France: the mood is rude

Ok, it’s official—France is the rudest country on the planet.  Seems that a company called Skyscanner.com, which claims to be Europe’s leading travel search site, surveyed its users seeking informed opinions (i.e., from people who have actually travelled to the countries they are disparaging) about how various nations treat foreign travellers. A whopping 1200 people responded from all over the world (although a preponderance of them were European) and to nobody’s surprise, 19% named France as the place most likely to insult or offend foreign visitors, with Russia following closely behind with 16.5% of the vote. With 33 countries named by the respondents, just three countries—France, Russia and the UK—managed to amass a full 46% of the total vote!

So, if France is the rudest country in the world, it must stand to reason, then, that the French are the rudest people in the world, right? Never having been to France and having met precious few French people in my life—although the one I knew best certainly would win no prizes for her courtesy towards others—I am not in a position to definitively declare the French a race of boors, but simple logic would lead you to the conclusion that, in order for France to be declared the rudest country in the world, it must be because its citizens are significantly lacking something in the courtesy department, hein?

So this got me to thinking…

When people want to give something a touch of elegance, when they want to evoke sophistication and grace and classiness, the go-to vibe is inevitably French. Whether deciding to call your coffee shop a bistro or sidewalk café, whether evoking illusions of Versailles or the Champs Élysées, whether channelling Coco Chanel or Christian Dior…if we want to bring to mind class, elegance, and style, we turn to the French.

We even do it with language. If we want to sound erudite and urbane, we toss in a vis à vis here and a faux pas or billet doux there, knowing the cognoscenti will recognize us as one of them, and everyone else will just pretend to know what we are talking about. Despite our recent falling out with the French, renaming their delightful fried potato fingers “Freedom Fries” in a petulant attempt to teach them a lesson about reciprocal support in times of trouble, we still look to the French for those things we subconsciously consider better than prosaic American sensibilities. If it’s French, it must be classy!

So how do we reconcile this sense of Frenchness being sophisticated and worldly with their apparently deserved reputation for being the rudest people in the world? French was once the language of diplomacy and international business, having been supplanted by English in recent years, and a mental image of couture-draped women dripping gems, French tripping lightly off their tongues, is what pops up when one thinks of embassy functions and soirées. Exceedingly polite diplomats and foreign functionaries concealing their deceitful intentions behind correct smiles and polite French phrases, rigidly correct, excruciatingly refined…this perception does not square with the exasperated “Merde!” muttered as another foreign tourist butchers a patriotic Frenchman’s mother tongue with his crude accent and ridiculous phrase book.

I suspect that France—and the French—are no more rude than anyone else, that the denizens of big cities like Paris fall prey to the stress of their environment like New Yorkers and Johannesburgers, and that in more laid back environments we might find gracious hospitality rather than rude rejection.

Then, again, maybe the French are just more willing to be honest than the rest of us, less politically correct, more true to themselves and their expectations of what it takes to make a satisfying life—which, in their culture, may not include being excessively patient with visitors who seem to think everybody in the world should speak English and drop what they are doing to serve the unintelligible stranger.

There is something inherently flawed in judging other cultures based on our own values. An American or Brit might find himself repulsed by the Japanese visitor’s loud slurping and lip smacking at dinner—while the Japanese host would find himself insulted at the carefully silent dining habits of their American or British guests. Perhaps what we non-French consider rude the French consider merely expedient. It is absurd, after all, to go to a foreign country and expect its denizens to ape your own sense of manners and courtesy. When in Rome, do as the Romans do—don’t expect the Romans to suddenly exhibit the manners and mores of your culture.

Maybe we should apply that to our judgments of the French as well, n’est pas?

Manners, people! Bring your manners!

Geeze, there are days it just doesn't pay to leave your house!

I only had to be out a couple of hours this morning--refill some prescriptions and pick up a few groceries--nothing major. And while it is a Monday morning, it is a public holiday here, so I expected things to be a bit more crowded than on a normal Monday. It wasn't nearly as busy as I expected, but that was probably because I got to the store as it was just opening.

