Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

When the panic button was pressed in the UK in August, the effects were seen here the next day, but did it have any lasting effect?

The small shop in our local airport doesn’t sell much wine or honey these days as it mainly sold those whilst people were wandering around after they’d checked their luggage. The wineries are none too pleased as there was a considerable amount of wine taken home as hand-luggage before the scare. A pilot who was staying with us recently thought that he’d be able to get his little case of wine onboard by showing his pilots license ’til I reminded him that the guys that flew the planes into the twin towers also had a pilots license.

I was expecting at least some increased level of security on my flight from Barcelona to Santiago but if anything the security was much lower than I’d been expecting. Thanks to the wonders of online check-in I was never even asked if I’d any sharp objects in my luggage, if I’d packed it myself, etc. In fact, the only contact that I had with anyone prior to boarding the plane was when someone had a fairly cursory glance at my passport just before I walked out onto the tarmac.

What about the increased security in the UK airports though? Delays in flight arrivals are much more common as the increased security level means that minor discrepancies result in flights being held until the source is identified. Earlier in the week one of the flights was an hour late because someone had dropped their boarding card for instance. Is that crazy? No, because the effect of the error was that it looked like someone who should have been on board the flight actually wasn’t.

What doesn’t seem so sensible is the very arbitrary reduction in the maximum size of carryon luggage. Is it really a co-incidence that the size corresponds to that of a laptop bag? I doubt that very much. The other aspect is that it now takes much longer to collect luggage from flights as almost everyone has checked baggage these days (quite a nice little earner for the likes of Ryanair with their charge for checked luggage).

I also can’t see that the security staff will maintain their vigilance in picking out potential terrorists. In todays world what they will more than likely do is to stop and question anyone who looks Muslim. OK, I will grant that this tactic will presumably pick out a higher proportion of potential terrorists than just picking out people at random in that the threat is, in practical terms, originating from the Muslim world. However, it’s also going to alienate Muslims in general and it may well sway the views of some middle of the road Muslims towards the anti-west mind-set which isn’t in anyone’s interest.

To indicate how ridiculous this kind of method of picking out potential terrorists can be, consider the flights from Belfast to London 10 years ago. They were all met by a couple of officers from the Metropolitan police. The ONLY people that they stopped to question were men walking by themselves. I used to travel back and forth from Belfast to London quite frequently so was able to experiment with this. If I was travelling on my own, all that I needed to do to avoid being stopped was to walk alongside a woman. Any woman: I didn’t need to speak to her, or do anything other than walk alongside her. I wonder how long it will be before the security people start picking out their subjects for questioning on the basis of some equally silly thinking to “single guy alone = terrorists”?

Arnold

I read an article in the Conexion today about integrating yourself into French society and one piece of advice was to speak French to the kids and ban English TV which set me thinking.

The family giving that advice was effectively robbing their kids of any chance of being bilingual which is a major advantage that you can give your children by living here. Moreover, isn’t that trying to be “more French than the French”? After all, a growing number of the French are finding that speaking English is an advantage in todays world. OK, France as a country may not like that situation, but that’s the reality.

Friends of ours are finding that by only having French TV and having their children going to French school that it is already becoming harder for them to communicate with their 10 year old (they’ve been here about 5 years). She’s not as fluent in English as she is in French and that situation can only get worse (or do you think “better”?) as she gets older. I’m sure that it’s not only her English language that she’s losing but her British culture too.

What about her parents? They only watch French TV so are gradually becoming more detached from the reality of life in the UK. Is that a good thing? I’m sure that they’ll not lose their ability to speak English fluently but if they stay here another 20 years, I suspect that going back to the UK would be like moving to a foreign country. Just look back to 1986 to see what I mean. How much has the UK changed since Thatcher? You don’t fully understand French taxation now I’m sure, but with a 20 year gap, would you understand UK taxation? I think not. Scotland didn’t have it’s own government then but it could even be a separate country in 20 years time: how much would that change UK culture? Even if you’d left as little as ten years ago, chances are you’d not know the English terms for e-mail and the like and be quoting your Minitel address to people. But you get the idea – the longer that they are out of touch with UK life, the more it will seem like a foreign country.

As for your kids: remember that they’ll have spent a much larger proportion of their lives “abroad”, so will they still consider the UK as “home”? What will you do if/when you decide to move back to the UK and they don’t want to move to a “foreign country”? Because, if you’re talking 10 or more years, it would be a foreign country to them.

So how French do you want to be? How French do you want your children to be? How French do you want your grandchildren to be?

They’re not easy questions to answer, but you should think about them.

Arnold

Whilst most countries in the world tend to move forward in terms of the use and usability of technology, it’s often the case in France that it’s one step forward, two backward.

