Filed under: cultural differences,daily life,shopping,stories,weird
I can’t decide. Call it a cultural confusion breakdown. How can my brain dissect two opposite spectrum societies without it exploding into small gray matter blobs. Call me crackers. Hey, that combination is a perfectly acceptable meal in France.
My recent trip to the U.S. reminded me that customer service in the U.S. versus customer service in France couldn’t be more disparate and clashing. They are like two entirely different beasts from separate planets.
Being here for 4 years I’ve learned that many a customer service person in France will and do have a general disdain for any living creature (aka the customer) they come into contact with at work. If it’s not a rolling of the eyes and a look that practically blurts out loud, “Merde. Another customer.” (Perhaps, I DID actually hear that a few times.) – or the disapproving, disgusted and ultra loud SIGH! or an unwillingness to…work, one thing is clear, lots of employees here are simply unqualified for the service sector. And, and and…all the lies! Some of you reading this know these symptoms quite well. You know what I’m talking about. Having said that, sometimes a person WILL make an effort to smile every other month.*
On the other hand, in the U.S. there is rarely a customer service smile shortage (even on the phone), and to me, that is also a scary thing. Why? Because that smile will sometimes come with a voice born only to be a television game show announcer, the voice that boldly and happily declares the oh-so-wonderful-and-lovely gifts you’ll receive if you win the game. It’s the voice that follows along an intonation roller coaster ride à la Disneyland. Perhaps a standard because Disneyland is afterall, “The Happiest Place on Earth!!” Do not forget the exclamation marks.
Just a few weeks ago, I found myself having lunch with my sister and my mum at a restaurant located at The Grove in L.A. (Doh! Dupars was STILL under renovation). I won’t name which restaurant, but it has a huge list of desserts. Anyway, I dunno, but our waiter was like Don Pardo’s younger clone. (not dissing Don Pardo – Loved him as SNL’s announcer). Maybe our waiter was in fact an aspiring announcer or actor like many waiting staffers in L.A. and was practicing his skills whilst also waiting but for his big break. In any case, he, like many customer service people I’ve run into in the U.S., offered lots of unfunny jokes and conversation, and extremely efficient service with a BIG, face-cracking smile but at the same time keeping an uncomfortably thick veneer of insincerity.
In his defense, however, you never know when one of your customers is the same Hollywood exec that hired people like Don Pardo. But, it IS superficialty par excellence and I recently read something that reported an American study that concluded that the American smiles are not only superficial, but artificial (anti-depressant drug induced) as well because more and more Americans are being medicated for depression and bi-polarism. Duh. France just goes untreated, I guess.
My mega polite sister and mother did try to go along with the waiter’s act, offering their forced chuckles and answering an enthusiastic “we’re fine!” (did our waiter really care if we were fine? rhetorical question, obviously.) in order to not mix a different attitude into the personal-but-really-impersonal conversation. Me, I just looked at him in horror. That kind of fake perkiness and loud smiling service has always made me feel yucky. Maybe my intolerance is even stronger now that I live in a different world.
Have I gotten too used to the customer service in France that I hated the U.S. version? Have I become an America bashing Francophile freak? Have I gone insane? I think I actually missed the way a salesperson walks away from me upon entering a shop.
* A Note: Please don’t get all postal on me, and just take this blog post with a grain of salt. I realize I am not a solid authority on anything, particularly, I am no expert on the culture of any people and their country. This post was founded on some humor, lots of unfair generalizations meant for comic relief, experiences as an American expat living in France, exaggerations, my own observations in both countries, and my casual comparisons and analyses, flawed or not.
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“Have I got insane”?
Nope. You’re just an expat, living in another culture and reflecting on your own. “Le cul entre deux chaises,” as the French expression goes [the butt between two chairs]. Can’t help comparing customs/systems…and realizing than none is perfect because there is good and bad in both. Nothing to do with insane, though slightly schizophrenic.
As a French person living in the U.S., I don’t understand the systematic bashing of French customer service, which may be more aloof or abrupt than in the U.S., but is more sincere (or less insincere) and usually more effective. I find customer services and smiles here annoyingly corporate and hypocritical — from people who usually don’t know anything about their job and don’t care anyway because they’re paid peanuts. And yet, whenever I go back to France, I find myself missing those smiles…and taking a while getting into French mode/moods 
“whenever I go back to France, I find myself missing those smiles…and taking a while getting into French mode/moods”
i used to say that!
in all fairness, there’s excellent customer service in many places in france. it’s just so easy and interesting and fun to write about the bad customer service.
Comment by ptinfrance 12.05.06 @ 2:40 pmIn defense of nothing, but here in the states we definitely have our share of surly customer service people!
Comment by PretzelBug 12.05.06 @ 3:39 pmI prefer genuine un-nice people than fake nice ones. On my mind, US concept is close to esclavagism, maintaining people at a very low wage to be sure that they will be nice with the tipping customer… But hey, I am French 
This reminds me of a visit we took to Paris. Every morning we would go into the same pastry shop and get the same thing. The waitress was always very unhappy-looking. Christmas eve, we went into the same shop, and she actually looked at us…then at her watch!!
We thought she just couldn’t stand the sight of us. The last day we came in, and another waitress took us the wrong order. The dour-looking girl ran over to her and rapidly corrected everything. We were shocked because we had misunderstood her (I think).
