The past week was difficult, in some personal ways, hence my lack of posting for awhile.
Since that time, I have been discovering new museums (Rodin, Bourdelle, Middle-Ages, Chateau Vincennes, Basilique de Saint-Denis, and others), sleeping in parks (Belleville) during sunny afternoons, exploring new areas (Olympiades with its huge high-rises, eastern Paris with a myriad of ethnic neighborhoods, my own neck of the woods too) and trying not to get sick like mostly everyone else has. Maybe it’s the combination of classes starting, or the minute changes in weather which decide how many layers to wear, but stress is taking a toll on some. For me, maybe it’s been a change in my relations with the French.
Like I may have previously said, the French to me are about form and formulation of experiences into someone unique. What has intrigued me lately is the concept of egalite, one of the three pillars of la Republique Francaise.
These thoughts have been swirling around my head because of my recent quest to nail down the internship. At IES, I’m taking an internship class where the professor in charge listens to your interests and helps find you an internship that will develop them as well as build on the experience for the French employer. Several people who are in the program work for universities, a culinary school, a stock and trading corporation, and many others, such as me, who work for ONG’s (the French abbreviation for non-governmental organization). My work is with Unis-Cite, a now national organization which aims to provide national service for youths to not only create the sense of community between disenfranchised groups, but to create change for others.
It all sounded well and good, but I had to set up the interview with the Paris director. After repeated phone calls that were either not returned or answered, I resorted to contacting my professor in charge. She was a bit angry, saying that I had no choice and HAD to contact him as soon as possible…she then finally gave me his email address, to which he replied to. I had heard a few stories from other students that many French managers do not return emails or phone calls fast, and so far this well-shared issue seemed partially true. So, I set up the interview for last Thursday. Their office is in an isolated neighborhood with many Chinese residents in the 19th arrondisment, hidden in a court yard up a large flight of stairs. My business suit looked pretty crisp for being stashed tightly in a suitcase and not worn for months (the shoes are another long blog entry for tomorrow).
Then I waited for an hour. I had been 15 minutes early, in hopes that I could be done and out fast so I could attend the rest of my classes for the day. Nope. What was weird was that no one offered an explanation to where he was, or what he was doing. In the French work world, there seem to be many unspoken rules that run completely contradictory to those of America. Namely, a boss does not tell explicitly go around and tell the employees what to do. Yes, you kind of just have to be “pro-active” and do the work you think should get done, in the amount of time you see fit. When my professor explained this, she also said that because of this, the French were more productive than the Americans or Asians because they work in concentrated amounts with lots of padding for rest. I’m not really sure yet if this is actually true. But I do know that most managers invite you to lunch, and that is when conversation about work and the ideologies regarding projects and such are bounced back and forth, the manager giving feedback. Or, as my prof says, “they only talk to you when something may be wrong when it’s not at lunch time.”
But what I did notice during my wait was that each person who passed by greeted me and gave me one of those complete “French looks,”….something that includes a bit of a smile, a deep look (though brief) into your eyes, and a sense of judgement depending on how you respond to the greeting and look. The interview which followed was a bit drawn out, as he repeated a few questions since I don’t think he understood my terminology or the work ideology I had been accustomed to. He was very interested about my time with the government, and why I was making such a change from the big to the small…my response that I wanted to be part of something that wouldn’t be finished when I walked out the door at 5pm seemed appropriate, and we both proposed that I help do some research as well as working on projects with other people my age.
At the end, he surprisingly told me that my French was good, even though I was sweating and looked a bit confused. My ususal grasp of “correct” interview words that I has been indoctrinated with in the past had seemed meaningless, because it was more of an interview about personality rather than achievements. I liked this, because it’s more of a process of creative flow rather than overzealous counting of time by a micromanager (read last internship). So I guess I start this week, though I wasn’t given a time or even what I should wear. Once again, I guess you have to be “pro-active,” or whatever that might mean in France.
This concept of egalite in the workplace, of equalness in many senses, stems from the changes after the Revolution. Because of the different social order which rose from the bloody struggles throughout the last few centuries, there is one rule that is very unspoken in France: you never ask how much someone makes or of the social class that they might be part of. When I asked my host dad about it, he said he wouldn’t tell someone how much money he makes even if he had a gun up to his head. It’s a transgression that is seen to be rude in a country where richness of materials (the “bling-bling” culture) should not matter as much as richness of individual knowledge and experience. I was told that it was because many people who were nobility in the old regime had the right to not work, so asking how much money someone made was not only unnatural, but demonic for someone that work was not of their stature. This survives today, as I had no clue that the neighbor my host dad likes very much is a descendent of the Duke who owned le Chateau de Fontainbleu (read really famous and huge). Things about such origins are not readily discussed…for a segment of the population.
So the egailte that I see more and more is one of politeness for the differences in past stature as well as one of a humble regard for others who might not be of your disposition. This is incredibly different than at home, and frankly, I like it a lot.
