When you arrive in the morning, to a small French company like mine, you’ve got to kiss everyone in the office. For me, that’s like 3-5 Hello Kisses per day. Everyone kisses differently. If you’re close or in a particularly good mood, you might really plant more of a kiss on the cheek of your greeter. Otherwise, a brushing of cheeks accompanied by the sound of kissing is acceptable, and far more common.
Throughout the workday, there are other invasions of personal space with which one must cope. Sayonara to all of those good old American desk lunches – you know the ones I mean – where you heat up that cup-o-soup in the microwave and slurp it down in haste while perusing Facebook and ignoring your telephone.
Goodbye are the days of lunch being a personal moment of rest and repose. If I start getting hungry, I think, naturally, about what I might want to eat, then about who is also in the office and what they might want to eat. And then I do the rounds. “Have you eaten? I’m going to Picard.” This bit I don’t mind so much. It’s the part after this – when you get back to the office with your boxes of frozen meals, or styrocartons of kebabs and must then sit around with all of your colleagues to eat.
Goddammit, sometimes I like to eat alone.
At my desk.
Reading a book.
And then everyone is smoking before you’ve even finished eating (some of us like to eat slowly).
One must also remember to bid farewell to all of one’s coworkers at the end of the day. For whatever reason, the kissing bit is often left out in farewells, but everyone has their own set of unwritten rules about it. For example, as I was bidding farewell to two coworkers one night, one of them decided to kiss me goodbye. This resulted in the other coworker, though not usually a Goodbye Kisser, kissing me goodbye, out of pure obligation. It is unacceptable to leave the workplace without bidding each coworker farewell.
But when exactly is the end of the day? Another funny thing about this country is its hours of operation. We Americans are known for our incessant working, our lack of vacation, our habit of holding two or three jobs simultaneously. And after some time here, I can’t really tell who has it worse.
As far as health benefits go, France is kicking our ass. And hey, that might be the most important thing here, in the end. A nation of healthy people! People who aren’t worried about taking their sick kid to the doctor because it might cost them hundreds of dollars at an emergency room…hundreds of dollars they don’t have.
The other side (I wanted to say ‘more superficial side’, but that is probably just my own vacationless culture speaking) to Workplace Life is that of hours worked, and vacation granted.
The French workday begins between 9-10am, and much to my horror, seems never to end. People just work and work and work, until, “well, I guess I’m done for the day.” I mean, how do you know when it’s time to go home? Isn’t there always work to be done?
Rush hour in Paris is between 8 and 10am, and then from 530-8pm.
Rush hour in Boston is 7-9am, and 4-7pm.
The French receive, on average, FIVE WEEKS of paid vacation per year. Five Full Fucking Weeks (pardon my French). Plus about 11 unpaid national holidays. You also earn MORE vacation if you decide to work 39 hours per week instead of 35.
For the information of my French or otherwise International readers – Employers in the United States are Not Obligated to grant vacation time. If they do, it averages about 10 days per year, and working overtime is simply rewarded with money. Being at work 40 hours a week is the norm, technically clocking in at 35, as the lunch hour is unpaid. If a worker surpasses 40 hours in the workweek, they are paid overtime. Woohoo!
Also, as the American system is not designed for all of this wild vacation playtime, it is nearly impossible to take all of your vacation days in one go.
Vive le Long Weekend?
in transito 