Anyway, I’ve had equally rude customer service people in both countries…..but never annoyingly happy customer service in France…so that’s a plus:)
Comment by Lorna 12.06.06 @ 5:40 amWhat’s insane is that in France, you have to pay 34c per minute to talk to someone in customer service at most places. When you’re stuck on hold for 30 mins, then the person can’t (or won’t) help you, that’s insane. Especially if the call is a result of a problem with their product or their service.
I don’t know why the French let companies get away with that.
Comment by David 12.06.06 @ 6:29 amAfter just having returned from a trip to the States for Thanksgiving, this post made me laugh. We had a similar “annoyingly nice” waiter at a restaurant in Las Vegas, and all I wanted to do was to tell him to shut it and let us eat our food in peace. And then today in Paris, I went to my favorite pizza restaurant and had the most surly and disinterested service I’ve every had. Good customer service can be had in France, especially when you’re a regular customer (getting bises from the chef at my favorite sushi place, for example) but most often one has to work hard to get good French service and win the person over, whereas in the States, good service is expected to come no matter how you may berate the person on the other end of the line.
Comment by Stefanie 12.06.06 @ 8:09 ampretzel and lorna – it’s true. you can find bad customer service everywhere. there’s actually a cvs that has a famously rude worker, and my mom totally dreads getting her as a cashier. she is sooo surly. but my mom still goes to this cvs because it’s really close to her house.
carole, it’s a weird choice, in any case. i wonder if most french people prefer unfake grumpy to fake happy.
david – it’s crazy, isn’t it? you have to PAY to receive abuse.
stefanie – i think we were both in las vegas at the same time. viva las vegas!
Comment by ptinfrance 12.06.06 @ 10:26 amRestaurant service: I still hate the type of service at most American restaurants, where the waiter or waitress constantly inquires if everything is fine. Let me eat in peace, for God’s sake!
There is surly service in the U.S. too. Go to Wal-Mart, K-Mart, or any supermarket, and the cashiers ignore you completely and have conversations with each other while collecting your payment. At my local post-office, there used to be a clerk who was so dreadful that I suse to skip my turn if I was going to be helped by her.
Yes, there is bad and good service everywhere, though. It’s just that, in the U.S. customer service is more “codified” perhaps than in France. I am not sure.
Comment by Elisabeth 12.06.06 @ 2:25 pmBonsoir,
Billet très intéressant…
Au-delà du sujet toutefois, je voudrais souligner l’approche très pragmatique que vous avez de nos deux cultures.
Il me semble que vous avez su jusqu’à présent éviter l’écueil classique des “gentils” d’un côté, et des “méchants” de l’autre, en nous offrant plutôt une analyse en profondeur de ce qui fait nos différences ou, au contraire, nous rapproche.
Merci donc pour cette honnêteté intellectuelle que l’on ne trouve pas forcément sur tous les blogs, qu’ils soient américains ou français.
Même s’il m’arrive de ne pas être d’accord avec vos impressions, et de l’écrire, il est appréciable de voir que vous ne faites pas preuve d’a priori en observant ces Français parfois un peu bizares…
Souhaitons que vous puissiez encore longtemps nous donner au travers de ce blog vos sentiments d’américaine immergée dans le “bouillon de culture” français, toujours avec humour.
Amitiés,
Didier(photo blog)
Comment by Transall 12.08.06 @ 4:52 pmI loved this blog too! it’s indeed so much easier to write about the bad service because it makes better comic material…
Just my 2 cents on that: as a French woman living in the States, I got used to the smiles & the regular checking in from waiters etc. (even if sometimes I feel a little pressured)… but what i’ve recently more and more noticed is the following: if you ask somebody for advice (I love to do that in the US because the reaction is always so much more welcoming than in France), one of their systematic responses will be to include their own experience with the product as a sales argument. I’ve noticed this when I was shopping for a futon, for plants, a rug… Some people will start a whole conversation about their life with the product while I have no personal connection with these people and therefore can’t really trust them… do you have what I want, or what I need to know, or you don’t?! sometimes the desire to elaborate is nice because you might get a tip on where to look further for the info/the product, but sometimes I feel trapped by this deeply ingrained chit-chat reflex especially when it centers the discussion on somebody I don’t know from Adam and about whom I couldn’t care less… Usually I go “ahun, ahun” with a distance look to try to cut it short–I mean in the end, the customer is king, not the sales person!
Maybe I’m reading too much into it but to me it’s typical of the individualistic trait of US Americans who assume that they are all very different and independent, even from their own employer (who pays their salary at the end of the day), and so if they have adopted a product, it can only mean that it’s a good one (not that they’re trying to sell it to you for more turnover)… am I making sense?
I think to a certain extent it’s genuine–like the guy who tried to sell lettuces to me when I kept telling him that I was looking for an indoor tree and I didn’t have a garden–he obviously had a passion for its salads and wanted to spread the love all around! But as a French person I felt like he was talking to fill the void of his lack of knowledge on what I asked him about in the first place… the chit-chat reflex! Maybe it’s where I live too… people are just bored and are desperate for social interaction…
Sorry for the long post, hopefully it wasn’t only just a senseless rant…
love your website !
that wasn’t a senseless rant, julie. i totally know where you’re coming from. i truly wonder if people ARE bored OR if they’re just used to providing superfluous information. it’s just what they do and not because they want to fill a void. i am totally wondering about stuff like that right now. i love the differences even tho they can make me crazy
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