"The connection between narcissistic personality traits and wanting people in the office full time is not coincidental — it’s causal."

"In one experiment, we got leaders to reflect on the role that a bold, assertive ego played in the success of Steve Jobs as Apple’s chief executive and Larry Ellison as Oracle’s. After participating in that exercise, leaders were more likely to oppose remote work.... [I]ndividual leaders who reject remote work are necessarily egomaniacs.... But our data does show that overall, self-centered leaders tend to struggle with the idea of employees making independent choices about where to work.... Remote work also prevents leaders from basking in the glow of employee reverence.... Instead of rapt attention, they’re met online with boredom, fatigue and interruptions from partners, children and pets.... Sycophantic reassurances from employees just don’t have the same effect if they’re on Slack...."

From "The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week" (NYT).

Doesn't seem like much of a "secret"!

I see some potential for turning all these criticisms around into attacks on the employees. They are worse when they are working at home. They are beset with boredom, fatigue and interruptions. It's not that the boss wants them in the office to fawn over him but that he wants them on task and working hard. It's not narcissistic of him to want what they're paid to do.

"He wants to use his presidency not only to slash the country’s budget but to wage an ideological war and rewire the country’s mentality."

"He wants to dismantle what he calls the 'aberrant' concepts of social justice and economic equality and make the nation’s core principles capitalism, the free market, a limited state and individualism. 'We are at war,' Mr. Milei said at a right-wing festival last year, and added: 'We are fighting a cultural struggle, an ideological battle, a war for the survival of our freedom.' At political rallies and international summits, in public policies and a deluge of social media posts, Mr. Milei has relentlessly sought to infuse Argentina with his libertarian ideals. And turn it into a model for the world. A nation where people are loath to eat alone or drink a cup of mate, the national infusion, without sharing with the person next to them is embracing a leader whose fundamental message is that people should fend for themselves. 'He is trying to break our DNA,' Juan Grabois, an opposition lawmaker, said of Mr. Milei. 'To destroy the communal identity of our people.'... Laziness to Mr. Milei is a vice stemming from years of left-leaning governments that turned society to indolence by giving citizens generous benefits...."

From "Javier Milei Wants to Rewire the Argentine Mind/Argentina’s right-wing president has tamed the country’s runaway inflation. Now he wants to transform its values" (NYT)(gift link, because there's a lot going on over there).

And here he is in his superhero costume:

"Brendan Liaw was kind of joking when he agreed he was a professional stay-at-home son during his appearance on 'Jeopardy!' in May...."

"'I figured, why not have some fun with it?' he said. 'Better to be a "stay-at-home son" than "unemployed" or "schmuck" or "lazy guy."' He certainly wasn’t expecting to set off a media moment of stories and think pieces on so-called 'trad sons' — adult men who embrace the lifestyle of living with their parents."

From "Stay-at-home sons are here — and they’re not going anywhere Why some young men are finding happiness in their parents’ homes" (WaPo)(gift link).

"'I’m sort of the origin of all this discourse,' [Brendan] Liaw, 28, said. He was speaking from an apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia.... After his 'Jeopardy!' appearance — during which he won almost $60,000 across four games — several media outlets, including Vanity Fair, People and the Wall Street Journal published stories about a rise in 'trad sons' or 'hub-sons.'"

"The authorities have punished two bloggers who advocated for a life of less work and less pressure; an influencer who said..."

"... that it made financial sense not to marry and have children; and a commentator known for bluntly observing that China still lags behind Western countries in terms of quality of life. These supposed cynics and skeptics, two of whom had tens of millions of followers, have had their accounts suspended or banned in recent weeks as China’s internet regulator conducts a new cleanup of Chinese social media.... 'In reality, we all experience fatigue and anxiety as a result of work and life, but these real emotions deserve respect and should not be deliberately amplified for traffic. The internet is not a dumping ground for negativity,' China’s state broadcaster CCTV said in an editorial about the campaign...."

From "Cheer Up, or Else: China Cracks Down on the Haters and Cynics/As China struggles with economic discontent, internet censors are silencing those who voice doubts about work, marriage, or simply sigh too loudly online" (NYT).

"[China's crackdown] demonstrates the concern among its leadership about the spread of malaise.... In recent years, some young people have opted out of the rat race in favor of a minimal life of 'lying flat' or given up on goals altogether and 'letting it rot.' The accounts of two bloggers known for promoting a minimal 'lying flat' lifestyle were blocked from adding followers late last month...."

"My favorite part of Dead Week is getting up early, drinking coffee, and looking ahead to the long stretch of nothingness that fills the day."

