Here's an extract from Stephen Clarke's book. The way he depicts post-office workers is so true! More to come soon.
"THOU SHALT BE WRONG (if you're not French)
When dealing with a Frenchman, you need to be aware that there is a voice in his head. It is constantly telling him, "I'm French, I'm right". (...) One of the best ways of seeing the French person's innate sense of rightness in action is to visit a crowded post office. The people who work there have even more reasons to be right than the rest of their compatriots. They have two layers of rightness that they wear like armour. First, of course, they are French. Second, they are state employees and therefore impossible to fire.
(...) A post office cashier's who's coming on duty will enter the room, sum up the size of the queue, see the urgency of opening another window, and smile inwardly. Or sometimes outwardly. He or she will then proceed to interrupt their co-workers' transactions in order to exchange good-morning kisses or handshakes. Any grumblings from the queue will be answered with a look, or an overt comment, to the effect that, yes, we state workers are human beings and have the right to greet our colleagues, just like anyone else, non? They are in the right and therefore totally shameless.
Next the new arrival will sit down at his or her counter and settle in, starting up the computer, slotting up 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 to receive customers. That is normal, non?
They are in the right and therefore completely unhurried.
je lis aussi "Manuel de savoir-vivre" de Desproges et voici un extrait concernant Mozart et l'origine de son prénom :
"Quand il était petit, Mozart avait un prénom normal, comme tout le monde. Il s'appelait Jean-Edern Mozart. C'était un enfant extrèmement turbulent, sale et désordonné. Il aimait particulièrement patauger dans la gadoue en sifflant La marche turque. Après quoi il rentrait se vautrer sur les luxueux fauteuils des galeries von Barbès de Salzbourg de la maison familiale. Chaque fois, sa mère excédée, lui criait : "Fous le camp ou mets des housses Mozart". Cette sainte femme avait un fort accent autrichien, comme cela arrive encore assez souvent, surtout en Autriche, "Fous le camp ou mets des housses" devint "Wolfgang Amadeus".
"The farmer who conceived foie gras must have been a very inventive Monsieur indeed. You can imagine him explaining his new pâté to his friends:
"Oh you don't just mince up offcuts of meat like you do with other pâtés. You take a goose or a duck, stick a funnel down its throat, and pour as much dried maize as you can into its gullet every day until it is so obese it can hardly walk. Then you rip out grossly deformed liver and spread it on toast.'
'You've been at the absinthe again, Jean-Pierren' his friends must have said.
But old Jean-Pierre was right, and foie gras could only have been a French invention. if it had been an Anglo-Saxon idea can called "fat liver", no one would have bought it.
THINGS THAT THE FRENCH ARE RIGHT ABOUT
- An adulterous politician is probably no more corrupt than a monogamous one.
- Children do not die if they stop eating French fries for a week.
- If you have a regular office job, there is no point on working Friday afternoons.
THINGS THAT THE FRENCH ARE WRONG ABOUT (though it is not wise to tell them so)
- The Earth does not revolve around the sun - it revolves around Paris.
- The words to a song are so important that you don't need a tune.
- If you push in front of someone in a queue, they will repsect you more.
- It is fun to eat calf's brain and pig's anus.
- Johnny Hallyday is world-famous (he's an ageing rocker by the way "
- Serge Gainsbourg was sexy. ( He was a chain-smoking, drung, toad-faced physical wreck).
- France invented French fries (the whole rest of the world accepts that it was either the British or the Belgians)
- YOu can cure anything by inserting the relevant medicine up your back passage."
"Looking in a French diary, you might get the impression that no one in the country is ever at work. Trying to phone an office on Friday afternoon will usually confirm this. French workers get the following bank holidays: New Year's day, Ester Monday, 1 May, VE Day (8 May), Ascension Day, Pentecost Day (the first Monday in June), Bastill Day (14 July), Assumption Day (15 August), All Saints' Day (1 November) and Christmas Day. In a bad year 1 and 8 May can fall on a weekend and aren't replaced by a weekday off. But in a good year, they might fall on a Tuesday so that workers will take a "pont" (a "bridge", an extra day off to make it a long weekend). That way the first and second weekends in May and the Ascension Day weekend (between mid-May and mid-June) will be four days long, and then Pentecost Monday could make it four long weekends out of six. In a good year, the French take almost as many days off in May ans June as some Americans get in a year - and still have almost all their holiday to take. Most French people in full-time work get five weeks' paid holiday a year. Some get even more - in my last journalism job, the company gave us thirty-seven days a year - seven and a half weeks. (All this on top of the bank holidays, remember).
This calendar, combined with the "work to live, don't live to work" attitude, can lead the French to to take what you might call a relaxed attitude to work. By Friday lunchtime, they'll be mentally engrossed in their weekend. Come May, it's almost summer so there's no point over-exerting themselves."
"Looking in a French diary, you might get the impression that no one in the country is ever at work. Trying to phone an office on Friday afternoon will usually confirm this. French workers get the following bank holidays: New Year's day, Ester Monday, 1 May, VE Day (8 May), Ascension Day, Pentecost Day (the first Monday in June), Bastill Day (14 July), Assumption Day (15 August), All Saints' Day (1 November) and Christmas Day. In a bad year 1 and 8 May can fall on a weekend and aren't replaced by a weekday off. But in a good year, they might fall on a Tuesday so that workers will take a "pont" (a "bridge", an extra day off to make it a long weekend). That way the first and second weekends in May and the Ascension Day weekend (between mid-May and mid-June) will be four days long, and then Pentecost Monday could make it four long weekends out of six. In a good year, the French take almost as many days off in May ans June as some Americans get in a year - and still have almost all their holiday to take. Most French people in full-time work get five weeks' paid holiday a year. Some get even more - in my last journalism job, the company gave us thirty-seven days a year - seven and a half weeks. (All this on top of the bank holidays, remember).
This calendar, combined with the "work to live, don't live to work" attitude, can lead the French to to take what you might call a relaxed attitude to work. By Friday lunchtime, they'll be mentally engrossed in their weekend. Come May, it's almost summer so there's no point over-exerting themselves."
