Last year, Belgium opened the door to a four-day work week. The idea is part of a broader package to try to make a fairly rigid framework more flexible, it was one of the edges in the balance of the complicated coalition government. It contemplated the option, but not the obligation, of concentrating the workload in four days without the employee having to give up part of their salary, but without the companies forgiving hours either.

In reality, in the country there was already a good culture of teleworking, different flexibility formulas for workers who have been in the same company for a long time, and it is not at all unusual for fathers or mothers to end up taking a permanent day off, since schools They usually contemplate a day of only morning hours. But this (four days of 9 and a half hours or working a week of 45 hours followed by another of 31 hours, for example) was something else, something that generated enormous expectations, impact and attention in the rest of the continent.

A year later, however, the results are not as expected: only 0.5% of workers have chosen this option.. “The measure was not intended to apply to all employees, but to meet the specific needs of some of them,” they tell Le Soir from the office of the federal Minister of Employment, Pierre Yves Dermagne.

There are two big reasons for the lack of interest. The first, the distrust of employers towards the measure. A study carried out by the Social Secretariat shortly before the entry into force of the four-day week showed that 25% of managers considered that the formula was not applicable in their company.. The second is that the workers are poorly informed, they believe that their request will be rejected or they fear that they will end up accumulating marathon days and being forced to do things on the fifth day, even if it is from home.

Even if it hasn't worked, we must applaud Belgian innovation capacity. They are people as lazy as they are forward-thinking, without fear of breaking schemes, without the need to follow any type of logic, open to experiencing what the rest of the planet would consider a delirium, the first to sign up for a bombing.

This last week we learned that some entrepreneurs had a huge marijuana plantation in the attic of a church in Turnhout. That researchers from the Faculty of Bioengineering at Ghent University want to map the phenomenon of permastink, that is, clothes continue to smell bad even after they have been washed.. To do this, the University is looking for 100 volunteers willing to wear the same white t-shirts for 30 weeks.

They are also capable (the Brussels Region) of giving R&D subsidies to a friktot, the stores that sell the famous and overrated French fries.. And the latest trend in cities, it seems, is to put large dolls in the driver's seat of parked cars, such as in the HOV lane, to avoid fines.

Because it turns out that the city council cars that circulate in search of parked vehicles that have not paid the meter do not impose a penalty if they detect someone inside, thinking that it is a brief stop. The one who has probably best described the Belgian soul, without knowing it, is Churchill, when he said that courage is simply going from failure to failure but without ever losing enthusiasm.