Case in point: just a few weeks ago we noticed that Carrefour had, at last, started to accept foreign cards in their petrol stations and we thought that this was the first sign of the “promised land” of being able to use foreign cards in all petrol stations. Sadly, no. A matter of days later, the only petrol station that we know of within about 100 miles of us that did accept foreign cards on Sunday installed brand new petrol pumps and no longer accepts foreign cards!

This seems particularly short-sighted in light of the experience of the petrol station closest to the airport. Last year, it was “upgraded” from a manned station to being fully automated. Previous to that, there were always queues of cars getting petrol. Now, there are never any queues because the bulk of their potential customers can’t use the pumps anymore. Funnily enough, the pumps offer the choice of four languages but just don’t accept any foreign cards.

Why is that though? After all, even in France the old style cards will be phased out by the end of this year and just about all the other countries in Europe seem to be issuing new chip & PIN cards.

Petrol stations aren’t the only example of this craziness. The ultimate expression of that is the village of Tautavel which lives on tourism. Last year, due to the complications that the combined introduction of foreign chip & PIN cards plus the various banks upgrading their machines to accept them, all the tourist shops decided to stop accepting cards altogether. So, what happens now if you arrive at the till will EUR 100 or so of souvenir pots etc. is that they’ll point you towards the cash machine across the road. Now, for French people, that’s fine as they have debit cards and therefore don’t pay any more to withdraw cash from the ATM than they would to use their card in the shop BUT almost all foreigners use credit cards and therefore would have to pay cash advance fees plus interest.

Overall effect? Well, it’s fine for the French or for those who are buying small quantities of souvenirs but the customers wanting to make larger purchases just walk away. The shops can’t understand why: after all, in their eyes, there’s no difference in cost for the customer as they’re pretty much entirely unaware of the extra costs they’re asking their customers to pay.

The other consequence is that several of the shops are looking rather shaky and seem sure to close. I suspect that the same could easily happen to the airport petrol station too.

Arnold

If you’ve been watching the “moving to France” TV series that seem to be on almost non-stop these days, you’d think that there would be no problem in getting kids into school here. After all, the kids just seem to go to the local school and if they don’t speak French, it doesn’t seem to be a problem. Perhaps you’re thinking that the presence of a TV crew eases the process considerably and I’ve no doubt that it does. However, we’ve friends and aquaintances in other regions of France and they’ve never had a problem in getting their children enrolled in school regardless of age or ability in French.

Things are different in the Pyrenees Orientale though.

If your child isn’t a fluent French speaker by the time they hit 16, then they will not be educated by any school in the state education system within the Pyrenees Orientale. What happens at that age is that you are passed onto Inspection Academic who in turn pass you on to the College Albert Camus and specifically the CIPPA class so that you can learn French and thereby get into an appropriate lycee (for age 17-18). There is only one problem with that scenario: Madame Benzine runs CIPPA as a remedial class for children from French speaking countries and just treats any non-French speakers as an inconvenience to be gotten rid of as soon as possible. The net effect of that is that if your child has no other option than CIPPA (and they won’t be given any other option if they reach 16 and don’t speak French fluently here), then that’s the end of their education.

Surely, not? Don’t children have some right to education up to 18? I thought so, but apparently the French locally read the fact that schooling is optional after age 16 as meaning that they don’t need to provide it and in particular don’t need to provide any means to teach you French after age 16. Having said that, everyone in the administrative side of education seems to think that CIPPA does actually teach French (and perhaps it is supposed to) but Madame Benzine chooses to ignore that and seems to go out of her way to encourage non-French speakers to leave the class as soon as possible. “You missed a class because your car was being repaired and the bus drivers were on strike? You should have walked in”. “How? It’s over 30km: it would have taken five or six hours”. “I gave him a question sheet every morning and he didn’t answer any of the questions on it. He has no motivation.” Emmm, he can’t read French and couldn’t understand the questions. “It’s mathematics: of course he could understand it:. He’s just lazy. ” Actually, no, because the questions are entirely in French. That’s the kind of person running CIPPA in Perpignan.

It’s not much easier from age 11 to 16 either, as all colleges that don’t have to take your child, quite simply won’t take them if they don’t speak fluent French (and I do stress “fluent”: they won’t accept anything less). Instead, they will direct you toward the Inspection Academic in Perpignan who in turn will pass directly to the CIPPA class. If your child is in that age range, you can get them accepted into the college designated for your commune but even then it’s not always easy but never accept the CIPPA option if your child is in that age range.

What about primary school then? That’s a little easier than the college as they are attached to the various mairies therefore the one associated with your commune will have to take your children from age 6 to 11. However, those not attached to your commune will usually refuse to accept your child unless they happen to be fluent French speakers. Would you be happy with your 11 year old having to get up around 6am to catch the first bus into town, then changing buses in the centre of town to get to a remedial class in a country where they don’t speak the language? That’s the option you’ll be given if you don’t push the matter with your own mairie.

