Yogurt in France is brought to the table right after the main course as a guilt-free transition or an alternative to a light dessert. At home, the meal rarely ends with crème brûlée, profiteroles, or chocolate mousse: a cup of yogurt and a piece of fruit is the real unspoken ticket to Frenchness.
Useful tip: Venture out and try delicious fromage blanc—a great alternative to yogurt.
Sound like a French person: “Yaourt: avec ou sans morceaux?” (Yogurt: with or without fruit chunks?)
STRIKES
Across the globe, countless people view the French as always being on strike, which is unfair. Sometimes, they are on vacation.
When it comes to the delicate art of striking, though not enough comprehensive data exists to give the French a solid gold medal outright, it is fair to assess that France is definitely one of the leading nations in the world.
Worldwide, liberals will admire the French while conservatives will mock them for it. However, what most fail to notice is that there is a key difference to acknowledge: whether the strike—la grève—involves the public or the private sector. While employees in the private sector hardly ever strike, the French public sector is home to the very best strikers on the planet. No question about it: the Michael Jordans and Tiger Woodses of strikes all can be found in the French public sector.
If you have been to France, you have most likely experienced at least one such strike: Paris metro staff, airport workers, bus drivers, Air France pilots . . . these are as recurring as they are unpleasant. Horror stories of students missing exams or of small companies being run to the ground due to the consequences of a prolonged strike add to the more banal horrors: countless hours of waiting, packed (and smelly) metros, horrid traffic, and frustration all around.
The French who get caught up in the chaotic consequences of public workers’ strikes like to say that they are pris en otage (taken hostage). Unions don’t shy away from using strikes during peak times that will create the highest amount of disruption and thus give them (they think) the greatest leverage. There’s even a term for this strategy: la grève ciblée (targeted strike). Typical examples: airport workers going on strike when most French people intend to vacation or, even better, Air France pilots going on strike just as the soccer World Cup was about to start in France.
While some still support strikers, a growing number of French people have grown quite aggravated by what they deem an excessive usage of their capacité de nuisance. It should be noted that strikes of a new kind have recently started to appear in the metro and bus systems: strikes due to physical violence (muggings, beatings) suffered by agents. In solidarity and as a call to action for management, drivers will stop working for a day or two.
All in all, getting a bike is probably a good idea!
Useful tip: Strikes are more successful when the weather is nice. If it rains, chances are disruptions will be minor. If forecasts announce sunshine, your best bet is to plan a picnic in the park!
Sound like a French person: “Fais gaffe, ils annoncent une grève mardi.” (Watch out. There’s supposed to be a strike on Tuesday.)
TELEVISED DEBATES
French television specializes in placing suit-wearing people in front of a camera and having them speak over one another.
That, to the French, is an exhilarating spectacle. After all, good entertainment surely can consist of watching beautifully prepared professionals perform live in a discipline that they certainly enjoy and indeed—don’t make me blush—dabble with occasionally and derive pleasure from in their free time. This in France applies to sports, of course, and to debating about politics. When it comes to entertainment, an evening spent watching politicians talk on TV is plenty good for most French people. Not that debates are typically as entertaining as a good sports game, but they do satisfy that strange side of the French brain that derives a significant amount of pleasure from talking about politics and assembling the argumentative blocks that will lead to the delightfully rational crushing defeat of the people you disagree with (because, let’s face it, any hope of convincing them would be illusory). Talking about politics in France is a sport. Make debating policies an Olympic event and watch France become the nation to beat!
While most other countries have occasional televised exchanges between pundits on given topics, they tend to limit these interactions to less than five minutes: “John, Jerry, thank you for your input, gentlemen. Have a great day.”
Rookies.
To the French, a five-minute interaction does not even qualify as an interaction—merely an amuse-bouche. A thirty-minute televised discussion is acceptable, but realistically the meat can really only be found in a good old two-hour prime-time debate show.
The recipe for a good French débat? Inviting guests expected to voice noncommittal thoughts and opinions on a vague topic and have a neutral journalist moderate the exchange.
If you were French, that last sentence would have triggered a mild thrill of excitement down your spine . . .
For a successful show, it is of paramount importance to respect a few rules:
1. No progress should ever be made: a constructive political discussion is simply not a thing in France.
2. People who deem it relevant to question the foundations or the legitimacy of an established system are not welcome guests.
3. It is fully acceptable to interrupt or speak over other guests at length.
4. Guests should primarily be politicians: as a general rule, people not living off taxpayers’ money are simply not as worthy to discuss anything at all.
Secretly, French viewers hope for things to escalate. While insults are a lovely thing to hope for, the real juicy part of a good TV debate is for one guest to leave the set outraged. That will plunge the French watcher into a mildly perverse joy. The incident will be discussed at work the next day and the influx of palpable testosterone will take weeks to be fully digested. Guilty rewatches on YouTube will occur for the more technology savvy.
