French Leave

by Liz Ryan

  One lovely sunny evening, five of us were lucky enough to spot a table just coming free at a busy restaurant on the waterfront. No maître d’ was in sight, there was nobody to welcome or seat us, so we had to make a snap decision: quick, let’s sit down at that table before somebody else does!

  We installed ourselves, and a waitress appeared. Marching up, she launched into a furious tirade. How dare we sit down! How dare we not wait to be seated! How dare we not present ourselves properly and process our request for a table!

  No problem. We obliged her by leaving and moving to another premises across the road, where we formally requested a table.

  ‘Oh,’ said the waitress, ‘I don’t think we have one.’

  Yes you do, look, there’s one over there, just vacated.

  ‘Eh oui … but I’d have to clear it.’

  And your point is? Feel free, mademoiselle, feel free! Eventually she did, but you’d deliver a baby quicker than she delivered our menus. A full hour elapsed before any food was served, during which one of the children in our group went all but hypoglycaemic from hunger. Not even a basket of bread was offered while we waited, and waited, and waited.

  When we were leaving, the manager asked whether everything had been all right, and we said yes, everything had been fine apart from the catatonic, time-warp service.

  ‘Eh oui,’ he nodded, unsurprised. ‘The problem is, you see, things get so busy at dinner time.’

  No kidding! Restaurants get busy at dinner time? Silly us, you can tell we’re foreigners, can’t you, thinking that restaurants get busy at five in the morning!

  When they’re open at all, that is. One day, at high noon in a pretty Provençal village, a restaurateur put up a sign: ‘Closed for Lunch’. Eh oui. A restaurant. Closed. For lunch. (This, it transpired, is one of the spin-offs of the thirty-five-hour week: staff gone home for their nap.)

  The French tourism season opens on 1 July and ends on 31 August, even if those dates happen to be midweek or in the middle of a heatwave. Incentive tourism, which extends Ireland’s season all year round, has yet to be invented; apparently nobody considers the country’s plethora of swimming pools, bowling alleys, ice rinks, riding schools, tennis courts, gourmet restaurants, and so on, to be of any interest to tourists outside the eight weeks of summer. Golf, which saved Ireland’s bacon, is only barely starting to catch on. Often, France is reminiscent of the snoozing rural Ireland of the 1960s, blissfully unaware of its potential, a sleeping beauty waiting to be woken with a kiss.

  Some day, perhaps, its prince will come. But meanwhile, I’ve given up on the garage that said yes, it could do an emergency repair on my car, bring it in at eight next morning. At 8 AM, I arrived and was invited to fill in a stack of paperwork. That was three years ago. I am still waiting for somebody to take the paperwork and fix the car.

  Three years have also elapsed since I first started searching for a company that could replace a broken Velux blind. Someday, if I live long enough into the century – or send off to Taiwan – perhaps a new blind will be got.

  But at least I’ve got my money back on the new television that had to go in for repairs two months after purchase, struck dumb with a sound problem. It went in, and simply never came back. Not only could the shop that sold it to me not find it, they couldn’t even contact the repair centre – which to the best of my knowledge has yet to answer its phone, four years later.

  I did promise not to talk about plumbers, so I won’t. Suffice it to say that I once went five weeks without heating or hot water, scouring all of Normandy for assistance (I even rang a radio station in despair) and was informed by the last in the series of handwringingly hopeless plumbers that it was a miracle the overheating thermostat hadn’t blown not only my house, but the entire village, sky high. Five weeks later, a neighbouring house was indeed blown apart by its exploding boiler.

  On the bright side, I’m no longer waiting for the new jacket replacing the one with the defective buttons: the shop sorted that on my fourth visit. Nor for my new glasses: the optician produced those on my sixth visit. Nor for the Air France plane ticket that went missing in Florence – no, madame, no trace of your booking! And, hélas, now the flight is full, you will have to find some other way of getting back to Paris.

