EVEN FRENCHMEN FIND THEMSELVES INTOLERABLE (via Jim Yates):

Does work kill in the country of 35-hour week? (Emma Charlton, 10/07/09, AFP)

Short work weeks, enviably long lunches and vacations their American or Japanese counterparts can only dream of: French labour conditions are well-known to be among the most generous in the world.

But a string of suicides at France Telecom has cast the spotlight on a darker side of French corporate life, where high stress and fraught relations with management drive many workers into depression. [...]

France has one of the highest suicide rates among the world's leading economies -- at 17.6 per 100,000 compared to 13 in neighbouring Germany, 11 in the United States and 6.7 in Britain, according to World Health organisation figures for 2005.