"The nothingness doesn’t have to be slothful; sometimes I leave the house and sometimes I don’t, but the point is that it doesn’t matter. If I don’t go outside, I don’t feel bad about it, and if I do, everybody else I encounter looks equally confused and at loose ends, frittering away these leftover days. It is the only time of year when the days feel slow to me, when the time outside of whatever tasks I have to do does not somehow vanish into further worry and busyness. It is the only time I don’t feel like I am perpetually late to my own life...."

Writes Helena Fitzgerald, in "All Hail Dead Week, the Best Week of the Year/The week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is a time when nothing counts, and when nothing is quite real" (The Atlantic).

The author "is a writer based… in New York." I presume that means New York City, and not just because I know it is the convention in New York to say "New York" for New York City and to specify "New York State" if you mean to refer to the state. There's no other state where people add "State" to the state's name. Imagine if in Oklahoma, you said "Oklahoma State" to signal that you didn't mean Oklahoma City. Anyway, I know that means New York City because the people on the street have a distinct look of being off from work. If the author goes outside she's struck by everyone looking at loose ends. New York City is such a workplace.

Anyway, for me, out here in Madison, Wisconsin, every day is the equivalent of a day in Fitzgerald's "Dead Week."

"I’ve gotten so lazy with my youngest one, because there’s so many, that at night I put him in his clothes for the next day..."

"So, he has dinner, he takes his bath, but then I’ll be like, 'Hey, dude. It will save an extra five minutes if we get dressed now and then you can sleep later,' and I can sleep later, wink wink."

Said the celebrity Tori Spelling, quoted in "Tori Spelling Gets Backlash for Dressing Her Son for School the Night Before—But Should She?"

That's in Parents, last September, and I'm seeing it because it's linked in a new article in New York Magazine, "On the Internet, Everyone’s a Bad Mom."

"In 2009, Christopher Frizzelle... pioneered the first 'silent reading party' at the city’s Hotel Sorrento."

"Accompanied by live piano music, the in-person and virtual reading series fosters 'healthy peer pressure' and a sense of community, according to the Silent Reading Party website. Silent Reading Party offshoots are proliferating worldwide.... The $20 events take place at night and typically sell out weeks ahead of time. Curious to explore the power of healthy peer pressure, I paid $10 to attend a recent late-night Silent Reading Party on Zoom.... For two hours, a pianist accompanied readers with dreamy New Age music, occasionally interrupted by the icy clink of a bartender’s cocktail shaker. I read my book, occasionally forgetting I was not alone. Then I’d peer at the hotel scene, where participants read in silence, took notes and sipped their drinks...."

Writes Stephanie Shapiro, in "I’m retired, and I still won’t let myself read in the daytime. Why not?" (WaPo, free access link).

You'll notice that the bit I quoted has nothing to do with what's in the headline. But it's a sidetrack that caught my interest. When I'd first read about the idea of a "silent reading party," I thought it was a pleasant idea. I thought the website was used to let people know where the group reading would take place. I was surprised that you had to buy tickets (and that some clown would be tickling the ivories). If you want to read with other people around you, go to a café. Or — here's an outlandish idea — a library.

"Staying in bed after you wake up is appealing because we crave agency..."

"... said Eleanor McGlinchey, a sleep psychologist at Manhattan Therapy Collective.... Much like 'revenge bedtime procrastination' — the act of staying up too long to make up for the hours you spent working or caring for others during the day — lolling about in the morning is front-loading that 'me' time before responsibilities invade.... Quality time for yourself can slip into something more detrimental — such as a mindless hour or even longer on social media....  Generally speaking, though, lounging in bed can be time well-spent...."

From "How Long Is Too Long to Stay in Bed? Asking for a friend" (NYT).

I think the right question is not how long but how good — quality, not quantity. That's true about staying in bed and it's true about being on social media. Hence the "mindless" in front of "hour."

Googling, I see this article has also had the title "‘Bed Rotting’ and ‘Hurkle Durkle’: Can You Stay In Bed Too Long?" That's a more exciting headline, especially for those of us who respond to words.

And it looks as though this article, positing the sort of question you'd want answered by a sleep psychologist, was inspired by a TikTok trend...

.

"They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace. They’re like: 'Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.'"

"Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: 'Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?'"

Said Jodie Foster, quoted in "Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with" (The Guardian).

"Americans have been nursing a shopping addiction for a while, and e-commerce has only deepened our problem."

"The psychologist Joshua Klapow told Time magazine that online shopping is 'psychologically so powerful.' It can temporarily lift one’s mood, providing a special type of retail therapy purified by a total lack of effort. E-buyers can bypass the schlep, the dreaded walk-around inside a store, the money handling or grueling Apple Pay tap. The human interaction...."

From an essay by Sonja Anderson, in the NYT, "The City That Never Sleeps … or Shops in Person." 

Anderson uses this cutesy video from the Atlantic to support her accusation that shopping on line is, pretty much, a mental problem:

"Perhaps the portrayal of Black idleness will always be, if not haunted, then framed by a broader context that makes it seem like an act of resistance rather than a simple fact of life."