  So I raced to Florence train station, queued up until the clerk closed her window, queued again at a different window and, after two hours, finally secured a ticket to Paris. It was an urgent trip and, with time running out, I hastened back to my hotel to get my luggage, only to find an aggrieved message from Air France.

  ‘We have your plane ticket here for collection! Are you returning to Paris on this flight or not? If not, please let us know immediately, other people wish to buy the seat.’

  No, no explanation for the confusion, hassle or panic. No apology. Just a ticket flung across the counter, when I finally collapsed gasping into their office, with a filthy look as if to say: ‘These damn customers would drive you mad!’

  Even those whose job it is to smooth life in France seem to find the challenge overwhelming. One day, two policemen walked into the classroom where I was teaching English, seized me by either arm and marched me away, to the incredulity of my goggling students.

  What had I done to provoke arrest? I’d arrived from Iceland, it was explained in the police station, and been teaching without a work permit. Iceland is not in the EU, madame – which makes you an illegal immigrant.

  No, Iceland isn’t. But Ireland is. I’m Irish. So let me go!

  Eventually they did, but only after hours of wrangling and a final desperate call to the Irish embassy. An apology? A lift back to work? Hah! Away with you, foreign filth, before we clap you in the cooler!

  Whatever country you come from – even if it’s Mali, Colombia or Botswana – it is unlikely to have prepared you for the slagheap of administrative muddle that is France. Proudly sitting on top of this heap, at its very apex, is a company called Free.fr, a so-called internet service provider.

  For a while, my internet connection worked fine with Free. And then one day it didn’t. I rang Free to tell them this. After twenty premium-rate minutes in a call queue, somebody answered. Ah, he said, you must write to us. By registered post. No, we don’t do email.

  So, since the nature of their own business appeared to have escaped them, I wrote by hand. I registered the letter. I waited. In the meantime, I amused myself by installing a smoke alarm, the sight of which nearly sent a visiting electrician into cardiac arrest. What’s that? Really? The stupid gadgets you foreigners waste your money on! And I painted the kitchen, wasting more money on French paint, which dribbled down the walls like milk. Finally, five coats and three weeks later, back came a letter from Free. Consult our website, it said, for advice on how to reconfigure your computer!

  No mention of how to consult their website when they’re blocking access to it. No mention of reimbursing my massive phone bill, which now resembled Nicolas Sarkozy’s. No mention of the hours and hours and hours I was wasting on this farce.

  Next step. Consult a citizen’s advice bureau. A very nice consumer counsellor expressed disgust, and got on the case. Don’t worry, he beamed, I will sort out this nonsense.

  Three weeks later, he wrote to say no, actually, sorry, he couldn’t sort it out. I must write to Free and … but I’d already written to Free. He knew this. He had a photocopy of their pointless response. Ringing the CAB, I asked to be put through to him.

  ‘Oh,’ chirped a voice, ‘sorry! That counsellor resigned just this very morning!’

  Furious as I was, I couldn’t blame him. Given a choice of trying to sort out French consumer complaints, or retiring to spend the rest of his days up a tree humming La Marseillaise, he hardly had much option.

  Does the consumer have any defence against all this inefficiency? Only one, in my experience: never sign up to pay for anything by direct debit. If you do, money will be taken from your account whether or not you are happy with the product or service – inde
ed, whether or not you ever receive it – and you will have no recourse whatever. Given that the system breaks the hearts of the long-inured natives, what it can do to struggling immigrants hardly bears thinking about. France is a most lovely country, but nobody with anything less than the most robust constitution should even think of tackling it.

  Shock horror. The Polish plumber has arrived. Nobody has yet seen him, but his spectre stalks the land, striding in like a colossus from Poland to snatch the bread from hard-working French mouths. Rumour has it that he will not only work far more than thirty-five hours a week, he will do the job in half the time for half the price, and will turn up long before French plumbers can even consult their diaries to see whether they might have a window next November.

