The post office often gets a bad rap. Long lines, grumpy workers, and ever-more-expensive postage. Despite this, I love snail mail: the little joy of opening up a card or package is one that I enjoy giving and receiving.
My grandma sent me cards every week when I was growing up, enclosing comics and a crisp dollar bill as “ice cream money.” In college, my roommates were often jealous: whenever the postman pulled up, there was always something for me. Perhaps some homemade cookies, or just a few magazine articles that my mom thought I might like. I always send postcards to friends when I visit a new place, and I’ve been “postcard pals” with a former lacrosse teammate for years now.
My obsession with La Poste–man has taken on a new fervor lately. My grandma asked me when I arrived in Spain why I hadn’t thanked her for the cookies. Umm, what cookies? Oh, my favorite cookies that she had sent over a few weeks ago. I was sure they’d be waiting for me when I got back from Spain…but I’m still waiting.
Now, cookies are mostly sentimental value—but there’s unmistakeable monetary value i the brand-new iPod that was also mailed a week ago and was certified in arrive in 3-5 days. No sign of it—until I trekked to the post office before work today, just to find out that it’s been blocked in customs in Paris for the past week. Awesome—thanks for letting me know.
The whole episode underscores a significant difference in attitudes between the French and Americans: customer service. To a greater degree, it also signifies our general outlook on life. The French assume that everything will go wrong—and seem to enjoy a certain amount of schadenfreude when it does—and tend to be shocked when things go right the first time around. Americans believe that everything should always go right (for them), and are outraged when it doesn’t.
The French postal workers were quick to carelessly shrug away my problems: no smiles or offers of additional help here. My poste-related problem doesn’t make it the problem of La Poste workers. They expertly removed themselves from blame without pointing me to the source of the problem–c’est comme ça.
The little facets of customer service that we take for granted—like opening up another register when lines get long, a flexible return policy, or just a polite greeting with a smile are hard to come by in France. The customer is rarely right, and you can never expect things to go smoothly the first time. Good customer service honestly takes me by surprise—when Galeries Lafayette allowed me to exchange a purse with a broken clasp, I was so overjoyed that I rushed home to email my mom and a friend about my good fortune. I never would have thought twice about an exchange of a defective product in America–that’s just how things should be.
As an American, it can be a tough adjustment. I studied marketing and worked in customer service: I recognize the profitability of effective processes and friendly employees. It’s hard to understand why French businesses don’t value the customer and accept that bit of unfriendliness is just part of being French.
As for my packages? I get to wake up early again tomorrow to go to La Poste and verify the email of customs in Paris (since the one they gave me failed). And then, all I can do is wait and hope that La Poste will find a way to shock me.
