Ignorance of a culture can be expensive.
Consider the wretched tourist who's chosen Paris to retire, a move, she is convinced, that will make her the envy of those she left behind. A hulking "Emily In Paris" she knows it all. She even knows more than the locals, yet much to her consternation things aren't quite going as planned. For one, the large tips she's been leaving at cafés and restaurants she frequents are not always yielding the “special” service - freebies, little extras, fawning attention - she's come to expect. Or even better service. Likewise, her boorish chattiness towards waiters, whose first names she discreetly notes off the check or, more likely, asks them for in bad French, leering, is not producing the results she’d counted on. Au contraire.
Unless it's a bar in a tourist hotel no one is falling over themselves as might happen "back home." And when predictably (and inevitably) she gets overcharged or shortchanged, she’s livid and, jowls drooping, she indignantly concludes that someone must be swiping her tips off the table the moment she lumbers out the door - even though service never gets any better when she is by herself, which is 99% of the time.
What's she doing wrong? - BPJ
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Adapted from:
Paris and The French: A Unique Culture
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