We have, surprisingly, managed nursery school with, so far, no problems. However, we fully expect that James will encounter problems getting into primary school in this area. Even now, the local doctor couldn’t understand why he couldn’t speak French. Why would he? If we spoke French to him he’d just end up with a dreadful French accent not to mention bad grammar and vocabulary. Oh, and he’d not learn to speak English.

The strange thing is that the French always talk about integrating immigrants into French society. I don’t know about elsewhere, but in the Pyrenees Orientale, it’s definitely all talk because there’s certainly no support given to you if your children don’t speak fluent French.

The other strange thing is that the teachers (except Madame Benzine) all seem to be quite supportive of the kids and fully expect that children of all ages will pick up the language fairly quickly. The problem seems to be that the administrators simply won’t let them try and without the approval of an administrator you just can’t get into a school.

Arnold

Customer service is one of those wooly concepts that few people really think about most of the time. OK, just about every place has a “customer service” department in some form but as far as most people are concerned, it’s where you go when you’ve some kind of problem. Change of address? Just see Customer Service? Want a refund? Customer Service deals with that.

At the other extreme you have the likes of First Direct where there doesn’t seem to be a “customer service” department as such because everyone you talk to considers that it’s their business to be serving you. In fact, in over 10 years of using them, I’ve only once or twice been referred to someone else and that’s been for a specialist thing like buying shares or whatever.

What we all forget though is that “customer service” isn’t something that the Customer Service department do. It’s done in part by everyone in the various companies that we deal with.

Except in France.

Here, the customer very definitely is considered an inconvenience to be tolerated. Not just in the dreadful companies either.

Consider Carrefour, one of the largest retailing company in the world. In France, it charges EUR 25 for a charge card that can only be used in its own stores. In Spain it offers a Visa card free of charge. Why? Simply because the French will tolerate such behaviour and the Spanish won’t.

Last year we ordered heating oil from them because they said on their adverts that we could pay by card. I even checked that when I called to order the oil. As it happened we were out the day that it was delivered so the delivery guy left a phone number for us to call to make the payment. We called them. Nope, we don’t do that, call this other number. Nope, we don’t do that, call this number instead. Turned out that was the number we had just called so they said a supervisor would call us back. A month later a reminder arrived to say we’d not paid so I faxed them with the card details. About two months later a further, slightly threatening letter arrived telling us to pay up or else. I posted a recorded delivery letter this time (businesses often ignore anything that isn’t recorded delivery in France). A week later, I got a call from a guy who wouldn’t take my card details for the payment but said that he’d get someone else to phone me back. No phone call but a month later we get a letter saying that our case had been passed on to the debt collectors and adding EUR 100 or so of charges. I faxed and posted yet another recorded delivery letter itemising the above saga and telling them to come and collect the money (legally businesses in France must accept cash). Finally, I got a call from the debt collection guy who admitted that in fact they don’t accept payment by card because the machines that they had issued to the delivery guys don’t work. So, in Carrefour the customer is definitely a nuisance to be passed on to someone else if at all possible.

Just two weeks ago I was in Santiago. We could have had breakfast in the place we were staying but instead thought that it would be nicer to have it in the town instead. As it happened we got a little lost on the way (and had a very pleasant tour of the town along the way) so were looking for something to eat around 11am. We had loads of choice and ended up in a nice little cafe just behind the cathedral. In France, we’d have had no choice at all: outside noon to 2pm restaurants simply won’t serve food. In fact this reaches the peak of absurdity in Perpignan airport where the restaurant is only open from noon to 2pm yet until quite recently there were no flights at that time ie no customers!

This nonsense extends to almost all areas of retailing. Whereas elsewhere most shops open during lunch to catch everyone else, here almost all shops lie closed.

Even three years down the line, it still confuses us. For instance, last year a couple came to us enquiring about us hosting their wedding reception. We gave them a few ideas for the meal but said that we could change that around to suit them, never thinking anything about that. Turns out that we were the only restaurant to offer them the chance to tailor the meal to suit them. In France, when you go to a restaurant asking about hosting your reception, the restaurant give you their wedding menu and that’s it: take it or leave it, you certainly can’t make any changes. How crazy is that?

At the end of last year we had someone from a French hotel staying with us. One comment that he made really struck us as symtomatic of the low level of customer service that is experienced throughout France: “This is France. You always greet guests in French”. Actually, no, you don’t: you should, of course, greet them in their own language where possible. At least it’s “of course” everywhere else in the world, just not in France.

Why is it like that here yet completely different in Spain? I think because the French just put up with it whereas the Spanish won’t.

So in France, customer service means telling the customers to clear off and come back sometime that it suits the employees.

Arnold