France’s hypnotic addiction to les débats is such that you’ll find them on most channels, most days, at all times of the day. A foreigner turning on the TV in France will grow incredulous:
Man, look at these guys. They go on and on—it’s nuts . . . What are they even talking about?
Soon enough, the zoo syndrome will inevitably settle in:
Look at that one with the blue tie—gosh, he’s animated, that one! Oh, and look at that lady—she looks so angry right now. It’s hilarious!
Foreigners mocking their beloved débats is disturbing to French people. They will laugh and somehow question whether what they have always viewed as noble democracy at work might actually just be a laughable spectacle.
But ultimately their own certitudes, shaped by decades of debate watching, will not be shaken that easily: these programs are worthwhile and far superior to crass Anglo-Saxon television. There.
By watching people tell them what to think, French people know they are growing more informed and educated. Miraculously, from the spoon-feeding process, French people manage to derive a sense of superiority.
It takes rare psychological skills to be French.
Useful tip: Most likely, if it’s on TV and it’s about politics, the odds that it’s worth your time are slim to none!
Sound like a French person: “T’as vu le débat entre Marine Le Pen et Manuel Valls? C’était chaud, putain!” (Did you see the debate between Marine Le Pen and Manuel Valls? Heated, huh?!)
BREAD
Most visitors arriving at a French dinner table will be faced with a small but very real challenge. The diner will see the bread basket, inevitably she will pluck out a morceau de pain, and . . . that is precisely when her troubles start.
For after picking it up, she’ll soon enough realize that she has nowhere to put that piece of bread. The bread plate is MIA. In an attempt to stay co
ol and composed, most people will opt for a cheeky move: keeping the piece of bread sitting on their napkin until the first course is served. The strategy is well established: the edges of the plate in front of her will make for a safe haven for the bread. With confidence in that strategy, the foreign diner will regain her original tranquillity.
But when the plate does arrive, the diner realizes with horror that the edges are not flat. Still, she will position the bread there. Only to find out that, with a disappointing obedience to the basic rules of physics, the piece of bread will start sliding down . . . straight into the food. Frustration, embarrassment, and discreet gluttony typically ensue.
The French way to solve this apparently unsolvable equation is simple: just put the bread on the table.
It is utterly irrelevant to the French whether the table is covered with a tablecloth or whether the surface on which the bread will be placed has any semblance of cleanliness. On the table is simply where your piece of bread belongs. More precisely, and according to French etiquette, on the top left corner of your place setting is where your piece of bread belongs.
If you like bread and find yourself in France, it is essential to let go of the modern obsession with bacteria and cleanliness. If you’re worried about these, just drink wine! That’ll take care of it!
A similar situation is bound to vex a foreign visitor at the bakery: the vendeuse will almost certainly pick the bread she will hand you with her bare hands. Most French people would almost feel offended if she did not. Heck, the good client at a bakery is easy to spot: it’s that person the vendeuse will go out of her way for, feeling up five to ten different baguettes to pick the perfect one for that special shopper. Oh, the delights of this very French moment where discreet sensuality and outstanding customer service become one.
In France, bread is so intrinsically part of everyday life that the relationship to it is entirely carnal. Bread is an extension of the French body and an expression of its undying soul. Each day, in hundreds of sushi or Chinese restaurants, you will find French patrons asking for some bread, for no matter how ricey your meal is, it’s still a meal and therefore calls for some bread. The ominous American threat known as “carbicide” is one that has never crossed any French person’s thoughts. Ever. And truthfully, if they were familiar with the term, most French people would simply order more bread, just to make a point.
Useful tip: Try une baguette tradition (aka une tradi) over the simple baguette.
Sound like a French person: “Théo, tu peux aller chercher le pain, s’il te plaît?” (Théo, can you please go get the bread?)
LES FONCTIONNAIRES
The French state is one far-reaching octopus. Anyone who gets paid by an entity controlled by the French state is referred to as a fonctionnaire. A fonctionnaire can be a teacher, a local government employee, a nurse, a train driver, a police officer, a postal worker, a tax collector, a professor, a bus driver, or a bureaucrat of really any sort . . .
Fonctionnaires make up about 25 percent of the French labor force—that is over 5.5 million people.*
While many fonctionnaires have jobs that are not quite exhilarating, they sure come with lovely perks:
PERK 1: Eighty percent of fonctionnaires simply cannot be fired.* Mess up in epic proportions? It’s okay. Lifelong employment. Who said, “What’s the incentive to work, then?”? You dirty capitalist, you!
PERK 2: On average, fonctionnaires are paid more than private sector employees. Their wages increase faster too.
PERK 3: On average, fonctionnaires work fewer hours than private sector employees. They also work fewer and fewer hours.