One sack of groceries--that is all I bought, which isn't much. I was in the queue, waiting for an open till, within a short time. The little automatic queue monitor flashed "6" and the electronic voice intoned "Teller Six" and Hubby and I set off for the till. Oddly, the woman behind us cut in front of Hubby as we headed for the till and when I hesitated a moment to allow him to get around her and catch up with me, she swooped past me and presented herself at Till 6 in my place! Fortunately Till 7 was available so I took my trolley there, but the Rude Cow at #6 never did seem to figure out that she had jumped the queue in such an egregious fashion--she was absolutely shameless--even clueless--about it.

We then had to go to the big market to pick up the prescriptions and I needed a couple of things from there as well. Much to my amazement, a younger version of the Rude Cow from Woolworth's appeared! She and her male companion, apparently oblivious to my big trolley being pushed by PlusSize me (who knew a woman my size could be invisible??), decided to enter an aisle as I was turning into it. My trolley was already more than half way through the turn when they jostled it and leaped in front, rushing past. Good grief--would their worlds have fallen apart if they had waited a whole two seconds while I completed the turn and left them sufficient room to go past without crashing into my trolley? What about the woman who parked her trolley in the middle of an aisle so that nobody could get around it and when I said "excuse me?" to her back, she moved but left the trolley in the middle of the aisle?

What is it with people who behave so badly in public? We were in another store on Saturday morning where someone had let a completely unmannered little girl of about 5 loose. Every aisle I entered, she got there ahead of me and every time I needed to stop to choose something, she managed to park her little body right in front of where I needed to be, doing absolutely nothing except taking up space and refusing to budge even when politely asked to do so. Where were her parents? Why was she allowed to run amok in the store? Where are the kidnappers when you need them?

There was a time when people left their children at home until they could behave in public (do not give me that lame tripe about kids needing to be in public to learn manners and I should be more tolerant. If you are a parent and truly believe that, then you are in desperate need of a course of etiquette yourself!) and if a child transgressed in public, s/he was brought up short, on the spot. Now, parents seem to be unaware that "having a baby" equates to raising (as in teaching, training, disciplining, and paying attention to) a child. Like the bride who doesn't think about the marriage, only the wedding, these parents seem not to look past their expectations of adorable, cooing babies and into the real future of the savage little beasts they are supposed to tame.

These little beasts grow into the thoughtless, self-absorbed Rude Cattle I encountered this morning. From supermarket trolley wars to airline passengers refusing to turn off their phones to women having no shame about dating married men, this "me me me" mindset has just gone too far. Manners are an expression of respect for others--and the idea that strangers have to "earn" your respect is a completely bankrupt, narcissistic, utterly stupid notion--and when you show disrespect for others, you invite them to reciprocate. Discourtesy and disrespect breed further discourtesy and disrespect...it creates a hostile environment. People with good manners will not point your faux pas out to you, as that is just as rude, so you must monitor yourself. Slow down--nothing is so important that you cannot wait 3 seconds for someone or at least say "excuse me" in an apologetic tone of voice as you go past. Think before you stop in the middle of a walking space to chat with a friend, before you leave your trolley in the middle of the aisle then block the rest of it with your body as you leisurely peruse the selections, before you gridlock an intersection because you just cannot wait for the next light, before you cut off another driver or refuse to let someone in--THINK--

You just aren't THAT important that everyone else on the planet should give way to you, now are you??

Wedding Etiquette and Other Forgotten Things

We have a couple of friends who are getting married soon. I haven’t been to a wedding in South Africa, but I’ve been to a bunch of them in America, and virtually every one of them has left me shaking my head…not at the nuptial couple, but at some of their guests. Who knew that the abandonment of manners and consideration for others had reached even such personally significant events as weddings?

Most of the grim wedding guest gaffes I have observed have involved alcohol or children…or both. One wedding, the mother of the ring-bearer, a cute little rosy-cheeked blonde boy, used up her drink tickets (how the bride and groom had chosen to limit the hits on the bar) and spent a good portion of the reception cadging tickets from the groomsmen and other men. She was young and pretty and flirtatious…and seriously intoxicated. The little boy was looked after by his slightly older sister as Mama reeled from man to man, flirting her way to inebriation. I don’t know how she got home, but I can only hope she did not drive herself and those kids!

