Next, the new arrival will sit down at his or her counter and settle in, starting up the computer, slotting in the cash drawer, checking that the books of stamps are all in place.
Any customer who dares to venture from the ‘wait behind this line’ barrier up to the counter at this point will be politely told that the worker has to get properly prepared before receiving customers. That is normal, non? In what other job does a worker have to start work before things are properly prepared?
They are in the right and therefore completely unhurried. The only thing to do is stay patient. It can be tough.
Once, in my local post office, I was praying that fate would not send me to the counter nearest the door, because it was about to be manned by one of the worst cases of ‘I’m Right, You’re Wrong’ I’ve ever met, even in France.
Monsieur Right was just coming on duty, and was apparently testing his seat for signs of bounciness deficiency that might oblige him to put in for a month’s sick leave if he sat on it for a whole morning. He could see all the people waiting, and seemed to be relishing the groans of frustration emanating from his audience. I was next in line, hoping desperately that he’d keep bouncing until one of the other counters was free.
But no, fate decided to be cruel to me that day.
‘Bonjour,’ I said loudly, as you must.
‘Bonjour,’ he replied, slightly put out by my merriness. Outside of the post-office combat zone, I’m sure I would have got on fine with the guy, who was a fairly laid-back, jeans-and-earring type and probably listened to the same kind of music as I do. But on his throne, he was obviously a complete tyrant, the Sun King hoping to burn my fingers.
I told him that my postwoman had left a slip telling me to come to the nearest post office to fetch a parcel, which is the usual practice when a delivery is too big to go in the letter box.
‘Do you have ID?’ he asked me, which is also the usual practice.
‘Yes, I do, but there’s a problem. You see, the slip says that the parcel was addressed to Red Garage Books, which is the name of my company. But I don’t have an ID card in that name because there is no person called Red Garage Books.’ I attempted a little philosophical laugh, which is necessary in France when you want to show people that you are joking.
‘Ah,’ he said, grimacing as if I’d just pierced his other ear. ‘If you have no ID then I can’t give you the parcel.’
‘But I know it’s for me. I’m the only employee. Look, I’ve brought along a piece of stationery with the logo on it.’
‘That is not official ID. I can’t accept it.’
‘I understand that,’ I said, diplomatically acknowledging his rightness. ‘But I don’t know what else to do. I know what’s in the parcel, though. It’s books. Can’t you just check, please?’
The guy agreed to go and look. These counter assistants are human, after all. And, like all French counter assistants, if you show them – politely – that you aren’t going to go away and leave them in peace (yes, two can play at being in the right), they will back down.
He went off backstage with my paper slip. While he was away, I turned to the people waiting and gave them an apologetic wince. Not too apologetic, though. After all, he was the one who’d gone off. I was in the right.
Eventually, he returned with the package. It was obviously, as I’d told him, a parcel of books. The word ‘livres’ was clearly marked on the green customs form stuck on top of the parcel. He looked at the package, at the paper slip, at me, and came to a decision.
‘I shouldn’t really give this to you, but I’m going to,’ he said, putting the parcel on the counter.
‘Thank you very much,’ I said.
‘Sign here.’ He gave me the parcel register.
I signed, and as I did so, I saw that the address on the package was in fact ‘Stephen Clarke, c/o Red Garage Books, etc’. So it was in my name, after all. The postwoman had got it wrong on her paper slip. I looked up at the counter guy, who had obviously seen this, too, and seemed to be daring me to make an issue of it.
I didn’t bother. That postwoman possessed the same two levels of rightness as her colleague behind the counter, so it would have been totally counterproductive to suggest that she’d been in the wrong.
‘You must get some ID in your company name to avoid this problem in the future,’ he said.
‘You are right,’ I told him. I gratefully took possession of my parcel, wished him ‘bonne journée’ and left.
In France, a tactical retreat is often as close as you get to total victory.
The Right Stuff
Sometimes, the whole world gets things spectacularly wrong.
One of the most traumatic recent examples of this was the day the Olympic Committee announced the host city for the 2012 Games. London? Non! How could the Committee get it so completely wrong? The 2012 Games were destined for Paris, everyone knew that.
Yes, everyone in France. Which, unfortunately for the French, did not include the Olympic Committee.
And what made things even more unbearable in French eyes was that they had lost out to their dreaded rivals, the ‘Anglo-Saxons’, as they mistakenly call English-speakers. Because, as every French person knows, those evil, globalizing Anglo-Saxons have been leading the conspiracy to prove the French wrong for centuries now . . .
In a Breton village called La Masse, on a hilltop near the Mont Saint-Michel, there is what looks like a miniature 3 This windmill with its sail jammed in the vertical. miniature windmill was part of a French communications system that was supposed to revolutionize the world back
