Nor is it, as so many people have tended to believe, simply a malaise of manual workers, a product of the chain- belt and the assembly line. It exists in its most malignant form among salaried office workers.

This struck me with dramatic force when I left active medical practice for an administra- tive job in a large (and extremely successful) commercial organisation. I had heard a great I deal about hard-driving businessmen, and the relentless pressure of decision-making on executives. I was prepared for a tough, com- petitive life in which it was every man for himself and the weakest went to the wall. But when it came to the point I was astonished by the torpid, almost oriental, tempo of commercial life. Decisions were taken only rarely and then after endless discussion and deliberation. Work slowed down practically to a halt during slack seasons of the year. Christmas seemed to start in mid-December and go on well into January. By contrast with a busy hospital, it

was like a perpetual August Bank Holiday.

It took me some time to discover the reason for this. It is, I believe, a manifestation of deep psychological rebellion. Modern men and women have become increasingly resistant to the unnatural and restrictive concept of 'office hours.' It is, in fact, quite impossible for a normal man and woman to do thirty-six hours of careful office-work every week. It is too sedentary and too boring. Any honest work study of office employees would show an em- barrassingly low level of productivity--this is not because the individuals concerned are lazy. but because flesh and blood revolts against the tedium of it. Unfortunately, nobody is pre- pared to admit this, and the farce of a full week's work has to be played out some- how or other. Over the years an elaborate series of games have been developed to fill in the time.

The games vary with the age and seniority of the participants. At lower levels they tend to be either sexual in nature, or else con- cerned with various forms of display, such as the comparing of new clothes or other posses- sions. The executive level also has its traditional games of display, prominent among which is that old favourite Business Lunch. Other executive games are Top Dog, in which the players compete with each other for position and influence, and Conference, which is a kind of group psychotherapy session designed to engender a feeling of solidarity and reassurance.

There are also more flexible games at which people on different levels can take part. There is a whole group of these which come together under the name of Secretary. Since secretaries tend to be acquired largely for reasons of prestige, the problem arises of finding activities to keep them busy. One much-favoured tech- nique goes under the heading of Get Me Mr Jones. In this game the executive, Mr Smith, asks his secretary to get Mr Jones on the tele- phone. When Mr Jones is told by his secretary that Mr Smith wants to speak to him he can see no reason why he -should pick up the receiver and sit there waiting for Mr Smith (after all, it wasn't his telephone call). He instructs his secretary to this effect. A battle ensues as to who is to get on the line first. All four parties thus move effortlessly into a sort of mixed doubles variation of Top Dog.

A man who returns home and tells his wife that he has had a hell of a day at the office has almost certainly been engaged for most of the time in harmless but essentially unpro- ductive pastimes of this kind. He is fagged out, naturally. If he had been playing thirty-six holes of golf he would have been equally exhausted and would have been doing just about as much good to his employer's interests. Perhaps more—since one of the serious dis-

advantages of executive games is that some of them require so many players. This particu-

larly applies to Conference. A man who calls a conference because he feels lonely and rest- less or wishes to emphasise his position of seniority vis-à-vis his subordinates, wastes not only his own time but that of all the others present. He is acting just as irresponsibly as a shop steward who stops the assembly line to discuss a trade dispute.

Most of this time-wasting is completely un- conscious and it is important that we should not take up a moral attitude towards it. This would create feelings of guilt which would be psychologically damaging and it would not improve the situation. The difficulty we are up against is that man is not by nature a full-time worker. He is not like the sheep, which spends all day eating its food, or the carnivorous mammal, which spends all day chasing it. He is a restless animal with a craving for variety and stimulation. He is capable of a remarkable degree of sustained effort if these two desires are satisfied. When I was a surgeon in hospital I got through an amount of work which astonishes me when I look back on it. But these were unusually favourable conditions. Surgery is an interesting and varied occupation. It is intensely personal and carries the constant stimulation of individual achievement. But even heFe, it is fascinating to observe how fatigue increases as personal involvement is reduced. It is notoriously more tiring to watch or assist at an operation than to carry it out.

Occupations which carry this degree of variety and motivation are rare, and getting rarer all the time. The vast majority of jobs are so tedious that it is not possible for them to pe done effectively except on a part-time basis. Yet the whole of our society is geared against part-time work. Large organisations arc particularly hostile to it. There is a vague feeling that unless a man is there the whole time he does not really `belong.' If he is em- ployed at all he is at a constant disadvantage in regard to promotion and pensions. His loyalty is constantly under suspicion. Only at the very top of industry does this prejudice disappear. At Board level, the value of part- time employment is accepted without question. The reason for the decline of industry is that man is by nature a dilettante, and we have tried to turn him into a specialist. He has hit back at us by turning himself into an idler, an inventor of complex games to act as a sub- stitute for the varied tasks which his restless nature demands of him. It is no use abusing him for this. The only answer to the problem is to develop a more enlightened attitude towards the organisation of work. The potential interest of jobs should be studied and assessed more seriously than it is at the moment. This would help us to recognise the fact that certain essential tasks are inherently part time, and to encourage part-time workers to do them.

Most important of all, we must learn to be honest with ourselves and cease pretending that we are working when we are only playing games. In this connection I remember with admiration a remark made bj, a very eminent prpfessor of medicine. He had just been giving an account of the time he spent travelling, attending conferences, giving addresses, and visiting centres of research. He had, he dis- covered, been out of the country for almost six 'months in the past year. Somebody asked, 'Bit who does your work while you're away?' After a pause, he replied, 'The same people who do it when I'm at home.'