Another wedding, held in a rose garden in a San Francisco Park, was lovely…until a baby started crying. One of the family members was making a video of the event and, according to my friend the groom, the infant’s wailing drowned out the vows and even a good bit of the music. Also marring the event was the infant’s toddler brother running amok during the ceremony and later at the reception. Neither child had been invited, and the bride and groom simply had assumed that their guests did not need to be told that a formal wedding was an adults-only affair.

My own wedding, an informal affair held in an Indian restaurant, had its own surprising and unexpected event. When I sent out the RSVP cards, I made sure to limit the number of attendees by giving the guest only two choices: 1 person attending or 2 persons attending. Imagine my surprise when my brother’s RSVP card came back with “4 persons” inked in. Sure enough, he showed up with his girlfriend and her two young teens who proceeded to turn up their noses at the buffet offerings (which were purposefully chosen to appeal to people who do not have much experience with Indian food…plenty of simple, unspiced choices). Imagine my surprise when our 35+ invited guests sat down to their chicken tikka and breyani and these two (uninvited) kids scarfed down a bag of McDonalds!

While it is technically incorrect to address an invitation to “Miss Mary Smith and Guest” as a wedding does not qualify as a dating event, many people are uncomfortable attending a wedding singly. Having no other way to formally indicate that Miss Mary may choose to attend with an escort, the “and Guest” tradition has pretty much taken hold. Unfortunately, a shocking number of people seem to no longer understand that the day is about the bride and groom rather than themselves, and take a wounded…or even insulted…attitude when they perceive that little Perceival and Priscilla are not part of the invitation. The “love me, love my kids” attitude is fine for single mommies shopping for a new husband, but it just doesn’t fly at some else’s wedding…even when the bride is a sibling of the invitee. Children, unless specifically invited (in which case a wise bride will have provided diversions for them), are not part of the wedding invitation.

I have to wonder what my old colleague must think whenever he and his wife view their wedding video. They wrote their own vows, heartfelt words pledging themselves to each other, but all that can be heard on the video is the screaming of someone else’s infant. American life being as transient as it is, they may no longer even be in contact with the mother of that child, may even have forgotten who she is, save for the obliterating of their vows by her child’s screams.

One of the outstanding memories of my own wedding is seeing my brother’s girlfriend leave the restaurant, only to return later with a McDonald’s bag in hand. Did it not occur to her the insult this must have dealt the restaurateur, who had gone out of his way to prepare a menu designed to appeal to both Indian food aficionados and neophytes alike? Did she not recognize this as a learning opportunity for those children, an opportunity to teach them to put someone else first for a short time? These children were in their early teens, easily old enough to wait an hour or two for the food of their choice or to politely nibble on a bit of salad if they couldn’t bring themselves to try a piece of tikka chicken or some plain boiled rice. In truth, they shouldn’t have been there at all, they were not on the guest list and, despite their refusal to sample the food, they counted in the head count so we paid for them, invited or not, whether they ate or not.

And that is a large part of the problem with uninvited guests at a wedding, particularly at a reception. The bride and groom pay “per person” for the food and the caterer prepares a quantity of food based on headcount. Buffets may be able to accommodate an extra person or two, but plated meals are a real problem: if the caterer has set up for 100 guests and four extra people come, what are they to do? There aren’t enough place settings, chairs, or food to accommodate the extra parties. And if the extras are uninvited children, there’s nothing for the kids to do except get bored, tired, and disruptive.

“Not my kids!” I hear some of you saying. Yes, your kids! We all have different ideas about what is acceptable behaviour from children, some of us more liberal than others. What is acceptable behaviour to you may be profoundly offensive to someone else, and another person’s wedding is simply not the place to demonstrate the result of your child-rearing philosophies to a large assemblage. Even if your children are beautifully behaved, the centre of attention should be the bride and groom, not some cute little tot who has recently mastered…and simply must show off…her curtsey or his alphabet. Bottom line, if your children’s names are not on the invitation, they are not invited…do not bring them!

The same goes for your boyfriend, girlfriend, neighbour, mother, cousin…unless the invitation clearly indicates that you may bring a guest (i.e., the invitation is addressed to more than just you), you are to attend solo. And be sure to RSVP, otherwise you will show up as an “extra,” your invitation notwithstanding. Failure to RSVP is the same as declining, so don’t be shocked if you rock up and the bride, groom, and caterer are all surprised…and even dismayed…at your arrival.

