Lol.  I have tons of similar stories

My Dad was an exec at Union Carbide, when there was a Union Carbide, and was part of effort to install a data center in Barcelona for tracking railroad cars. This was in 1972 so computers and in particular telecommunications were a nascent technology so in the planning stages they doubled the time lines from 3 months to 6 months, taking into consideration Spanish siesta and other socio-cultural factors.   It took over 2 years to implement.  I remember him telling me a story about scheduling meetings….no mater what dudes would show up an hour or two late…no one on. the Spanish side seem to care and that's just the way it was…so on the advice of a Spanish guy they started planning meetings that they wanted to start at 0800 at 1000hrs….worked out great until 1430 when everyone took off for lunch and didn't come back until about 2000hrs. Then it was time to start having wine and discussing all the great work they did that day prior to dinner at 2300…have to love it!

Here's another,,,circa maybe 1986

Some guys from 1/10 SF up in Bad Tolz Germany participated in a FLINTLOCK sub exercise in Italy called MUFLONI or something like that. Anyways, after being in the mountains for a couple weeks and being particularly miserable  they linked up with an Italian SF unit and planned a joint hit on an Objective.  The italians were in charge….lol.

So the Italian CDR plans for a day time raid, which is fucking nuts but he's the boss and the American's advice to do it at night were shot right the fuck down.  So daytime it is….anyways the raid force is crawling into final positions from the ORP and the Italian CDR stands up, points to his watch and yells something in Italian.  

Turns out it's lunch time. He has his guys and the Americans stand up, walk down to a little Gasthaus about 1/2 mile away and have lunch. A few minutes later the aggressors on the OBJ show up. After lunch everyone takes a couple hour nap. Everyone gets up, has coffee and a pastry then walks back up to the positions they were in and everyone goes tactical again. The mission was a success!

He referenced a lot of it to innovation, or lack of in Europe. In the UK they are still heavly into the class system even though they deny it. Upwardly mobile was a big name of the 80's. In Europe I'm not sure how much people jump ahead in large amounts and hover around what they were born into. No idea really, just going off what some people who live there have said. I'm a high school drop out and am retired at 53. I'm a huge believer in the ability to get ahead in the US.

A few people I have known in the refining and chemical plant business have spent some limited time in Europe and they all come back saying the same. It's a continual fight with the unions and if they had a switch to turn off the refinery to take a break they would.

Your quote says more about America's current problems than the original.

It's not just longer hours and more days.  In many instances there are multiple people to do what in America would be the job of one person.  Although that tends to be more prevalent where it is harder to fire people so instead of firing dead weight you take the important part of the job and give it to someone else.  Switzerland seemed somewhat differential to me but I only worked with those folks for a week so I may just not have gotten to the rot.

Yeah my interactions with the new engineers at our facilities is mind boggling.  One of the is a maintenance engineer ( tasked with supporting our on site maintenance crews) that wants to work the two days in the office hybrid schedule like our corporate office works.   Or the young process engineer I brought to the field one day when HIS unit had crashed and his comment when we were heading out was "will we be done in time to go home" to which I said yes.   He was much displeased when we were there several hours and I had to explain to him that time to go home was once he got his unit running again.

This guy is a regular Captain Obvious

That's awesome. Experiences like that are not uncommon throughout Europe. Here? lol.

He must have been referring to Mexican Americans.

America has socialism too. Is it not holding us back?

Working more sucks. I need to embrace the euro model.

People focus on "work life balance" but another reality is that the average European is a lot poorer than than the average American.
You want that work life balance? Fine, going to have to give up the new cars, the jetskis, the big house and all the other toys.

Yes, it increasingly is.