"'When we talk about Black people and time,' [one curator] says, 'we’re talking about stolen labor, stolen time—and each of these images steals it back.'... [The curators] show that Black people around the world have been reposing, alone and in each other’s arms, for a long time...."

Writes Emily Lordi, in "The Visual Power of Black Rest/Black people are generally pictured as doing anything but relaxing—as being attacked, or agitating, or performing. The Black Rest Project aims to widen the lens" (The New Yorker).

"The show is part of a broader initiative called the Black Rest Project... [which] will explore the complexities of rest for Black people, and challenge the binary assumption that one can either slow down or make a living, can either struggle or sleep (a myth encoded in the activist mandate to 'stay woke')."

"What are some famous examples — in truth or fiction — of a character who puts a lot of effort into being able to be lazy?"

I ask ChatGPT, a propos of the previous post about the "Lazy Girl" jobs. I was influenced by a comment from Jamie, who wrote, "Heinlein wrote a story called 'The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail,' about a smart but lazy guy who spends his life and career thinking up efficiencies and ends up very successful."

ChatGPT answered me:

I see Instapundit is linking to "The ‘Lazy-Girl Job’ Is In Right Now. Here’s Why."

That's in the Wall Street Journal. Subheadline: "Rather than lean in, young workers say they want jobs that can be done from home, come with a cool boss and end at 5 p.m. sharp."

Here's the Instapundit link. Quips: "Career goal of the moment" and "it’s unfair if women get paid less than men."

I was thinking about blogging that "Lazy-Girl Job" story yesterday. Quip: I was too lazy.

"I grew up in South Korea, where there are two words that can roughly translate as 'laziness': geeureum and gwichaneum."

"Geeureum’s connotations are more or less identical to the English—the word bears the same condescension. But gwichaneum lacks the negative valence. There’s even a kind of jest to it. To feel gwichan... is to not be bothered to do something, not like it, or find it to be too much effort. The key to understanding the term, however, is how it fits into Korean grammar: You can’t say 'Bob is a gwichan person'; you can only say something like 'Doing laundry is a gwichan endeavor for Bob.' The term describes tasks, not people. It places the defect within the act. Errands that are gwichan induce laziness in you.... Gwichan nails what’s wrong with the litany of errands that plague our everyday existence: Many of them don’t merit our devotion.... Gwichanism (a popular neologism in Korea) is not an apologia for anti-productivity or anti-work, and the gwichanist will still fulfill their vital life obligations. You see, gwichanists aren’t unproductive; they’re perhaps meta-productive, interrogating the merit of every undertaking.... [E]mbracing gwichanism allows me to assert the primacy of my preferences, however esoteric...."

Writes Sheon Han in "The Case for Selective Slackerism/How a Korean term helps me reconcile my moments of discipline and sloth" (The Atlantic).

In this view, as I understand it, it's not that you avoid all chores. It's that you differentiate among chores and you view the chores as the source of the laziness. It's interesting to think of the activity itself as producing the feeling and to relieve yourself of a moral burden in feeling lazy.

Is English lacking the words for this distinction between 2 types of laziness? I can see that I have a tag for "laziness" and a separate — and important! — tag for "idleness." There are also many English words in the general area: "apathy," "inertia," "lethargy," "sluggishness," "sloth," "lassitude," "loafing" (I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease...)....

But perhaps none of these words expresses the difference between the general resistance to work and the resistance only to a particular type of work. And yet, let me suggest "irksome." We speak of the "irksome task." That does seem to blame the task itself and not our own laziness. It makes sense, in English, to say I am not a lazy person, but that is an irksome task.

"Yes, the French are... lazy. It’s just not in the way we lazily think."

I'm reading "Are French People Just Lazy?" by the historian Robert Zaretsky (NYT).

By its own account, "Cubik is 'a deeply human organization' that 'seeks personalities before skills" — "you don’t just work at Cubik, you 'Be Cubik.'"

"An online quiz prompts you to discover your Cubik profile: Reflection, Action, or Relation. 'Cubik’s V.I.P. drinks have hardly begun and you’ve already talked to all the guests,' the description for the last category reads. 'You now know at which sport Jean-Yves is unbeatable, where Joëlle will spend her vacations, and that Antoine has planned to cross Slovenia on a tandem bicycle.' Whew. Jean-Yves, Joëlle, and Antoine might be having the time of their lives. Or they might be frantically texting the babysitter or wishing they were at yoga class. Cubik boasts, 'Because we are proud of our culture, we have many rituals for getting together.' These include an annual corporate retreat just before the summer holidays, 'to celebrate the past season and take a step back from working.'"

From "The Right Not to Be Fun at Work/In a win for workplace dignity, a French high court recently decreed that businesses cannot force their employees to participate in supposedly enjoyable activities" (The New Yorker).

