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I love my job, I love my job, I love my job. For those not accustomed to the American comedy of the early 2000s, the quote is taken from the film The devil wears Prada, made iconic by the interpretation of Meryl Streep as domineering Miranda Priestly.
In the particular scene, the first assistant Emily, whose face belongs to the then little known and homonymous Emily Blunt, is at her desk, exhausted by a long day of work of which she does not see the end, tenaciously anchored to the idea that that particular employment will be able to launch his career in the fashion world, and that therefore may be worth all the sacrifices that are required of it.
The devil wears Prada it is certainly not what can be defined as a committed work or one of social denunciation: brilliant, ironic and above all very, very light, however, it hides under the sparkling patina a declaration of love mixed with hatred towards the overestimation of the culture of work from overseasfounded on hard work and commitment to be lived often and willingly as all-encompassing, in my opinion much more thrust on the big screen than in successful best seller by the American Lauren Weisberger from which it is taken, published in Italy by Piemme.
Given the pervasiveness with which work takes over large spaces in private life, I don’t think it’s a coincidence phenomena such as great resignation or quite quitting start right from the United Statesor that companies like Gallup are born in the same territory, which in their core business include the ambition to measure the global state of work, with very detailed annual reports. just theGlobal analytics and consulting firm Gallup published the annual State of the Global Workplace Report 2022 last June, the report on the state of work worldwide.
Employee work in Europe
A very detailed document from Gallup, which in 170 pages compares the various areas of the globe with questions related to employee satisfaction, in relation to very specific topics. Going to browse among the data relating to the European Union areawhich therefore also involve Italy, it emerges that, for example, citizens feel they can belong to systems with a high presence of corruption (60% of the sample, down by one point from the previous year), do not feel satisfied with what institutions and companies are putting in place in favor of environmental protection (only 44% of the sample has a positive opinion on the topic), or how only 42% are satisfied with their income.
The questions cover the most diverse topics. As an example I want to mention also the degree of satisfaction with the average time needed to find a new job (44% of the sample expressed a positive opinion), but they also tend to measure i levels of personal satisfaction, stress, anxiety and anger which can take over workers’ days on a daily basis.
The situation in Italy in relation to the EU according to Gallup
All the indicators apparently mark a positive average but, in fact, they refer to the entire European territory. The report also provides data about individual countries, in relation to each other in the area of belonging.
And it is precisely in this appendix, which is found on page 115 of the document, that we can see more concrete measurements relating to Italy: we are ranked last in Europe for employee engagement, and among the top ten for level of daily worry and stress. Data down compared to the previous measurement, but still very far from a real balance between work and private life.
We are also, after Cyprus, the country with the highest daily sadness rateat the position 36but for satisfaction with the actions taken against climate change (ranking that instead rewards Finland, Switzerland and Luxembourg), e very reluctant to want to leave our homeland even if aware of losing opportunities.
Now, from my point of view it is possible to read these data in two different ways: by continuing to repeat that we love the system in which we live, exactly like the Emily mentioned at the beginning, who tries to convince herself that it is worth enduring everything for an end that now it seems a pale imitation of the initial ambitions, or try to reverse course as instead, after various hesitations, the second assistant, Andrea, played by Anne Hathaway, tries to do.
It is she who, in the film, presents a curriculum of social denunciation investigations, such as the infamous and repeatedly cited piece “on goalkeepers’ unions”. And perhaps (spoiler, but after sixteen years I think it can be done) the fact that in the end this critical streak manages to take over everything else can be an indication that even a light comedy may be able to bring personal reflections , despite having almost twenty years on his shoulders, and that all is not lost in the real worldas some discouraged people would have us believe.
