I'm not going to fall into the "work is good for you" trap, but when you look at what some people do in their spare time, you have to admit that it's still worth working.

Personally, I've always found great satisfaction in my two successive jobs. Of course, it all depends on the profession.

I'm one of those who believe that there's an obvious laziness in certain categories of the population. I read that AXA recently conducted a study on this subject with SOTOMO. One point confirms my impression: (and I quote) "The younger generation seems less efficient and more disloyal. However, the study confirms the cliché of "lazy young people" on one point. In fact, the companies surveyed indicate that it's the young who do the least, and are content to "do the job". The younger generation are therefore less responsible and less willing to perform than their older colleagues."

I'm always impressed to read the list of graduates published in the media. There's a very impressive number of commercial clerks and hardly any IT specialists. Switzerland is also short of electricians. I'm not even talking about general practitioners.

Where's the laziness? Without wishing to minimize the profession of commercial clerk, it seems to me that putting cans on the shelf certainly requires less intellectual effort than designing complex software. As for electricians, some young people imagine that all they have to do is pull a few cables and connect a switch, forgetting about calculations, safety standards and so on.

You want to hire a young employee, but be careful: he won't want to work more than 80%, especially not at night and certainly not at weekends.

And yet, in many professions, it's impossible to do otherwise: health, transport, security, to name but a few.

So, is work a chore?

Until proven otherwise, private companies are designed to make a profit; the common good is not part of their objectives. In this sense, working in a company is unhealthy, as it has made our planet and humanity sick by not taking them into consideration.

More generally, private enterprise has no intrinsic safeguards limiting its logic of exploitation for profit purposes.

Conversely, in the public sector, there are hardly any safeguards to limit controls.

In both cases, individuals are absolved of the consequences of their work on the common good of humanity. Unfortunately.

However, and fortunately, there is also a frequent goal of excellence in quality in Switzerland. When it is sincere and supported at all levels of the company, this objective is liberating (it gives meaning to work, it encourages critical thinking, it unites, it requires training).