Attractive watering hole for a thirsty Englishman - or is it?

As an Anglophone in Grenoble you may, like me, have had something of an adjustment period regarding the service culture in France. There are several deeply instilled beliefs that you may have to abandon like the hardest of bad habits, for instance the not necessarily culturally-translatable motto “the customer is always right”. The customer and server are altogether different beasts from those ‘back home’, wherever that may be, with service ranging from a brutal efficiency that sometimes borders on the violent (I’ve been served in restaurants where the laying of table should be conducted with the warning “keep your limbs inside the vehicle at all times’), to active disinterest (there are occasions in Paquet Jardin where I have practically had to beg to be served) and, occasionally, downright hostility.

Dealing with the first two forms is less problematic, it is easy to put a surly career waiter down to experience, and as shoppers from the UK’s chain-store ridden retail universe can attest, active disinterest is not such a shock to the system. The third variety is, I confess, a rather unpleasant novelty for me. I have become convinced, rather irrationally, that the staff in my local boulangerie hate me. Going there to part with my hard-earneds – which I have done sheepishly for nearly two years – has become a source of dread to me. Not only have I failed to engage in any kind of meaningful banter (more on that later) with the proprietors, but I have become convinced that they deliberately select the poorest quality bread to give me as a way of warning off my future custom. Other customers, especially those with kids it seems, are greeted with the kind of bonhomie that leaves me feeling envious and inadequate, while I am not granted even a flicker of recognition for my loyal custom.

My experience at the baker is born in part, I believe, with my inability as a banterer. While my French improves, my capacity for making casual but engaging small talk remains null. All attempts in this area have ended in shame and self-loathing. It was my brother-in-law, a native of Grenoble, who explained the bantering concept to me. Service is not a given in France, relationships with shop keepers must be forged and tended like fledgling plants: nothing must be taken for granted. If you are fundamentally bantering-averse, like myself, you are severely handicapped in such transactions. From the Lands of the Bottom Line (i.e., the British isles and westwards), where money matters most, this is almost incomprehensible. Furthermore, whereas in the UK I am familiar with facing surly adolescents in shops, in France such casual employment is harder to encounter – owing to high social security contributions made by companies on behalf of their employees – and more often than not it is the shop keeper him or herself who is serving you (with or without enthusiasm). In these apparent crisis times it’s something of a mystery that shopkeepers feel they can afford to be disinterested to your custom; suffice to say that service simply is not in the French blood.

I am exaggerating, of course, but a couple of more extreme examples add a little bite to this fluffy commentary. Once I gave several camera lenses to a camera shop in Grenoble to sell second hand on my behalf. When we finally came to retrieve them, unsold, the owner was apparently unable to locate one of them, which was worth une centaine d’euro. Rather than accepting responsibility, the shop owner lied and turned us away on several occasions in ever more aggressive terms along the lines of ‘you’re wasting my time’. Finally we pleaded with a sympathetic assistant during the owner’s holiday, who secreted the lens out of the shop for us claiming that the boss ‘was often doing things like this’ and implying that he was a difficult and unpredictable man. In fact, the lens had been broken, but there seems to be no small claims court procedure that I am aware of in France to pursue such occurences. Most people’s
uncertain advice was to go to the police.

On another occasion my pregnant wife was shouted at for having the temerity to ask the fish monger to weigh the fish before adding more to the scales. We vowed to take our custom elsewhere, only to discover there was no local elsewhere to take our custom to, something that suggests a lack of open competition may well be a defining factor. As a teacher in a private institute competing with a number of rivals, service is imperative, and I fancy that our students are sometimes shocked with pleasure at how welcoming we are in comparison to, say, their taciturn local butcher.

Given my aversion to the more OTT, notionally American, end of service culture – for instance being complemented on my self-evidently wanting dress sense as I enter a Gap clothes store – maybe I am being too demanding. Service is a subtle art arguably performed poorly by the majority, no matter the nation. But I’m jealous of Japanese diners, who can call waitresses guilt-free at the press of a button (literally, a button on the table), and of the consumer wonderland Denmark is reputed to be. But if France doesn’t immediately turn out to be the postcard provincial Shangri-la that you were expecting, then some s’habituer will be required. There must, after all, be some catch to all this abundant cheap wine, delicious fresh bread and fantastic-quality produce at arms reach in nearly every district. Grenoble, a city pinched in by mountains – the capital of the Alps – is after all known in part for the reticence and even coldness of its inhabitants. I may continue, for the moment, to feel like a slightly unwelcome party guest in places of business, but I’m not taking it too personally for I’ve even heard French friends from other parts of France make similar complaints. One thing is certain, regional identity is too important in France to make a sweeping generalisation. Let me know your feelings, or experiences, in the comment box below.

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