  Overnight, the nation begins to buzz with anxiety. And, soon thereafter, a news bulletin announces partial, tentative reforms of French labour laws. Some are to be ‘liberalised’ – which, roughly translated, means that old protectionist policies are to be ditched in a desperate attempt to make France, and its workforce, ‘competitive’. Henceforth, enterprise, skill, imagination, overtime, commitment and other such offences will be less severely punished. To start with, the rules governing hiring and firing are to be relaxed: employers will no longer be obliged to take unsuitable staff to the grave with them, while employees will be free to bid adieu to any boss not to their taste.

  Reeling, France digests this, reaching for a glass of calvados to buffer the blow. It looks as though the nation’s traditionally socialist leanings are about to suffer a mortal setback. The ugly face of capitalism now lurks, alongside the Polish plumber’s, around every corner. Protests are plotted and, a week later, significant chunks of large cities are besieged by the enraged Tanguys, who, en masse, have finally mustered the energy to do a bit of destruction. If there’s one thing the French can execute efficiently (apart from monarchs), it’s a demo and a spot of window-smashing.

  I have an acquaintance who, as a committed socialist, sees it as his moral duty to relieve his local supermarket of as many products as possible, unpaid for, every Saturday. This, he says, is to balance out the chain’s ‘immoral’ profits. If prices have to go up as a result of increased security, well … so be it. After all, prices are of little concern to him, and the invention of some fiendish American besides. In an ideal world – come the revolution! – all goods will be freely and equally distributed. Meanwhile, he is merely liberating what belongs to the common man, as embodied by himself.

  Archaic as it may sound, this view still holds sway in much of France. Which may or may not explain why unemployment is always at 10 percent minimum; there is a feeling of ‘entitlement’ to many goods and services without actually having to earn or pay for them, and ‘entitlement’ to jobs without actually having to do them. There is also an unspoken rule that tradesmen are to be paid in cash, and the choice is fairly stark: either the job will be done au noir, or it won’t be done at all. Terror of taxes (and taxes on taxes) has driven half the workforce underground.

  In the year of Nicolas Sarkozy’s election (2007), a new word began to circulate. Le dynamisme was, demonstrably, rampant elsewhere. Look at Ireland, where they have to import workers to keep up with demand! (True at the time.) Look at the fat-cat British, buying up French holiday houses and raising prices in the process! Look at China, a massive new market ready to crash like a tsunami onto the stock exchange! Clearly, we are going to have to do something to stem this tide of foreign competition. Pierre, pass that calvados again, s’il te plâit. We’d better put our heads together and think about this.

  After all, thinking beats working any day.

  In fairness, France rarely blows its own trumpet. It knows it can be a bit dozy. So it is somewhat surprising when, one morning, a newspaper reports the comments of a leading economist, who sings the praises of the nation’s ‘unparalleled efficiency’. Of which there have recently been some fine examples.

  A registered letter arrives from the local treasury, delivered by the postlady with a grin that says: ‘So, dodging your taxes, are you?’ Its contents indicate that, since I have failed to pay my poll tax of two years ago, la belle France will be obliged to take legal action, as well as levying hefty interest on the original sum.

  Bewildered – I normally pay bills on time – I trawl through my financial records. Indeed, they reveal no trace of any cheque having been written or cashed for the sum in question. Now I know why French menus often feature a dessert called a mystère. So I trundle down to the treasury, where the desk is staffed by a clerk so sour she is a caricature of the French civil servant: Mona Lisa with PMT.

  ‘You didn’t pay,’ she says flatly. Whereupon a suspicion suddenly crosses my mind. ‘Did you bill me?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, would you mind checking your records, just the same?’

  With a huge sigh and a scowl that says ‘This is what comes of European union’, she delves into the depths of her computer. An exhaustive search – with me standing over her while a muttering queue backs up behind – reveals a surprise. Why no, that bill never did go out, actually!

  No explanation is proffered. No apology. Why don’t I just pay up now immediately, and as a gesture of goodwill we’ll forget the interest?

