Something so typically French is to say, "No, that's not possible" when, actually, what the person meant to say was, "I don't know."
God forbid any Frenchie ever admits to not knowing something! Heaven help the Frenchie who actually says, "I'll look into it, because, to be honest, I'm not so sure about that right now." Pray for the Frenchies who actually show a sign of weakness by doing some investigative work before closing down all barriers.
I still can't figure out. It's the weirdest thing. You have to learn to press them, and I mean really force them, into looking further after saying, "No. We don't do that." I guess they're just used to operating that way, and I suppose other Frenchies just accept it and say, "Oh, ok." But I'm not a Frenchie, damnit! I find their system frustrating and annoying.
Here are a two examples from today alone:
1.
At the grocery store, a man hands the cashier a mini credit-card. Have you ever seen these before? They're about the size of a normal credit card, cut vertically in half. A real hoot.
She investigates the card, turning it over in her hand. Being a Weird Card (aka Foreign) Carrying Person myself, I recognize the gestures: pensive moment of thought, double-checking of the strip on the back, recognition of the name Visa or Mastercard. Yes, all things clear. This card appears to have them all.
But yet, it's very small.
"I'm sorry sir, we don't take these cards," she says, and hands it back to him.
"But it's a credit card," he says. "It works like any other credit card."
"I know sir, but we don't take them."
After a beat, the man says, obviously slightly annoyed, "Punch credit card on your machine there. We'll just try."
She does as told.
He swipes the card in his little swipey console thing.
Moment of tension ensues.
"Did it go through?"
"Yes sir, it did."
A tight smile tugs at the corner of the man's mouth, but he resists. I do it for him as I load up my three articles.
2.
I'm working on a project right now that involves searching for a lot of information on French companies for the years 1997, 1999, and 2001. At base, the project is simple, and were I doing it in the US, it would probably be finished in a heartbeat. At least the data collection process would be, which is what counts because I'm on data duty.
But alas, here I am in France, trying to get "historical" information on French companies, and there simply aren't any resources available on that topic. Because, you know, who would ever want to know what a company was up to in 1997? Or 1999? That's absurd! People think I am out of my mind.
The problem is that all of the information would be readily available to me in a nice, easy-to-read format were I were only interested in 2003. Then it'd be a snap. They'd have all of this info on a handy CD-ROM and I'd just print up some pages and be done.
But no. That's just not the case for anything before 2003. So I asked, "Well, where can I go for the same information but for previous years? Is there another CD-ROM, or a book, or something that chronicles the same information as the CD-ROM, but for 97, 99, and 2001?"
"That's not possible," the Librarian Lady said, with a bit of scorn. "No, there's nothing like that. We'll have to come up with another solution."
What we came up with involves me searching through each company's annual reports, year by year. That means pulling each company's file, looking through to find the appropriate year (if they even have it there) and then going through the report until I stumble across the information I'm looking for. I've seen a lot of graphs and pie charts in the last few weeks, let me tell you.
All of this would be ok if the library where I consult these reports - which is also the only library in France that has such information - didn't lay down the following ground rules:
- The library is only open from 10.30-16.30.
- You can only look at 10 annual reports per day because, well, they're too busy to keep getting the files out for you, and it would be wrong to expect them to do their job, what with such a long workday and all.
- The library is closed on Friday.
This means, technically, that I can only look at 40 companies per week. And that's IF my schedule happens to allow me a few free hours to go to the library between 10.30 and 16.30, which is rarely the case.
But no matter, I've learned to work with the slow pace achieving things seems to take in France. As the head of this project says to me, "Well, everything in France takes about 20% longer to do than it would in the US." Try 50%.
Still, I've gotten the Librarian Lady to be a bit more on my side - she's even breaking the second rule so that I can get everything done before my deadline. I think she's just trying to get me out of her hair as quickly as possible; little does she know that I'll be back in January with another 400 companies to investigate. Her stupid smile still drives me friggin' batty and her absolutely unnecessary hoo-ha about how stressed out she is is even less appreciated, but the Lady gets me the annual reports, so I just go with it.
Today, however, she marked a few companies (off of the nice, new spreadsheet I made for her) as having already been given to me, but when I looked at the pile (I am, of course, also only allowed to take the files one at a time), they were nowhere to be seen.
After asking her about them, she hastily responded, "No, they're right there. You must have missed them." They weren't. But, while leaning over the little roly thing she had put the other files on, I noticed an interesting book on the bookshelves just behind the cart:
It was a book, from 1997, with all financial data concerning several hundred companies for that year. Coincidentally, it was the print version of the handy-dandy CD-ROM I could have used, were I interested in 2003. Strangely enough, it was EXACTLY what I have been needing, this entire time, that nobody had thought to suggest to me. Even worse, the book has the same friggin name as the CD-ROM. It wouldn't have taken a genius to think of that, had the genius known it existed. And since it's on the special reserves shelf that only the librarians have access to, I'm assuming the Lady knew it existed.
But instead of taking a moment to think it over, she had just said, "That's not possible." and we had gone looking for other options.
I meandered over to her desk and asked her about the book. "Oh, of course it would have all the information you've been looking for! That makes perfect sense!" she squeaked.
Yeah, Dumbass, hadn't I directly asked you if there wasn't a way I could get the same information available on the CD-Rom but for 1997? Couldn't you have said, "I don't know" and then checked out a few options? Wouldn't that have been better than making a big scene about how many annual reports I ask for per day? And better than having made me do this, one by one, for over two weeks, before realizing there was a book I could have been using the entire time???
So, I still have 99 and 2001 to do one-by-one, but Key-rist, I think I cut my workload down by at least a third today with my fortunate discovery.
Are french credit cards double the size of non-french ones then? Or have mini ones just been invented to mark out foreign people?!
I'm French, I have traveled all over Europe and I have never seen this mini cards. French credit cards are the standard format.
And yes, it's a French thing to say "It isn't possible" instead "I don't know", a way to avoid difficulties.
I agree it makes a crappy customer service.
I know, it can be really annoying. Social Security lost my papers, but it was "the other department" who lost them. The paper telling me to pick up my carte de sejour has "been in the mail" for almost three weeks now (another 1.5 weeks and I'm in an 'irregular situation'). Sometimes I wonder how this country functions at all.
I know I should try to be positive, but maybe I will be when I get paid for October.
I've seen Weird Cards myself. Discover keeps trying to do a Key Chain Sized Card, and I've seen other ones like that. Hee. I admire the man who taught that lady a lesson. (And if they have that book for 1997, why don't they have it for 1999? 2001?)
France sounds a lot like Atlanta.