It amazes me how many people do not seem to understand that a wedding is A) a solemn affair and B) an affair in which the bride and groom are intended to be the centre of attention. What you choose to wear and what statements you choose to make at your own wedding is, of course, your own business, but hijacking someone else’s wedding and competing with the nuptial couple for attention is just tacky and in bad taste.

Women are not supposed to wear black (a funeral colour and worn only if you wish to tastefully display your disapproval of the marriage) nor are they supposed to wear white or near-white colours, which are the bride’s colours. Daring cleavage, bare midriffs, bare thighs…each a serious fashion faux pas at a wedding. Also eschew attention-grabbing hair styles and colours, hats that grab attention and/or block the view of other attendees, stripper heels, and tight pants. In fact, at a wedding, women should be wearing dresses or skirts and pants are seldom appropriate unless they are of the flowing palazzo pant variety. All of this, of course, does not apply if you are attending a theme wedding or if the bride has assented to something unusual in your garb, knowing it will likely take attention away from her.

Men can be fashion fumblers at weddings as well. Unless otherwise reliably informed (eg, by the bride, not the groom), don’t plan to wear jeans, sandals, sneakers (takkies), caps or hats (unless you are Jewish or it’s a Jewish wedding and you are sporting a yarmulke) and for heaven’s sake, wear socks!! Formal trousers, a dress shirt, leather shoes, a tie, a sport coat…minimal attire for men at the average wedding. Make sure you shave or, if you have facial hair, that it is neat and trimmed.

This is a day belonging to someone else. It is not a platform for you to display to the assemblage how eccentric or what a fashionista you are, or how politically “relevant” you have become. It is not a place to display evidence of your love of animals, the environment, a political party or leader, a religious leaning…this is not a venue for you for anything except to witness the bride and groom become united in matrimony and then share a feast in their honour. If you do not feel you can attend the nuptials and keep PETA in your pocket or Green Peace silent in the harbour of your brain, if you don’t think you can spend several hours watching two people wed and celebrate their union without drawing attention to yourself and your pet causes or peeves, then stay home!! If you feel you absolutely must have a large audience to which to demonstrate your beliefs or feelings or even your sartorial eccentricities, you are well within your rights to throw a party of your own…at your own expense…but you have no right to hijack someone else’s celebration for your own purposes. Good manners and respect for the bridal couple dictates that you do everything in your power to help create a positive, pleasant atmosphere that the bride and groom can remember happily for the rest of their lives.

If you are lucky enough to be part of the bridal party, this means you sacrifice a bit of your own convenience for the rare opportunity to help the bride shine on her special day. Have your own grooming needs taken care of the day before the wedding…nails, hair colour and cut, facial, etc., because on The Day the bride is going to need your help. You are an “attendant” and that is more than an empty title…you are expected to be with her in the hours before the wedding, both for moral support and for practical matters, like helping her with her gown and veil, buttoning 10,000 little buttons, remembering something blue and the coin in her shoe, last minute touch ups to hair and make up, etc. etc. As a bridal attendant, you actually have a job and your reward is that you get to be part of the wedding party…remember that the bride is that star of the show and that you are one of the supporting players.

Remember this is a celebration, but it is their celebration, not yours. Keep your alcohol intake modest, leave everybody at home except those whose names are on the invitation, remember to RSVP, dress appropriately and most of all, enjoy yourself…your joy will simply add to the joy of the celebration!

Why am I surprised?

Written 25 August 2008

We’re travelling again. The Honda is still in the shop, but Bertha has recovered (and at about half of what we expected to pay) so she was our chariot to the airport early Friday afternoon.

Even though we don’t live in the US, we still have to deal with airport security. Just like in American airports, we have to queue up, put our hand luggage through an x-ray unit, and step through metal detectors before being allowed to enter a boarding lounge. And so it happened, a queue of impatient people gathering behind me wanting to get to their boarding gates, and I beeped going through the metal detector. The unsmiling guard directed me to “wait right here” until a female security agent could search me.

