Alright. For the past 7 months, you've witnessed my picturesque adventures through France & several other places in Europe. Maybe you've been jealous. But I'm here to tell you that it's not all fun & games.* Here's the list of things I dislike most about France, in no particular order. Sorry, France.
1) Relative inconvenience: Okay, you have to remember that this is all coming from the perspective of an American. I live in the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the States, and my life in general is really easy. So keep that in mind. Also, some of the inconveniences in France were due to my personal living situation, and not France, so I won't put them here.
1a. Separate stores: French people really like to specialize for higher quality, so they have separate stores for things. (Butcher, wine store, bakery, regular grocery, pharmacy, etc.) They do, of course, have Carrefour and a couple other stores that are similar to Walmart or Target. But even in Carrefour, you can't get things like throat lozenges or painkillers, because they're in the pharmacy. So that means two trips, and when you don't have a car or live really near city center, it's just even more annoying.
1b. Store hours: French stores, restaurants, banks, etc. all have interesting hours. First of all, with very few exceptions, EVERYTHING is closed on Sunday. This is because in French culture, Sunday is a day for rest and family. People stay home, or take the car to go drive around or go on a walk somewhere nice. This is all well and good if a) you have family to spend it with b) you have a cozy, inviting home and/or c) you have a car to enable you to take a drive. Unfortunately, I don't have any of those things. Mind you, I've had some good Sundays with my friends, playing board games in Narbonne, watching a movie (not at my place, of course, as I don't have a TV), or on excursions with friends with cars. But there's always the panic when you realize on Saturday night at 8:30 that you somehow don't have any groceries and your life is basically over.
Here's a particularly horrible Sunday in France story:
1) No groceries (was busy Saturday and got distracted)
2) Plan B: Hot panini machine 10 minutes away. Out of order.
3) Plan C: Kebab shop 15 minutes away from the panini machine. Sign says open on Sundays non stop. Store not open.
4) Plan D: McDo 45 minutes away. I asked for a burger. They gave me a chicken wrap. I was too tired to stand up for my burger. Walk back home.
This whole ordeal took more than 2 hours and it was cold and really windy outside. And there aren't buses on Sundays, so I was on foot. Unfortunately, similar stories have happened on a few occasions. Moral of the story: Do NOT forget to make sure you have food on Saturday in small town France.
In addition, things close for lunch, so often things are just closed for 2 hours in the middle of the day. Which is annoying. Also restaurants often close at 2 pm to reopen again at 6 pm. Which is also annoying if you decide you want to eat after 2 pm.
Another example: A couple weeks ago, I needed to grab some aloe vera and some food before running to my friend's barbecue. It was about 12:20 on a Saturday afternoon. I didn't have any money. I stood on the corner where my ATM is, and I looked down one street and saw the pharmacy sign lit up. I looked down the other street and saw the grocery sign lit up. I quickly withdrew my €20, no receipt, a process that takes approximately 60 seconds. I look up, pharmacy light's off, it's closed. I look the other way, grocery light's off, it's closed. ARE YOU FOR REAL, France?!
To sum it up, I cannot even tell you how many times I've wanted/needed something only for my plans to be thwarted by French hours.
2) The pace: Holy cow. Take anything you would ever want/need to get done in the States, multiply it by at least three times, and that's how long it will take you to do anything in France. ESPECIALLY if it involves paperwork.
Would you like to get your insurance card to use during your 7-month contract? You can count on getting it 5-8 months in. That's right. Most assistants haven't even gotten theirs yet, and it's over.
Would you like to start working when your contract begins? Well, too bad. It's gonna take 3 weeks to get your schedule to you. That's right, my contract began October 1st, and I received my handwritten schedule on October 17th.
Would you like to do something like cancel a phone line or a bank account? You're gonna need to write a super fancy letter making sure to get all of the wording exactly correct, sign it in blood, send it with delivery confirmation via pigeon gram, and allow approximately 2 weeks to 2 months for anything to get done. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but only the blood and pigeon part. Everything else is accurate.
Wanna get something done at the post office or the bank? Take the time you'd spend getting something done in the same facility in the States, and multiply it by three. At least.
I generally feel like I'm wasting half my time doing tasks that take much longer than they should. Luckily, I only worked 12 hours/week this year, so I had the time to burn. If I worked the same hours I do in the States, but lived in France, I'd have to give up sleep to get anything done.
