French customer service and intercultural dialogues

I had the opportunity to witness a very interesting cross cultural dialogue between an American tourist and an employee of the SNCF yesterday. But first context. I was off to visit a childhood friend and I arrive at the station half an hour early only to be told that the station was being evacuated due to an abandoned piece of luggage. When this happens and it happens regularly, the authorities act as if they were faced with a mini apocalypse while the public act blasé. So I wait diligently for two hours in the cold in front of the station.

I had company, notably a freezing teenage girl who kept calling her mother to blame her for the situation and an exhausted mother whose toddler had a plastic toy sheep called Maurice she kept trying to eat. Finally they opened the gates and people ran around like chickens without a head trying to get in.

Once inside the station I had to queue for 45 minutes to get a ticket exchange at which point I overheard an American tourist asking to be upgraded to first class for her trouble. The SNCF employee told her with extreme indifference that between 40 cancelled trains, a strike and school holidays the most he could offer was a 6 am ticket with no guarantee of a seated place. She asked to speak to the manager at which point the SNCF employee decided to no longer understand English. There is something to be said for this very French ability to stand one’s ground even while working in the service industry.