The French, As Adorable And As Stubborn As Mules…

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cultural differences, Ex Pat, France, French, funny, Habits, Humor, Life, Tourism, Travel

OK, so that’s a title and a half for a blog post, but bear with me, I’ll explain.

You see one of the things I love about French people is their frequent absolute refusal to do things in what I see as a logical, straightforward manner.

I should add this is just my opinion, and yours may well differ (he said diplomatically).

As an example of this I will tell you a little story from the other year, when I was working in a local travel and tourism office.

We had a village event coming up, a very popular, well attended event that spanned one entire weekend and happened every year. We had all the posters up advertising the event, but were still waiting for the programmes to arrive, with all the times of the various activities that were planned for that weekend.

The most frequent question we were asked – on the phone, and in person – in the days leading up to the event was: ‘Do you have the programme for the event yet?’.

The day finally came and we were informed that we would be receiving the infamous programmes, and so we could give them out to the locals and allow them to see what was in store.

The programmes arrived. They were delivered to another building, 500 meters away.

I offered to go and get them, and the conversation went a little like this:

Me: The programmes are here, down the road, shall I go and get them?

Colleague: Oh no, they are in a box, and the box is heavy, we will have to wait till we can get them delivered. I will contact the mayor.

Me: But people want them, and they’re not far away – I could take the trolley (indicating a small trolley we use to move heavy items around)

Colleague: Oh, but that will take a long time and the box is heavy.

Me: But that’s what the trolley is for.

Colleague: No.

Me: Well how about this? I go down, open the box, and bring up enough leaflets to hand out to people, then at least the ones who have asked for them will be happy.

Colleague: (long pause) (lots of blinking) No. No, the box is heavy. We will contact the mayor.

The programmes did finally arrive in our office.

Several days later.