3) General unpredictability: Wanna go somewhere? Maybe there's a transportation strike. Need to go to the store? Maybe it's closed even though it says it's going to be open. (We joke that our local grocer, called "8 to 8" because it's open from 8 am to 8 pm, should actually be called 8:15 to to 7:40, because it's never actually open at 8 am or to 8 pm. Seriously. Even the name is a lie.)
4) Customer service: In general, customer service is subpar at best. I will admit it's hard to compare customer service anywhere to American customer service. But seriously. One time, a server made a mistake about coffee (charging us for one extra coffee), and they (the waiter and the owner) proceeded to yell at us. In general, you can expect a "Bonjour" and then an "Au revoir" from a cashier, but sometimes you don't even get that. The customer is DEFINITELY not always right in France, and God help you if you have a complaint or if something about your transaction isn't EXACTLY as it should be. That said, I have met several really nice cashiers/servers/etc. It's just much more rare here than at home.
5) The general confusion about the fact that Americans SPEAK ENGLISH: Here are some real-life quotes from this year:
"How are you an English assistant if you speak American?" -people to me
"Wow, that's so cool that you can understand Katy, that you can understand American!" -one of our Spanish friends to my English friend
"Do you speak American or English, or both?" -people to me
"How do your students understand you when you speak to them?" -people to me
Honestly people. Americans speak English. This should not be news. It's always people who don't speak English who ask these questions... never a student or one of my teachers, but just general people in the community. For the love of Pete, this is ignorance.
6) Dog poo: People don't have yards. They walk their dogs. Dogs take care of their business partout partout. No one picks it up. It's everywhere. It's gross. That's it.
*It's mostly fun & games.
1) Relative inconvenience: Okay, you have to remember that this is all coming from the perspective of an American. I live in the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the States, and my life in general is really easy. So keep that in mind. Also, some of the inconveniences in France were due to my personal living situation, and not France, so I won't put them here.
1a. Separate stores: French people really like to specialize for higher quality, so they have separate stores for things. (Butcher, wine store, bakery, regular grocery, pharmacy, etc.) They do, of course, have Carrefour and a couple other stores that are similar to Walmart or Target. But even in Carrefour, you can't get things like throat lozenges or painkillers, because they're in the pharmacy. So that means two trips, and when you don't have a car or live really near city center, it's just even more annoying.
1b. Store hours: French stores, restaurants, banks, etc. all have interesting hours. First of all, with very few exceptions, EVERYTHING is closed on Sunday. This is because in French culture, Sunday is a day for rest and family. People stay home, or take the car to go drive around or go on a walk somewhere nice. This is all well and good if a) you have family to spend it with b) you have a cozy, inviting home and/or c) you have a car to enable you to take a drive. Unfortunately, I don't have any of those things. Mind you, I've had some good Sundays with my friends, playing board games in Narbonne, watching a movie (not at my place, of course, as I don't have a TV), or on excursions with friends with cars. But there's always the panic when you realize on Saturday night at 8:30 that you somehow don't have any groceries and your life is basically over.
Here's a particularly horrible Sunday in France story:
1) No groceries (was busy Saturday and got distracted)
2) Plan B: Hot panini machine 10 minutes away. Out of order.
3) Plan C: Kebab shop 15 minutes away from the panini machine. Sign says open on Sundays non stop. Store not open.
4) Plan D: McDo 45 minutes away. I asked for a burger. They gave me a chicken wrap. I was too tired to stand up for my burger. Walk back home.
This whole ordeal took more than 2 hours and it was cold and really windy outside. And there aren't buses on Sundays, so I was on foot. Unfortunately, similar stories have happened on a few occasions. Moral of the story: Do NOT forget to make sure you have food on Saturday in small town France.
In addition, things close for lunch, so often things are just closed for 2 hours in the middle of the day. Which is annoying. Also restaurants often close at 2 pm to reopen again at 6 pm. Which is also annoying if you decide you want to eat after 2 pm.
Another example: A couple weeks ago, I needed to grab some aloe vera and some food before running to my friend's barbecue. It was about 12:20 on a Saturday afternoon. I didn't have any money. I stood on the corner where my ATM is, and I looked down one street and saw the pharmacy sign lit up. I looked down the other street and saw the grocery sign lit up. I quickly withdrew my €20, no receipt, a process that takes approximately 60 seconds. I look up, pharmacy light's off, it's closed. I look the other way, grocery light's off, it's closed. ARE YOU FOR REAL, France?!
To sum it up, I cannot even tell you how many times I've wanted/needed something only for my plans to be thwarted by French hours.
