Archive for June 18th, 2008
Should we salute the long hours culture?
An excellent article in yesterday’s FT by Stefan Stern on today’s workplace, Success at work is a drug that becomes an addiction. His final comment is one that will resonate with many corporate lawyers, as we work ever longer hours,
The best and most subversive question to be asked about the “long hours culture” is this: why don’t you want to go home?
When I was an articled clerk, and just writing that dates me, my principal, one of the best corporate lawyers I have met, made it clear that office hours (9.00 to 5.15 in those days) meant for me just that. He didn’t expect to see me in the office much after 5.30, and he himself was gone not much later. How things change, and not always for the better.
On this day, 1815: “Vive l’Empereur!”
Shortly before 7.30 p.m. Napoleon played his final card, despatching the Guard up towards the crest of the ridge that ran from La Haye Sainte to Hougoumont, in what Andrew Roberts describes in Waterloo, Napoleon’s Last Gamble, as “the last great military manoeuvre of a hard fought battle”. In little more than 30 minutes it was over, ‘La Garde recule!‘ and the French army broken.
