Tongue in cheek, hands in pocket

The shortage of "golden Czech hands" in industry is just one aspect of the labor shortage. The other is a paucity of people willing to actually work once they're hired. Employers often want to scream "Do your damn job!" when they catch someone lazing around, but the lack of a replacement turns this instead into "if you don't mind, pretty please, with sugar on top." CEO Radim Jančura of Student Agency told Týden that men are the worst. Their idea of career advancement, he said, is less and less work, and more and more money. The end result of this ne'er-do-well attitude, to quote talk-show host Jan Kraus, is that many Czech companies charge outrageous fees for services they can't perform. Economists haven't been taking this into account when calculating GDP. Perhaps it's time to include a "value-subtracted" column, to give a more accurate picture of what Czechs are actually fabricating.