The muddle rules

The French writer Philippe Daudy remarked that ‘Continentals are always disconcerted by the English attitude to work. They appear neither to view it as a heavy burden imposed by fate, nor to embrace it as a sacred obligation.’ In other words, our attitude to work does not conform to either the Catholic-fatalist or the Protestant-work-ethic model, one or the other of which characterizes the work-cultures of most other European countries. Our position is sort of somewhere in between these two extremes – a typically English exercise in compromise and moderation. Or a typically English muddle, depending on your point of view. But it is not an incomprehensible muddle; it is a rule-governed muddle, the guiding principles of which are as follows:

We are serious about work, but not too serious.

We believe that work is a duty, but we wouldn’t go so far as to call it a ‘sacred’ duty, and we also believe it is a bit of a fag and a nuisance, imposed by practical necessity, though, rather than by some mystical ‘fate’.

We constantly moan and complain about work, but we also take a kind of stoical pride in ‘getting on with it’ and ‘doing our best’.

We indignantly disapprove of those who avoid work – from the minor royals at the top of the social scale to the alleged ‘dole-scroungers’ at the bottom – but this reflects our strict, almost religious belief in ‘fairness’, rather than a belief in the sanctity of work itself (such people are seen as ‘getting away with’ idleness, while the rest of us, who would equally like to be idle, have to work, which is just not fair).

We often maintain that we would rather not work, but our personal and social identity is in fact very much bound up with work (either the mere fact of being ‘in work’, bringing home a wage, or, for those with more intrinsically interesting or prestigious jobs, the rewards and status attached to the work).

We find the whole subject of money distasteful, and there are still vestiges of a deep-seated prejudice against ‘trade’ or ‘business’, which can make ‘doing business’ a rather awkward business.

We also have vestigial traces of a ‘culture of amateurism’, involving an instinctive mistrust of ‘professionalism’ and businesslike efficiency, which again can be a handicap when trying to run professional, efficient businesses.

Finally, we carry into the workplace all the familiar English rules of humour, embarrassment, inhibition, privacy, modesty, moaning, courtesy, fairness, etc. – most of which are also incompatible with productive and effective work.

But despite all this, we seem to muddle through somehow, and some of our work is not bad, considering.

It is from these principles that many of the specific rules governing behaviour at work are formed or derived.

Humour rules

Spend a day in any English workplace, from a street-market to a merchant bank, and you will notice that one of the most striking features of English working life is the undercurrent of humour. I do not mean that all English workers and businessmen spend their time telling raucous, thigh-slapping jokes, nor that we are ‘good-humoured’ in the sense of happy or cheerful: I am talking about the more subtle forms of humour – wit, irony, understatement, banter, teasing, pomposity-pricking – which are an integral part of almost all English social interaction.

Actually, I lied in that first sentence: if you are English, you could easily spend a day among English workers and business people without noticing the omnipresent humour – in fact you probably do this every day. Even now that I’ve prompted you to be conscious of it, the humour in your workplace interactions will be so familiar, so normal, so ingrained that you may find it hard to ‘stand back’ far enough to see it. Foreigners, on the other hand, tend to notice it straight away – or rather, to notice something, not always immediately identifiable as humour, which they find baffling. In my discussions with immigrants and other foreign informants, I found that the English sense of humour, in various guises, was one of the most common causes of misunderstanding and confusion in their dealings with the English at work. All of the unwritten rules of English humour contributed in some measure to this confusion, but the biggest stumbling blocks appeared to be the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule and the rules of irony.