D'oh! French court fines baker for refusing to take a day off

A French boulanger has been ordered to pay a €3,000 fine for working too hard after he failed to close his shop for one day a week last summer.

Loyal customers in the town of Lusigny-sur-Barse, population 2,000, in the Aube department of north France, an area popular with tourists, have now launched a petition in support of Cédric Vaivre and his Boulangerie du Lac.

Christian Branle, the town’s mayor, defended the baker. “In a tourist area, it seems essential that a business can open every day during the summer. There’s nothing worse than closed shops when there are tourists,” Branle told L’Est Eclair newspaper, after the fine was levied by employment authority officials.

Under local employment law, two separate regulations from 1994 and 2000 require bakers’ shops to close once a week – though exceptions can be made in specific cases.

Until 2016, the Lusigny-sur-Barse boulangerie had applied for and obtained an exception to the rule, but officials refused to renew Vaivre’s application last year.

Source: theguardian