Peter Simpson had created a business in the UK and then in the USA, so when he was asked to do it again in France, he didnt bat an eyelid. After all, how difficult could it be? What awaited him was a culture shock that he was completely unprepared for. Hed read the books and seen the TV programmes about people relocating to France and settling into their new lifestyle, but this was different. Very different. Caught between a nation that viewed work as a somewhat necessary evil, and a traditional British CEO that had no time for excuses, Peter was between a rock and a hard place. Make that an enormous planet-sized rock, and an Einstein-beating impossibly hard place.