Exactly. And in smaller centres outside of Paris, the opening greeting in shops often goes on longer: “Bonjour Madame. Comment-allez vous aujourd’hui? Si vous pouvez m’aider, je cherche …”
(“Hello Madame. How are you today? If you could help me, I’m looking for (what you want to buy)…”)
If you just walk into the store, ignore the shopkeeper, and then say “do you have …”, then you’re the rude one.
Sure, but that’s the same everywhere, n’est pa? Is there anywhere in the world where it’s polite to initiate a conversation without a “Hi” or at least “Excuse me”?
It depends where you are. In my part of Canada, it’s not expected that you begin with a conversation. I can go into a small store, look around for what I want, and not say anything to the shopkeeper until I bring my item to the till.
In towns of the same size in France, I found that was considered rude. You greet the shopkeeper as soon as you come in, even if you know where to find the item. You start with that short social exchange.
One time I forgot that expected exchange, and I saw immediately from the sudden frown on madame’s face that I had made a faux-pas. Fortunately, I redeemed myself by carrying out the rest of the exchange in French.
Just nitpicking that the correct usage, at least as far as my French goes (which is far from perfect), would be n’est-ce pas? You need the “ce” so the phrase has a subject.
Back to topic: I second what has been said by many posters about tourists often being the rude ones; but in the OP’s vein I’d like to agree that sometimes, some locals in places heavily frequented by tourists do have a tendency to view tourists as walking wallets to be taken advantage of. If you’re bored and want to read a series of particularly outrageous examples, google DK Oyster, a notorious beach restaurant on the Greek island of Mykonos. The internet is full of stories of how people were ripped off there with ridiculously overpriced drinks and meals and the restaurant’s tactics of deceiving guests as to the price that would ultimately be charged.
I took 2 semesters of French in college 25 years ago, which is the extent of my knowledge of the language - so we can all assume that any correction you make is most likely justified.
Clip joints aren’t exactly unknown elsewhere.,
When late wife and I moved from suburban Las Vegas Nevada to central St. Louis Missouri we were amazed at the cultural change.
St. Louis was by far the larger metro area, but it was also very, very Midwestern. You had to engage the waitress or cashier or floorwalker in a greeting / countergreeting and “How’s your day?” before trying to get down to business. Else they’d go all cold on you.
When I use that same midwestern tactic now in South Florida, most folks are surprised, but most also warm to it. The exceptions usually come back with a NY / NJ accent and are evidently in much too much of a hurry to waste precious seconds in idle speechifying before taking my money.
Culture is real and culture is still local even in this modern era of homogenated corporatified commerce.
The “Fear City” pamphlet wasn’t printed by the NYPD or any other city agency.
It was a union publication, with grotesquely exaggerated warnings, issued in an attempt to forestall impending layoffs of police and firefighters.
Relevance to current conditions in NYC is minimal.
Even in NYC, you should probably start interactions with an upward nod of the head and maybe a brief “Hey”.
OP Here: It appears that my original post may have come off as bigoted. For that I apologize. I could have chosen my words better, and I’ll admit that forming my opinions based on internet listicles isn’t necessarily best practice. I have let the community down, and for that I apologize.
For whatever it’s worth, I’ve travelled pretty extensively, and the only places where I’ve ecountered rude behavior by locals were Paris (it seemed that just everyone was openly hostile to anyone not Parisian) and a market in Morocco (aggressively rude vendors*) and Dunn’s River Falls in Jamaica (aggressively rude vendors**).
*I was there with a group of American high schoolers on one of those ultra-cheap tours of Europe designed for high school groups. One guy at the marketplace was aggressively asking every adult male in the group about buying a certain girl in our group who’d caught her eye. He was offering four camels and dumbfounded as to why her father wasn’t around to speak for her. She was terrified. Again, different cultures and all that, but the poor girl was terrified she was going to get kidnapped.
**One guy physically grabbed me! Where I come from, that’s an act of assault, and I suppose it’s true in most of Canada, too – and 99 percent of tourists on those Caribbean cruise ships are American or Canadian. One of these days a tourist is going to reflexively sock one of those guys in the nose and create an International Incident.