PERK 4: Fonctionnaires get to call in sick (much) more than private sector employees. On average, a local government employee calls in sick a mind-blowing 22.3 days a year. Yes, that is close to one month a year. (And yes, they still get paid when they do.)
PERK 5: Fonctionnaires get extra cash each month when they have children.
PERK 6: Many fonctionnaires get to retire at age fifty-seven, some at age fifty-two.
Fonctionnaire bashing is a recurring conversation for French people employed in the private sector. Though most French people are grateful for les services publics, many suspect that the number of fonctionnaires employed to supply these services is excessive and the advantages they enjoy scandaleux. Altogether, many reckon that functionaries are privilégiés. Among these, the hundreds of thousands working vaguely useless administrative positions are dubbed des planqués (literally, “the ones in hiding”).
As much as they like to bash them and point out their advantages, very few private sector employees would ever consider becoming a fonctionnaire. Apparently, the advantages do not quite compensate enough to justify the looming perspective of having to work for one of the least exciting and most overarching bureaucracies in the world.
While over the past few years all comparable countries have been cutting the number and, frequently, the advantages of their own fonctionnaires, France has been hiring more and more of them. With successive politicians lacking the courage to take the measures that would effectively lead to the reversal of the unemployment curve, they wisely reasoned that a great way for unemployment to go down was to hire more fonctionnaires.
Smart.
Most French youngsters share their government’s absence of courage and general disconnection with the basic rules of the world economy we live in: 73 percent of young French people would like to become fonctionnaires for their careers.* It is reassuring to see that the vast majority of left-leaning French teachers managed not to pass their views on to their pupils.
Little do the young realize that, while working for the government is indeed safe (should one consider that working for a virtually bankrupt employer is safe), it surely is becoming less and less pleasant in a number of professions—police officers, teachers, nurses—that have to deal directly with a population that is growing more violent and less respectful by the hour. Interestingly, while historically a vast majority of fonctionnaires voted for the Socialist Party, the appeal of that party is eroding as more and more civil servants have to witness the mess their country is in on a daily basis.
All in all, one quarter of the French workforce works for the state. Add an odd 22 percent that is (more or less) unemployed,* and you realize that only half of French adults actually have a job in the private sector. It could be argued that 50 percent of the workforce is paying for the other 50 percent.* One France looks at the other with mild scorn and an inability to truly understand. The fiscal escalation and the general lack of perspective that this fonctionarisation of French society has incited come with a new ambition, a new hope for French people who wish to work in the private sector: leaving the country to live and work abroad.
The ultimate French move is thus to go be a fonctionnaire overseas! Double whammy!
Useful tip: The term les services publics refers to all the services rendered by la fonction publique (aka les fonctionnaires).
Sound like a French person: “Oui, enfin, tous les fonctionnaires ne sont pas logés à la même enseigne: un prof en banlieue et un employé du conseil régional, c’est pas la même chose!” (Okay, but not all public servants are the same: a teacher in the hood and a paper pusher in local government are two very different things.)
NICE THINGS
France has a history of being pretty good at making nice things. When it comes to architecture, fashion, food, and wine, the French are up there in the pantheon of people who have excelled at creating beauty in the world.
However, a more current look sheds a different light on the contemporary relationship between the French and nice things.
First off, while in English the adjective “nice,” when applied to a building, a neighborhood, or a car immediately makes sense to all, it is not the case in French. Simply, for in French there is no direct equivalent to the word “nice” whe
n used to describe these things.
A nice neighborhood in French is un quartier chic or un beau quartier. Both have a significant negative socialist-infused undertone. Hipsters talk about their gentrified areas as un super quartier, but while those neighborhoods may have character, they are not, so to speak, “nice.”
The same goes in the field of new constructions. Travel to Asia, to Dubai, to Brazil, or to the United States and you’ll see plenty of nice new buildings: nice airports, nice office buildings, nice houses . . . In France, while some examples do exist, you’ll have to get quite lucky to find nice new things. France is mainly a country of nice old things (châteaux, cathedrals, churches, buildings, etc.)
Most recent constructions in France look and feel incidentally rather far from nice. While old-school France, with its castles, churches, cathedrals and villages, could show the world how to do nice, new-school France could learn a thing or two from other countries—but it is most likely not going to happen anytime soon. There are two reasons for that.
First, construction in France is a world where norms and regulations have become so onerous and their application so costly that creating niceness or beauty has grown to be a preoccupation that generally ranks somewhere between secondary and unrealistic.
Most people don’t aspire to nice. They aspire to good enough. They don’t hope for beautiful; they yearn for safe. The triumph of relativism has led to a constant undermining of the notion of beauty itself. Most French these days would argue that beauty is a personal construct. Argue that it is rare for a human not to find a sunset beautiful and you will be classified as a fascist. If beauty is no longer a thing, ugliness can’t be either.
WTF?!--What the French Page 15
