Fabien Toulmé: "The idea of work as something sacred is deeply embedded in our culture."

BarcelonaIn the epilogue of the comic Work and live (Garbuix Books, 2025), French author Fabien Toulmé (Orléans, 1980) recalls his teenage self's conversation with a career counselor who couldn't understand why, despite getting good grades in math and physics, he preferred drawing to engineering. At the time, Toulmé was convinced by the arguments, but later changed professions to pursue what he truly loved: comics. Partly for this reason, Toulmé is now publishing a book, halfway between a sociological essay and a diary, in which he travels to different countries around the world to understand how we relate to work.

Why did you want to dedicate a comic to the world of work?

— I've had a very diverse career. When I was young, I worked a lot in factories during the summer. Later, I became an engineer. Back then, the issue of work already raised many questions for me. And, above all, I wasn't happy at work. I often wondered why I was forced to work, beyond just earning a salary. Why work is so important and why, at the same time, it can cause so much suffering. This became even more evident when I became a comic book author. I still work, but, in contrast, I'm very happy, and I feel fulfilled and free.

How did you choose the countries to visit?

— I knew I wanted to start with an analysis of the current state of work, a sort of snapshot of the situation. It seemed obvious to me that, in the context of the Great ResignationThis phenomenon affected the United States the most, and I thought going there might be illustrative of how we experience work and the problems that work organization entails. When I went, I didn't know where I'd go next.

In South Korea he came across the word gwarosa,describing deaths from overwork.

— When I returned from the US, I had the feeling that the problem wasn't work itself, but the companies that made people suffer. This also made me want to delve deeper into digital platforms [in the book, Toulmé visits the family of a young Korean messaging app worker who died of a heart attack]. I wanted to travel to a country where the social value of work was very high, and South Korea was among the top countries in the ranking of hours. By the end of the report, I was quite pessimistic: working for a company can be exhausting, but trying to be self-employed doesn't guarantee well-being either.

Her third trip was to the Comoros Islands to visit an ecological conversion project that creates jobs for flower harvesters. ylang-ylang.

— Initially, I found it difficult to reconcile profitability with good working conditions. I mean people working in a healthy environment, not being unhappy, receiving a good salary, and respecting the environment. And what I discovered is that this is feasible. But there's also the problem of global competition. If we don't all agree to say, "We're going in the wrong direction, people are suffering, and the planet is in danger," nothing will change.

It often happens that someone introduces themselves by mentioning their work. Can we separate ourselves from work in the construction of our identity?

— In fact, what I've noticed is that people who introduce themselves as "Paula, journalist" or "Fabien, comic book author" are people with socially valued professions. Not everyone introduces themselves with their work. So, in the end, it's the more privileged people who highlight it. One of the questions I asked myself was why work comes up so often in our conversations. We've gone from the era of antiquity, when physical labor wasn't highly valued compared to philosophy or politics, to the Middle Ages, when people had to be convinced that it was a good thing because it allowed them to accumulate wealth. To make it more attractive, discourses developed that even reinterpreted passages from the Bible. The idea of work as something sacred is deeply embedded in our culture, to the point that it's inseparable from our identity. We are human to work and produce, and even to exploit existing resources.

What was your concept of work before writing the book? Has it changed since?

— I think I perhaps gave it too much importance, both when I was an engineer and when I became a comic book author. Inactivity seemed to me to have negative connotations, as did laziness. Writing this comic made me realize that we've been raised with the idea that we must sacrifice ourselves through work in order to earn a salary and live, and that pleasure isn't very important. But, talking to people and reflecting on them, I thought that, ultimately, pleasure is essential in life. Certainly, work is important, but so is enjoying what we do every day; having a stable situation and a salary isn't enough.

At the end of every interview, ask the subjects what they would do if they suddenly had millions to live on, and everyone answers they would continue working. Were you surprised?

— Yes, I was surprised. But less and less so. At first, I thought people would tell me they were taking a break, that they wanted to travel. But the first person told me they'd keep working. Then I realized that, since I love what I do, I'd keep working too. But, like everyone else, I'd do it under different conditions. Maybe I'd dedicate more time to my comics, work one week and then another, and go to the beach the rest of the time. But this also illustrates what I was saying before: how deeply ingrained work is in our lives and how difficult it is to imagine doing nothing.