With Open Heart, Paris Can Be a Christmas Tree

In my office building, if you wanted to know something about travel you went to Billy Farrington.

He wasn’t a travel agent. He was just a knowledgeable fellow who didn’t take himself too seriously, had been places, done things and then thought about them.

Like what parts of Dublin still looked like the Dublin of James Joyce, where to stay in London at half the cost with no traffic noise or other tourists, why the English drive on the left and the French do not.

Unloved and Unwanted?

So a few years ago when I was considering my first trip to France and had a few questions, I called on Billy Farrington. I had heard things about Paris such as: No one will speak English to you, and if you try your high school French on them they will laugh at you; taxi drivers will short-change you, and waiters will intentionally get your orders wrong.

My real question for Farrington boiled down to this: If the French don’t like Americans, why should my wife and I go to France, where we would be unloved and unwanted?

Billy held up his hands. “Stop right there,” he said. He picked up the phone and spoke into it. “Miss Ambergris,” he said. “Hold my calls.”

I knew that there was no Miss Ambergris. It was Billy’s way of letting me know he was going to be putting out important information.

He put down the phone and poked a finger into my chest. “Even without your money and your credit cards the French people love you. They wear more American clothes, play more American music and eat more American food than we do. You are not unloved or unwanted.”

“But Bill,” I said, “I’ve heard that in Paris. . . .”

Again he held up his hands. “Now this is not an easy concept, but Paris is not France and France is not Paris. France is big and almost as varied as this country. You’re thinking only about Paris and the people most tourists make their initial contact with, cab drivers and waiters.

“Parisians feel that their city is the greatest, the most beautiful and wonderful place in the world and they may be right. But sometimes they’re afraid that visitors won’t see Paris the way they do. So they hold back. They put up a little wall of reserve.

“Let them know you understand how they feel. It won’t be hard. If you take a look, you’ll understand why they love it. Tell them what a beautiful city they’ve got and they’ll open up like roses in the springtime. You’ll feel as if somebody plugged in your Christmas tree.

“You want to enjoy Paris? Show her some respect. Don’t wear shorts, sandals with socks or baseball caps, and be nice to everybody. Say “S’il vous plait” and “merci” a lot and you’ll be fine.”

“And the cab drivers and waiters?” I asked.

“Just like home, ask the fare to your destination before you get into a taxi. And the waiters . . . ah yes.”

Billy looked at his shoes for a long moment before answering. “More sinned against than sinning.”

I couldn’t keep the surprise off my face.

“Oh yes,” said Billy. “Americans are used to waitresses. They come up to you and you smile at them and they smile at you, and a warm relationship is established for the second most important experience human beings share, eating.”

“Eating?”

“Eating. Now, how does the average American male react when another male, a complete stranger, approaches? Starts asking almost intimate questions in a foreign language? Friendly?”

“Not friendly?”

Adversary Relationship

“Men give each other a macho look and kind of mentally walk around each other stiff-legged like strange dogs in the barnyard. Adversary relationship. Couldn’t be more so if they were meeting in court or in the ring.

“I had a friend,” Billy said, “who used to carry it to extremes. He’d order in his very poor French, then if the waiter was discourteous, my friend would trip him at the first opportunity and then apologize in German.”

I laughed and got a stern look in return.

“Oh, the cruel laughter of youth,” Billy said.

I accepted the “cruel laughter” because I liked the “youth” application. I don’t get it much anymore.

“It’s not the least bit funny,” Billy said. “You see, Paris waiters are the most stiffed of any waiters in the world.

“In a city full of tourists who know they’ll probably never see the person serving them again, there are a lot who walk away leaving zip for the man who does the work. And the locals sit all day behind one cafe au lait or one glass of wine, taking a table out of service and leaving maybe a couple of francs.”

“Wait,” I cut in. “Isn’t that considered normal?”

Paris Waiters as Victims

“That doesn’t make it fair, not if it whittles down his income. My point is that Paris waiters have been victimized so much they tend to respond in kind. Sometimes they might even anticipate and respond ahead of time. Not too many years ago the government, brought to an awareness that all the tipping was driving the tourists away, had a big think session about it.

“ ‘I know what,’ one of the bureaucrats said. ‘Let us include the tip in the bill, just add 15% for service and nobody has to tip anybody!’ ”

“ ‘Voila, mai oui, ‘ the others said, which is French for ‘hey, yeah.’

“In that way the government effectively eliminated any reason a waiter might have had to either give better service or even be civil if he didn’t feel like it.

“On top of that, some but not all of the managers of the restaurants and cafes who had survived the dozens of French governments since World War II began to figure ways of keeping the waiter’s 15% for themselves. After all, there was no shortage of waiters but there was always a shortage of money.

“So the waiters tried to find ways of letting the patrons know they would not be upset at finding a few coins on the table once more. Most of them were disappointed . . . the world had done it to them again. A few, in their bitterness, started even being rude to each other.”

“Then all is lost?” I asked.

“Not so. If they laugh at you, if they bring you a dish of guacamole with two straws when you think you’ve ordered a green salad, let them. After all, if anybody needs a laugh, it’s a Paris waiter.

City Worth Knowing

“Spread a little joy to the people who need it the most and then surprise them by leaving a few coins--not much, just the price of a glass of wine. Chances are that you will never have the problem, so don’t think about it. In the words of Jean-Paul Sartre or Andre Gide or maybe it was Satchel Paige, ‘Don’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.’ Take your wife to Paris. She’s a city well worth knowing.”

We went to France and met the people and enjoyed the country. In Paris we did not wear shorts, nor sandals with socks, nor baseball caps. We smiled a lot, were nice to everybody and had a wonderful time.

Only once, in a restaurant proclaiming itself Voltaire’s old stomping ground, did we get bad service and a dish of guacamole instead of a green salad. Pretty good considering that we were in Paris for three weeks.

Everything Farrington told me was true, even the part about how Parisians feel about their city.

My wife, Joyce, and I, while eating in a small cafe one evening, got involved in a conversation with a French couple at the next table. They had mentioned that they were on vacation, so I asked them how far they’d traveled.

“How far?” the man asked. “We live around the corner. We are Parisians. Why should we travel when we are already there?”