I retrieved my handbag from the x-ray machine and the guard scowled at me, so I returned to the spot he had designated for me to wait. A few seconds later a smiling black woman approached me and began to pat me down. And suddenly I was jostled…first lightly, then firmly…and then I was shoved most unceremoniously by a scrawny little hunched over man who was muttering something about me being in his way…as if I had chosen to park myself in his path…and as if he couldn’t see a large uniformed black woman running her hands all over my body. And it really wasn’t that I was in his way…I was exactly where I was supposed to be…he simply was unwilling to stay in his own line to the end of the x-ray conveyor and was trying to go around the people who were taking their turns. Unfortunately for him, the security agent has stationed my not inconsiderable bulk beside his queue for her search.

“That was really rude!” I said to the security agent, who appeared to be as surprised as I was, but the culprit ignored me. Like a twitching little weasel, he scurried over to the end of the x-ray machine and began collecting items, at one point reaching his arm across my husband’s body to retrieve something…Hubby was collecting our hand luggage, his pocket goods, and our laptop from the end of the x-ray machine while I was being patted down by security. Nothing that even vaguely resembled an apology came out of his pursed lips, either to me or Hubby.

The security lady finally decided it was probably the underwires in my bra and waved me onward. We headed down the concourse and found our boarding lounge, only to find Mr. Weasel already there. Being in our boarding lounge signified he was booked on our flight and, since we had at least half an hour until boarding, it was obvious that his ill-mannered rush at security was not motivated by an urgent need to make a departing plane, it was just self-centred boorishness. I found myself hoping the little weasel would try shoving his way past one of the bullishly built rugby fans that were on our flight to Durban as we queued up to board, but they called us to board by row numbers, so the gnomish Mr. Weasel was unfortunately able to board unmolested.

Three hours later, we were deplaning in Durban. Ordinarily, Hubby and I wait until the plane is nearly empty before we leave our seats and take down our carry on luggage, and this was no exception. As we were seated in the 24th of 29 rows, it wasn’t long before the traffic past our seat thinned to a trickle and I stepped up to take our bags from the overhead bin (I was in the aisle seat). I try to be as polite a person as I can, so I did not step into the aisle and block it, but unbeknownst to me, my handbag was protruding out into the aisle. Instead of calling it to my attention, a sturdily built blonde woman tried to shove past me, nearly knocking me over. In a struggle to keep my balance, I thrust myself back upright…causing my bag to protrude back out into the aisle…and she said, testily “I’m trying to get past!” Well, I’m sorry, but the plane isn’t going to take off again with you still on it and a simple “Excuse me, you are blocking the aisle with your handbag,” would have resulted in an immediately cleared aisle and an apology!

Ironically, ShoveyPushy Woman and I met again at the baggage carousel where my bags were among the first out and hers…well who knows when hers showed up? There was no need for her great hurry, no reason for her rude pushiness, other than an urgent desire to get out of the plane before some people in the aisles ahead of her.

The return was no better. My husband, an ordinarily laid-back sort of gent who is normally difficult to ruffle, actually left our seats to go stand near the boarding gate because of an uncommonly annoying boy. He looked to be about 12…certainly old enough to know how to behave in a public place…and he had a soccer ball in a plastic shopping bag. He wandered up and down in front of our row of seats, his parents completely oblivious, kicking that soccer ball through the bag. Since the bag was in his hand, the ball did not leave the vicinity, giving us some respite. No, the ball never moved more than a few inches, allowing him to kick it over and over and over again. Thwack thud thwack thud thwack thud…endlessly.

Hubby and I took up a position near the boarding gate and turned our backs on the annoyance. A few minutes later a black soccer ball rolled past, and a few minutes after that, I saw the ball impact the shoulder of a fellow passenger. Hubby moved us again while I kept a jaundiced eye on that ball. The boy was bouncing it off one of the support pillars of the building, completely ignored by his family: his parents were reading and his teenaged sister, badly bleached blonde and dressed in obscenely tight white capris, a pink and black designer top (at least it said Chanel on the front) and a white bra…the straps were tackily exposed by the racer-back design of her shirt…was busily picking the zits on her face.

Because the support pillars were cylindrical, the kid was unable to anticipate where the ball was going to rebound to and, as a result, the ball was akin to an unguided missile. As it sailed past us on one occasion I leaned to Hubby and said “If that ball hits either of us, it’s mine!” He nodded, obviously as weary of the kid’s antics as I was.

