“Bonjour la politesse” (hello politeness) is a sarcastic French expression used when someone is actually rude. That means it’s used pretty frequently where I live in the Paris area, and I have plenty of examples. In France, it’s a lot more acceptable to be rude than in the US. Here, people will skip queues and push past you for no reason other than saving their own “precious” time.
A few days ago, my dad and I were waiting in a line at the phone shop so that I could get a new cell phone: mine was broken. We waited for an hour, and when it was our turn, we started talking to the salesperson, and suddenly someone pushed us out of the way and started talking himself as if nothing had happened. When the salesman didn’t react, my dad said “bonjour la politesse”, and got a dirty look and rude hand gesture from the man, and a chuckle from the people behind us in the line. The pushy guy got served first.
In my old school, we had to go up and down four floors about five times a day, and every single time, we would be pushed and shoved all the way. In my new international school, I was shocked the first day when someone bumped into me and apologized for it!
Recently when we were buying a birthday present for my brother in a small toy shop, we were suddenly asked to leave because the salesman wanted to take a break. We were flabbergasted at this abrupt request. We ended up buying a chess set, and found out we had three queens, and only one king. When we asked the shop to replace it, they handed us a spare piece from another set.
Add to this the insulting gestures and shouting from drivers and near death experiences I’ve had trying to cross the road on the crosswalk, I’ve concluded that this behavior is considered normal in France.
In tune with my own French nature, I’ll say : get lost. (just kidding).
Au revoir la politesse,
Pierre
No comments:
Post a Comment