On a recent afternoon near the Place de la Bastille, Alberto Riberio, a tourist from Spain, stopped with his family at a quaint cafe and asked a waiter if they could sit down
writes
Liz Alderman in a New York Times article in which the money quote comes in the final paragraph.
“Look around!” he recalled the waiter replying abruptly. “You see empty tables, don’t you?”
When the family tried to order food in halting French, the waiter rolled
his eyes, Mr. Riberio said. Later, when a wrong dish was served, an
argument ensued over whether it would be changed.
“In general, the French can be quite friendly and helpful,” said Mr.
Riberio, whose family went on to have a pleasant stay. But the encounter
“was a reminder of why they can also have a reputation for being rude,”
he said.
In the City of Light, an eternal question is once again spurring debate:
Is the stereotype of the brusque Frenchman justified, or do visitors
just not understand the French?
The soul-searching is coming from an unlikely place: the Paris tourism
board. It is ramping up a charm offensive to burnish the image of France
— and Paris in particular — as a kinder place for tourists. Officials
have been deluging cafes, hotels, shops and taxi ranks with 20,000 more
pamphlets
titled “Do You Speak Touriste?”, a manual on how to make travelers feel
more welcome, after 35,000 copies handed out in July ran out.
The British, it advises, want to be called by their first names. The
Japanese need to feel reassured. The Spanish mainly want people to be
nice. (“I would agree with that,” Mr. Riberio said.) As for Americans,
the guide notes, they are glued to their personal devices and want to
eat as early as 6 p.m. — a frightful thought to a typical Parisien.
“The goal is to fight against a bad reputation, and improve the quality
of the welcome in Paris,” said François Navarro, the communication
director for the tourism board, the Comité Régional du Tourisme Paris
Île-de-France. With 30 million tourists a year, Paris is one of the most
visited cities in the world, he said. “But we can do more.”
How much more remains to be seen. Paul Kappe, an owner of the renowned
Brasserie de l’Isle Saint-Louis, perched behind the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, gave a Gallic shrug when he saw the brochure.
“It starts with the assumption that the French are disagreeable,” said
Mr. Kappe, a contemplative man who kept a watchful eye on the
restaurant’s sunny terrace, full of waiters and patrons crammed behind
tiny tables. “Well, that does have the ring of truth,” he said. “But it
won’t stop a waiter from being unpleasant.”
He added, “Their mentality is, ‘Don’t bother me when I’m working.’ ”
… many of the 600,000 Parisiens employed in the tourism industry place a premium on politesse.
Still, “snobisme” is hardly a relic of the past, and even the French
complain about a perceived lack of civility among some of their big-city
brethren. A spate of mocking television ads by the newspaper Le
Parisien a few years ago, showing Parisiens
cutting in line and leaving poodle droppings
on the sidewalk,
provoked knowing laughs. And this is by no means the first time the
government has encouraged a more polished image: in 1995, a “Bonjour”
campaign urged people to be pleasant to tourists, echoing several
similar efforts since World War II.
Of course, tourists can be uncouth, too. “A lot of Americans shout, or
don’t say hello, and then they say the French treated them rudely,” said
Karen Fawcett, the president of
BonjourParis,
a Web site that dispenses travel and cultural insights. “If you don’t
have some cultural sensitivity, you are probably not going to be well
received.”
Ms. Fawcett said her main tips for visitors were to be polite, keep
their voices down and not assume they will be served immediately. “A
simple ‘bonjour’ or a ‘s’il vous plaît’ will go a long way,” she said.
… “In the United States,” Mr. Kappe observed, “waiters can be fired at any
time and must work for tips, so they have to be nice. In France, you
can’t just fire somebody if they’re not doing a good job. If you could,
everyone would be friendly.”