Durban is a hot and humid place and even though the boarding lounge was air conditioned, it was muggy and uncomfortable in there. Boarding was delayed by half an hour, so passengers were grumpy and restless, and when they began boarding the plane by seat number, people began to queue up in anticipation of their number being called. I kept looking out the window onto the tarmac (there are no jetways at Durban’s airport) trying to find the distinctive bright green paint job of a Kulula plane, but despite a steady stream of people walking out the boarding gate and out of sight to the right, I could not locate our aircraft. A wholly irrational frisson of fear trilled down my spine…or sort of a Twilight Zone moment…as I watched fellow passengers file confidently out the door into the unknown.

Our turn came and we made our way out the door and turned right. Somehow I had expected to see the distinguishing green of a Kulula plane out there, but nothing. “Where’s our plane?” I asked Hubby. He nodded towards a blue and white 737 to which the passengers from our lounge were streaming. “That must be it.”

It had nothing on it! Just white paint over dark blue. No insignia, no company name, nothing at all. To call it “nondescript” would be banal, but that is exactly what it was. There was no way to tell if it was a commercial plane, a privately-owned jet, or a government craft. That frisson of fear tickled my spine again, this time feeling not quite so irrational.

When we took our seats the first thing I noticed was how hot the plane was. I reached up to adjust the little air-blower thingie and encountered a solid clear plastic panel covering the reading lights and no air nozzles. A flight attendant was standing nearby and I asked her how to adjust the air…she reached up to the plastic panel, bumped her hand on it, did a double take, then said “I guess they don’t have them on this aircraft.” Very comforting thought…the flight attendant doesn’t know how our airplane works…

No air conditioning…29 rows of 6 passengers each…174 souls plus crew crammed into a narrow aluminium cigar sitting on the black tarmac of the Durban…hot, humid Durban…airport and the air conditioning doesn’t come on until the plane is underway. What genius thought that up? OK, granted the plane’s designers couldn’t know it would sit on the tarmac in sweltering conditions, but whatever made them think that 174 people of varying sizes, shapes and metabolisms would be comfortable at a single uniform temperature and only then after the plane was fully boarded and under way? Calling them unthinking morons would seem to be an understatement.

We were seated in aisle 12…an exit row. Why didn’t the check-in agent ask us if we would take exit row seats? OK, Hubby is a sturdy fellow who can easily lift the 45 lb (20kg) emergency door and the emergency rows do have more leg room, but at what cost? For one thing my handbag…with my money, ID, good jewellery, and diabetic emergency supplies for Hubby…was not allowed under the seat ahead of me like on normal rows. I don’t know about you, but I’m not comfortable with my handbag being stowed in a place easily accessed by a lot of strangers. Secondly, the seats in our row did not recline, which made for a very uncomfortable flight. And third, the plane was absolutely booked full, so we were stuck with these seats as there was no place to which to move us.

The plane was full of rugby fans who had flown to Durban for a game against Australia. South Africa lost, but it didn’t stop the guys from drinking and carousing as if we had won. SoccerBoy was someplace else on the plane, thankfully, but the rugby okes did their best to make up for his absence, the thrumming silence of the plane frequently broken by loud yips and yells. I tried to sleep but between the stiffly upright seat, the inability to regulate the temperature, the turbulence, and the sound effects from the rugby crowd, all I could do was doze. By the time we got to Cape Town I was exhausted, cranky, and had a stiff neck.

Bertha was waiting for us where we left her and sinking into her cushy leather seats was an unmitigated delight. The doggies were hysterical with joy at our return and it was with great relief I sank down into the comfort of my own bed. After a solid night’s sleep I was back to my own cheerful self, but now I find myself wondering…

Why do I continue to expect even the barest of courtesies from people I meet outside my house? Do I set myself up for disappointment by expecting people to wait their turn, politely ask me to step aside if I am blocking their progress, restrain their children from being public nuisances? Should I expect this kind of rudeness as a matter of course now? And if I do, won’t that turn me into a dour old cynic…someone I find miserable, pathetic and pitiable?

What has happened to the barest minimum of courtesy and politeness in public? And why, after all these years, do I continue to be surprised when confronted with the rude and uncivil?