The french have always been trendsetters when it comes to fashioon and cuisine. Anyone who has visited Paris detects a noticeable difference between the fashions statements of the French and Americans. They have it down better. French women can do more with a scarf than other women around the world can do with an entire wardrobe.
So now here is a new form of trendsetting. Bossnapping. Bossnapping is a term embraced by the media where the French employees lock up their bosses for days at a time in order to negotiate or coerce, you pick the term, better layoff packages from the company. Basically, the boos becomes the workers’ hostage until better layoff terms are met. Here, where we mostly do a lot of grousing and then seek some logic explanation for our economic decline, we can only shake our heads at such craziness.
But of the French polled, fifty percent said they disapproved, while 45 percent said they did approve such action. When blue collar workers were asked, 56 percent of them were all for it. Can the guillotine be far behind?
Bossnapping is but one more sign of how much anger there is to the alleged powers that be who most deem responsible for the economic downfall. In the United States it is evidenced on a million blogs and then of course during the bonus offering at AIG. People were more irate, it seemed over the $154 million for bonuses than they were over the entire economic collapse. That’s becuase the bonus debacle represented a focal point for all the rage and hostility. Still, we aren’t bossnapping. Not year, anyway.
Will that happen here? Have the French started a trend that will ultimately build momentum and carry acorss the pond? It is doubtful. We have little history of civil unrest with the exception of a few glaring instances. The sixties come to mind. and of course that little thing called the American Revolution. But now when we anger it seems we take it out in a variety of ways other than civil unrest. some of ar e constructive. Others are not so much. And we are slow to anger. The thing is once that anger gets rolling and finds a voice, few can match our own brand or social restiveness.
But for now, let’s hope this is one trend that started in France that doesn’t find fashion in America. Rather than bossnapping, I think we can all settle instead for a godo french meal, or a a decent outfit. That tastes better or looks better. It makes more sense.