For what it’s worth, from my own experience this may have been an inter-cultural misunderstanding. Caution, anecdote:
When I and my girlfriend vacationed in Hammamet, Tunisia, in 1992, I sported long, curly hair almost to my bottom. One time, we entered a leather store (bags and purses and stuff like that) with two young women behind the counter. I wasn’t interested in anything the store had, so I just stood by while my girlfriend looked around and made contact with the sales women. One of them said “Your man has beautiful hair, he’s a treasure, would you trade him in for ten camels?” My gf didn’t skip a beat and began pseudo-haggling until she had the price up to 15 camels. Shortly before making the deal, she said “You know what? I think I like my guy better than 15 camels, and I don’t have stables for them anyway”. All, me included, had a good laugh about the situation, and it was clear from the start that this was all in jest and humor. I have no doubt that many sales people in that and similar cultures (like Morocco) pull off the same spiel, to break the ice with the customers. Maybe in your case, the humorous nature went over your group’s heads, and I can understand that a teenage girl could get frightened.
We had that issue here in Illinois, as well; up until (IIRC) the early 1990s, rental cars’ license plates had prefixes based on the company’s name. Avis cars were “AVS,” Hertz were “HRZ,” etc. Finally, someone figured out that it made the rental cars targets for thieves, and they changed that policy.
this story is common, and it’s just a classic case of American naivety, told and re-told by people who will believe anything.
This guy was offering 4 camels. And they thought he was serious?
Suppose they agreed, and sold him the girl from their group. What would they have done with the camels–put them on their tour bus to take home?
Yes, you’re in a foreign country, where the locals may practice marriage customs which involve strange and non-western concepts, such as child brides, dowries and offering camels.
But use a little logic, folks.
I obviously wasn’t there, but unless there was a LOT of menacing involved, this sounds like you were being whooshed.
May very well be. I was 16 at the time and in a foreign land. What can I say?
If the local Moroccans’ custom is to exchange witty banter with tourists and joke that they’re going to purchase people – well, I imagine most Westerners aren’t going to get the joke. Particularly those in their teens who are hungover from the previous night in Torremolinos…
I have used that approach for years, and I’m right in the heart of “Joisey”. People aren’t as rude here as the reputation would imply. If you skip the formalities, nobody will notice, but as long as you aren’t at a packed NY sandwich shop at the lunch rush, folks often respond kindly to an opening “How are you today?”
Now, I don’t think interactions like those in the Deep South would fly here–I remember one day in Georgia when I stood in line for way too long while the person at the register had a thrilling discussion with the customer about the high points of last Friday night’s high school football game.
I realized that on their turf, I was the impatient one, so I relaxed and enjoyed the slower pace.
I’m from a Midwestern city (130k people), and I moved to a town of 600 people that straddles the cultural and metaphorical border of the Midwest and the South. Things here move at a snail’s pace, and it’s not uncommon for me to be stuck in line at the store or the convenience store or wherever, where the clerk and a customer are just catching up, chatting about this & that while the rest of us wait in line. Drives me up the fucking wall.
4 camels, specifically, is an old Middle Eastern cliché. 15 years into my marriage, my father-in-law would ever so often turn to me and mock-growl, “You! You still owe me four camels for my daughter!”
This reminds me of one time when a friend and I went to Las Vegas. We got into a cab at the airport and after we told the driver the name of our hotel my friend mentioned that it wasn’t necessary to give us a tour of the Strip on the way there, as we were both old Vegas visitors. The driver laughed and took us via the most direct route. We all had a nice chat on the way, and tipped enough to partially make up for the lower fare we paid.
I wholeheartedly second that. The buying-women-for-camels spiel is an old cliché that vendors in Arab countries will give to any Western tourist who will listen. They’re playing with a stereotype that Westerners have about these countries, and it gets the tourist to engage in a conversation with the vendor (which is essential if you want to sell anything - the prime rule is not to let a potential buyer walk away).