Guards at the Louvre in Paris are to strike for more pay because of the stress of looking after Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
The security guards have voted for industrial action in support of their claim for an extra £100 a month.
A spokesman for the guards said: "There are so many people all trying to take photos and wanting to see the picture that those who have Mona Lisa duty are under enormous stress. The 100 pounds a month (150 euros) is compensation."
For once I have sympathy with the French strikers. The big pinky-beige room which houses the Mona Lisa is seriously grisly.
An unhappy Alamo of guards fight a losing battle against invading hordes of tourists. They tell the tourists not to take photographs as the flashes can damage the painting. The tourists ignore them. They keep on coming, coming, flashing, clicking, all day, every day. Like the zombies hammering at the door in Night of the Living Dead.
I would start screaming and throwing wild, aimless punches within about two minutes of working there.
Perhaps if they sat down and thought about it and petitioned the museum to adopt the bouncer friendly 'one in - one out' procedure they wouldn't have to throw their petit-pains out of their prams.
ReplyDeleteSupport the 'Thought before action' campaign.
Yes, they are a strange and unworkable mixture of laissez-faire (letting people wander in willy-nilly without any kind of check on whether they have cameras) and ineffectual and exhausting yelling at you to stop.
ReplyDeleteAmen to solutions before sympathy
ReplyDeleteI would start screaming and throwing wild, aimless punches within about two minutes of working there.
ReplyDeleteYes, but you do that when UNICEF publishes a report you don't like.
My aim is true enough. But yes, the Unicef report - or rather, the BBC's unthinking, uncritical reporting of it - has made me unusally annoyed.
ReplyDeleteProbably because it is so tediously predictable - I said here that the BBC News is a mixture of leftism (casual anti-Americanism) and Daily Mail hatred (everything is worse than it used to be). This is a perfect example.