Can the capacity to have fun be made one of your professional responsibilities? It's one thing to be allowed to have fun or even encouraged to have fun or rewarded for bringing your delightful spirit of fun to the workplace. But it's quite another to fire you because you're no fun. But what is this "fun"? An employer's idea of fun can be distorted and burdensome. Isn't that what the TV show "The Office" is about? I don't know, I don't watch it, because I can't stand that sort of thing even vicariously.

"After opening the choice of Word of the Year up to English speakers for the first time in its history, over the last two weeks more than 300,000 people cast their vote.... And the winner is... Goblin mode."

"‘Goblin mode’ – a slang term, often used in the expressions ‘in goblin mode’ or ‘to go goblin mode’ – is ‘a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.’ Although first seen on Twitter in 2009, goblin mode went viral on social media in February 2022, quickly making its way into newspapers and magazines after being tweeted in a mocked-up headline. The term then rose in popularity over the months following as Covid lockdown restrictions eased in many countries and people ventured out of their homes more regularly. Seemingly, it captured the prevailing mood of individuals who rejected the idea of returning to ‘normal life’, or rebelled against the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media...."

So says Oxford Languages (the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary).

Sample quote from The Guardian: “Goblin mode is like when you wake up at 2am and shuffle into the kitchen wearing nothing but a long t-shirt to make a weird snack, like melted cheese on saltines.” 

Here's an Axios article from last April: "Musk's 'goblin mode' is here to stay":

"I have been lazy my entire life. I just got by in school, including college where I finished near the bottom of my class...

"... although I had superior SAT & GRE scores. I got a government job by scoring well on their exam (and had the required sheepskin). I continued to be lazy by being highly efficient. My supervisors always praised my work and considered me a top employee even though I was putting in little effort. Eventually, I retired early. When I am not wandering around museums and the streets of foreign cities, I spend my time reading and philosophysing (daydreaming). I also post comments. There's a lot more to life than work."

Writes a commenter named Paerdegat at a WaPo advice column where the question comes from a man who is absurdly disgusted with his wife because she, unlike him, is not using the extra 30 hours — gained by not commuting to work — to be "productive." The remote work for both of them is full-time — in the field of law — and both completely fulfill household chores and cooking. 

But he has "read 25 biographies, developed decent conversational skills in two foreign languages, upped my running program to the point that I am marathon-ready, and started volunteering for voter registration advocacy." 

All she does with the leftover time is read fantasy novels — "books better suited to children" — watch some TV — not crap, but History Channel documentaries — something he calls "exercise," and this thing he puts in scare quotes: "unwind."

Which character do you most identify with?

the husband

the wife

the commenter

 

pollcode.com free polls

"A Kalispell woman allegedly called the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office to complain about being on the couch and her juice was in the kitchen...."

"A woman called to report she and her fiance were 'having a little dispute about helping each other.'... Three to four dirty mattresses were spotted on the side of a road in Martin City.... A man’s friend might not be so friendly after all when they allegedly pawned a TV he left at their house.... A man was allegedly on the side of a road in Columbia Falls flailing his arms, yelling at cars and acting like he was going to 'jump into traffic.'"

From the Law Roundup at the Daily Inter Lake.

"In the United States, Black activists, writers and thinkers are among the clearest voices articulating this spiritual malaise and its solutions..."

"... perhaps because they’ve borne the brunt of capitalism more than other groups of Americans. Tricia Hersey, a performance artist and the founder of the Nap Ministry, an Atlanta-based organization... says she discovered the power of naps during a draining year of graduate school at Emory University, an experience that inspired her to bring the gospel of sleep to fellow African Americans whose enslaved and persecuted ancestors were never able to properly rest. She argues that rest is not only resistance, it is also reparation. Ms. Hersey now leads events across the country focused on the transformative power of rest, and she has influenced other Black intellectuals, including Casey Gerald, the author of the transcendent essay 'The Black Art of Escape.' In it, Mr. Gerald reflects on a year he spent in what he calls a 'disappearing act,' lying flat in Texas, ignoring the calls of friends and admirers to join them in the fray of protest politics, which he’d come to view as a sure path to self-annihilation. 'Claim your inheritance,' Mr. Gerald enjoins. 'Miss the moment. Go mad, go missing, take a nap, take the day, drop a tab. You’re free!'"

From "Work Is a False Idol" by Cassady Rosenblum — "a writer who recently quit her job as a producer at 'Here & Now,' a National Public Radio news program, and is living with her parents in West Virginia" —  (NYT).

Objectively, on the substance, this post would get my "laziness" tag, but I'm wary of connecting it to a racist stereotype. Does that mean the essay has a racism problem? Or does that reveal that the stereotype is propaganda that manipulates people into not using their power to resist?