rond-de-cuir

plural ronds-de-cuir

1. A French bureaucrat or functionary; an office worker.

   1 more example

   In 1893, Georges Courteline immortalised France's petty bureaucrats in a satirical novel called Messieurs les Ronds-de-Cuir, after the leather cushions that civil servants sat on. The "ronds-de-cuir" are still ridiculed and detested. Like Courteline's bureaucrats, the tormentors of the préfecture derive sadistic pleasure from sending people away for ever more documents.

   2013 March 11, Lara Marlowe, “Magic of living in Paris punctures pain of endless French bureaucracy”, in The Irish Times

2. colloquialderogatoryA pen-pusher.