Sometimes just the simple things of living in France can drive you nuts. People often ask me if I miss my own country and my answer 99.9% of the time is "Non".
But when it comes to Customer Service, no one beats America! In any store in the States, you're always welcomed with a smile. You chat. You have a special request? They'll bend over backward to help you. Here? In the mom-and-pop shops, you’ll be okay. But in the
grandes surfaces, you can just forget it.
At the supermarket this morning, I had to ask the woman at the customer service desk twice to call someone to help me reach Mia's milk conveniently placed on the uppermost shelf of the baby isle. When the person finally showed up, instead of responding to my smile, he just grumbled about how over-worked he was and how helping customers wasn't his job before he shoved the box into my hands.
On the other end of town, I stopped by an appliance store to check out their warranties and delivery services. I wandered around looking for an employee to help me and found 5 of them sitting around drinking coffee. When I asked for a
renseingement, a woman responded that the person in charge of large appliances was in the back and that I would have to wait until he was back. So I left.
And in the public sector it’s not much better. On the way home with Mia still awake in the stroller, I stopped by the Tribunal d'Instance to ask a question about obtaining the nationality. After carrying the stroller up 25 steps (because people in wheelchairs don’t exist here) I found the Service des Nationalites. I didn’t stay long though, because the place was full of tobacco smoke. The person in charge had his door open and was smoking a pipe while he had people in his office. I thought that was illegal, but I’m not French so I may be wrong. At any rate I think I might put off sending my application in until further notice.