2) The pace: Holy cow. Take anything you would ever want/need to get done in the States, multiply it by at least three times, and that's how long it will take you to do anything in France. ESPECIALLY if it involves paperwork.
Would you like to get your insurance card to use during your 7-month contract? You can count on getting it 5-8 months in. That's right. Most assistants haven't even gotten theirs yet, and it's over.
Would you like to start working when your contract begins? Well, too bad. It's gonna take 3 weeks to get your schedule to you. That's right, my contract began October 1st, and I received my handwritten schedule on October 17th.
Would you like to do something like cancel a phone line or a bank account? You're gonna need to write a super fancy letter making sure to get all of the wording exactly correct, sign it in blood, send it with delivery confirmation via pigeon gram, and allow approximately 2 weeks to 2 months for anything to get done. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but only the blood and pigeon part. Everything else is accurate.
Wanna get something done at the post office or the bank? Take the time you'd spend getting something done in the same facility in the States, and multiply it by three. At least.
I generally feel like I'm wasting half my time doing tasks that take much longer than they should. Luckily, I only worked 12 hours/week this year, so I had the time to burn. If I worked the same hours I do in the States, but lived in France, I'd have to give up sleep to get anything done.
3) General unpredictability: Wanna go somewhere? Maybe there's a transportation strike. Need to go to the store? Maybe it's closed even though it says it's going to be open. (We joke that our local grocer, called "8 to 8" because it's open from 8 am to 8 pm, should actually be called 8:15 to to 7:40, because it's never actually open at 8 am or to 8 pm. Seriously. Even the name is a lie.)
4) Customer service: In general, customer service is subpar at best. I will admit it's hard to compare customer service anywhere to American customer service. But seriously. One time, a server made a mistake about coffee (charging us for one extra coffee), and they (the waiter and the owner) proceeded to yell at us. In general, you can expect a "Bonjour" and then an "Au revoir" from a cashier, but sometimes you don't even get that. The customer is DEFINITELY not always right in France, and God help you if you have a complaint or if something about your transaction isn't EXACTLY as it should be. That said, I have met several really nice cashiers/servers/etc. It's just much more rare here than at home.
5) The general confusion about the fact that Americans SPEAK ENGLISH: Here are some real-life quotes from this year:
"How are you an English assistant if you speak American?" -people to me
"Wow, that's so cool that you can understand Katy, that you can understand American!" -one of our Spanish friends to my English friend
"Do you speak American or English, or both?" -people to me
"How do your students understand you when you speak to them?" -people to me
Honestly people. Americans speak English. This should not be news. It's always people who don't speak English who ask these questions... never a student or one of my teachers, but just general people in the community. For the love of Pete, this is ignorance.
6) Dog poo: People don't have yards. They walk their dogs. Dogs take care of their business partout partout. No one picks it up. It's everywhere. It's gross. That's it.
....................................
Okay, so there aren't THAT many things. But here are the things that drive me just nuts here. I may have forgotten something(s), but these are the main ones. Coming up next: Things I love about France!
*It's mostly fun & games.
Wow for the last bit you really had some nutters! Having said that an English friend of mine told me some very similar stories she experienced in a US high school, eg: "so you're from Europe, how come do you speak English and not French? Well...cos I'm English". Otherwise for the customer service I also remember a bad coffee related experience. I hate being confrontational but I ordered with a friend a cappuccino and black coffee (that came with the meals). We got one coffee and for some strange reason they told me to come back for the second one later. So I did, only I was ignored, I told them about the cappuccino I paid for and was still waiting but they looked like they had no clue what I was on about. I showed them the receipt, stood around for almost 10 minutes and after much arguing it turned out that they had already given us a cappuccino (espresso-sized one with no foam which is why I was confused). so finally they gave the coffee but it was unbelievable how they had me stand there, discuss the matter among themselves and make me feel bad for it. I am French but I've been living in the UK for a while where size wise coffees are much bigger and where customer service is much more similar to what you'd get in the US.
ReplyDeleteYes, I have to admit that many Americans would exhibit the came same kind of ignorance when it comes to foreign cultures. When I was in Rome, a lady a few spots behind me in line for the Vatican museums kept talking about how she was so excited to see the Sixteenth Chapel. She was, of course, American.
DeleteI feel the same, that customer service in the UK is more comparable to US customer service. Maybe not quite the same (especially as the southern US, because that's a whole 'nother ballgame), but it's definitely better.
Glad I'm not the only one to have a weird coffee experience! So weird.