Stop Sign Crying

In France, the say­ing goes that “le client est roi”. But in fact, the cus­tomer is any­thing but a king: at worsse he is an idiot, at best he is a minor annoy­ance in your day. As this funny arti­cle on “How to play the French ser­vice game … and win” explains: “The cus­tomer is king. But we all know what they did to their royal fam­ily. The guil­lotined head of Louis XVI bounced across the Place de la Con­corde as a few thou­sand Parisians laughed at it”.

I wish I could tell you for­eign­ers have the wrong impres­sion and that French cus­tomer ser­vice is actu­ally top-notch – but I’d be lying. The only thing I can tell you to make you feel bet­ter as a for­eigner in France is that not just tourists expe­ri­ence bad cus­tomer ser­vice. French don’t dis­crim­i­nate. Every­one is treated like shit.

To eat or just have a drink, you will have to play the passive-aggressive game. Never wait to be seated, even if a sign reads just that. And since you are at it, grab the menus your­self, you will save at least 30 min­utes. Never ask for food or drink sug­ges­tions: look like you know what you are doing, even if you have no clue what these com­pli­cated dishes are. It’s not like the part-time under­paid waiter will know more than you any­way. Don’t expect wait­ers to be cheery, happy or just friendly. Their job is to bring you food and the bill – con­sider your­self lucky if you can get just that done. Oh and never go out to eat if you are in hurry (for instance, hop­ing to catch a movie after­wards). I can’t tell you how many movies I have missed just because I wanted to grab some­thing to eat before­hand… And note that fast-food joints aren’t that fast — that would include “Quick”, don’t let your­self be fooled by the name.

Okay, maybe it’s not that bad. Maybe I’ve been brain­washed by North-American style cus­tomer ser­vice. I admit it: when I first came to Canada, I hated it. I found peo­ple sounded “fake”. In my mind, there was no way Star­bucks employee could be that perky serv­ing cof­fee to an end­less queue of grumpy cus­tomers from 5 am to 12 pm. And why would McDon­alds’ employ­ees apol­o­gize for the occa­sional 10 min­utes wait? Didn’t they all hate their employer, like in France? To me, ser­vice in restau­rants was way too per­sonal: I didn’t like the way the waiter or the wait­ress would show up unex­pect­edly at the table after bring­ing the food to ask if every­thing was alright. I found the bill came way too fast too: it was almost as if they wanted us to free a table as soon as pos­si­ble (which they prob­a­bly did).

But of course, now I’m used to it. Only when I go back to Europe I get super-annoyed at the inef­fi­cient and unfriendly cus­tomer service.

Another annoy­ing side of the French cus­tomer ser­vice is that you must pay to com­plain or have a prob­lem solved, because of premium-rate phone num­bers. Let’s say your Inter­net con­nec­tion sud­denly stops work­ing: you must pay about 0.15 €/minute to hope­fully have it fixed. Even the unem­ploy­ment office uses a premium-rate phone num­ber! Reach­ing some­one isn’t easy either: cus­tomers are often put on hold for a long time before being con­nected (and of course, you are pay­ing for this wait time). It’s often hard to get through because post-sales sup­port, gen­eral cus­tomer ser­vice and pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion have very restricted busi­ness hours, typ­i­cally from 8 am to 5 pm. And of course, they may be closed on WE.

In North Amer­ica, almost all busi­nesses offer a 1–800 num­ber, which is a toll-free phone num­ber. Busi­ness hours are much longer to accom­mo­date every­one (and sev­eral time-zones). And most sur­pris­ing to me, employ­ees seem to really want to solve what­ever prob­lem you may have and keep your business.

For instance, a few weeks ago, I sent Skech­ers, the shoes com­pany, an email. I had bought a pair of pumps for work, barely wore them and yet the sole was already dam­aged. I was pretty annoyed because shoes are rel­a­tively expen­sive. Plus, between us, I hate shop­ping for shoes.

The com­pany replied pretty fast and was will­ing to solve the prob­lem. A cou­ple of emails later, I was offered to choose a new pair of shoes on their web­site. They took care of every­thing and the shoes were deliv­ered right to me door. Ah, American-style cus­tomer service!

Some­times it is worth com­plain­ing politely to get some­thing done — another thing I learned to do in North America.

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2. Way2many Pa$$word$
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5. My Per­sonal Stalker