  Meanwhile, the water board also has news. My bill has increased almost four-fold since the last one. Apparently, I have consumed more water than the golf courses of Dubai. I ring to enquire.

  ‘Perhaps you have had guests?’

  Occasionally, yes, I have. But none that moved in as permanent housemates. I have not started taking four showers a day, nor washing the car daily, nor set up a Chinese laundry.

  ‘But alors, madame. Zere must be a leak. You must get a plumber.’

  Really? Well, there’s no sign of any leak; for once, the basement actually isn’t flooded. But despite lack of evidence, I scout around and get a plumber after barely a month’s worth of phone calls. No, he confirms, the basement is not awash. He can find no leak. Rien. That will be eighty euro please. I trudge down to the water company’s office, where the young clerk wears the blissful expression of one who knows absolutely everything. But still she cannot explain why she has instructed me to get a plumber for a non-existent leak and billed me for Niagara Falls.

  Much scratching of heads. Much tutting and lamenting. In a final flash of the blindingly obvious, I invoke the insurance they so resolutely sold me. If there’s a leak, should it not be covered?

  ‘But your plumber says zere is no leak.’

  Now I begin to grasp France’s preoccupation with existentialism. No wonder they love Beckett. ‘Then why do you say zere is? Where has all this water gone?’

  Hmm. Curieux, indeed. Further riffling through files. Phone calls. More calls. And, eventually, daylight.

  ‘Ah yes. Zere was a leak. Year before last. In your driveway. We fixed it on 30 September. You must have been out that day. It’s only showing up now on your bill. Your insurance will cover it. Why don’t we just call this episode – hah, hah! – water under the bridge?’

  Why don’t we. After it is conceded that yes, I have been overcharged by almost two hundred euro (plus the plumber). An apology? Eh? What’s zat?

  The following year, I am overbilled again. This time my water bill has gone up by – brace yourself, Bridget – 1400 percent. There’s only one course of action for this, and I take it: I burst out laughing, and frame the bill for the amusement of one and all.

  Next, the bank. Where yet another mystery lurks. Zis time, I have vanished altogether. Been erased. There is no trace of either me or my money. The clerk – a.k.a. M. Kafka – informs me that I do not exist.

  I beg to differ. I am standing right here. I have stood here before, many times. The bank knows me. He knows me. This is my chequebook. So could he produce my account please?

  No. Sorry. It is no more. Gone. Pffttt. Look, the computer he is blank.

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sp; Oh dear. Then we’ll have to call in the police, won’t we? I am a missing person. Meanwhile, customers, gather round! Look, your bank can do magic! Make you disappear! It has turned me into thin air! Who might be next?

  Consternation. Who, indeed? The Normans are profondement attached to their money. A wave of anxiety begins to rumble. A manager flies to my side and takes my arm, as if to suggest that it is my marbles, not his, which are rolling down the drain. Sympathetically, he whispers in my ear: ‘Madame, please, you are overwrought. I beg you—’

  Overwrought, eh? Right so! Find my money, buster, or I will run amok. Flip the lid, throw a major wobbly. Fly in the lads with the Semtex to blow your bloody bank to kingdom come. I’ll give you ‘overwrought’, and you will deeply regret this moment. For ever, amen.

  Approximately forty-five seconds later, my account surfaces. Why, it was there all the time! Somebody – uh, the computer – just confused a ‘3’ with an ‘8’, is all! Perfectly understandable, they look so alike!

  An apology? A little sedative, perhaps, to calm me down? Let’s call it five hundred even? Of course I’m kidding, but the manager’s face freezes with shock. ‘Ah non, madame, regrettably we cannot—’

  Cannot apologise? Oh. Okay. No problem. Just give me all my money, then. Yes, all of it. Now. Every cent. In cash. Coin, actually. And the loan of a young fella to ferry it to that rival bank across the street in a wheelbarrow.