Les Courses
Reader, if you don’t like bitchin’, this week’s Les Courses segment is not for you, so just scroll on down to Parlez-vous? for some lighter, hopefully funnier content because I’m about to talk about French grocery store shelvers.
For those of you who stayed, I need to preface this week’s segment with an acknowledgement of my privilege and American-ness. I am privileged to be living in France AT ALL. I am hella privileged to have a working vehicle (my mom starting our vehicle-of-the-moment was like a game of Russian Roulette—would we be going to town that day? Would Mom be calling around for a ride to work? Would we be staying home on a sweltering day, spraying each other with the water hose instead of going to the river?). I get in my car confident it will start. I go to the grocery store confident I will be able to purchase everything my family needs (and a shit ton of stuff it doesn’t but thinks it can’t live without). I don’t have to approach the cash registers, taking deep breaths to prepare myself for the possibility that I will go over-budget or be digging through my purse for linty coins trying to avoid having to choose between milk and eggs. I don’t have to write hot checks to buy bread. I don’t have to walk miles to a gas station to buy Funyuns as my only lunch. I don’t have to walk back to my overpriced motel kitchenette, round with child, schlepping all my WIC items, the milk so heavy it’s causing my back to ache, my round ligaments to strain and the handles of the plastic bags to dig into my swollen finger flesh. As I clawed my way up into the American middle class (ironically by marrying a French engineer), I started to forget. That’s the point, right? Leave all that hardship and sparsity behind you? Forget how good you have it now, how bad it was back then. Get annoyed, even angry, when things don’t go down the way you expect, do not meet your standards. (I’m hoping this paragraph of taking stock will balance out all the griping I’m about to do.)
You know how in the States, you walk into most supermarkets and everything is on the shelf, the floors are shiny and clean, clear of debris and have been for hours? In the morning, the aisles are deserted, and you have time and space to scan the shelves, compare labels, make informed choices. You might see a store employee here or there, but they’re usually running the register, slicing meats in the deli, cleaning up on Aisle Four. Maybe they’re all having a morning meeting in their red vests, getting pumped for the sales day. But mostly, they’re out of sight until you need them (and even then….). They got there before dawn, replenished the shelves, swept up any messes, polished the floors—all before the doors opened. (If the store is open all night, these things still happen while you sleep or are otherwise distracted). If they need to restock, they try to do so discreetly, they stay out of your way, defer to you and your needs. And if you need to know where in the Sam hell the fried crispy onions are, you need only ask, and they’ll tell you the aisle. Hell, in the south, they’ll walk you right on over there to make sure they haven’t steered you wrong.
In France, it has been my experience that stores do their greeting and shelving and cleaning right about the time you get there which usually means Saturday, all day long. You will have to do at least two (probably way more) u-turns during your shopping experience because there is a pallet jack piled with open products, a trio of shelvers having a mini-meeting about some political or philosophical subject (pre-covid, you had to wait for them to all faire la bise before they would get out of your way), a pile of boxes whose contents are being arranged on the shelf—oh, you need pasta sauce? Chill for a min while I stock all eight shelves. You can try to duck in and grab one while I go back to the pallet jack for another box but you do so at your peril because I will be back. Oh, you wanted to actually read the labels so you don’t buy the mushroom or olive sauce your kids hate and want to make sure you get the one with the basil? Tough tuchus. Mill about looking for other things on your list and try back in a few. (If you’re French, you might not even SEE these people stocking the shelves and they probably don’t see you. I used to think it was pure narcissistic selfish egotism (all the words I can think of added together to mean DICKISH) but have realized after living here a long while that it’s just hyper-focus. Or maybe thinking that is just how I soothe myself.)
It took me over a decade to learn the nuanced protocol involved in asking a shelver (or other store employee) for assistance. In the States, if you see someone stocking a shelf or busy working, you don’t want to bother them but you need those damn onions for your Green Bean Casserole so you ask but you want to make it as quick and pain-free for them. You say, “Hi, where would I find the fried onions?” and rush away looking for your product or jogging to keep up with them as they zoom to the salad topping area.
In France, you are bothering the shelver (the verb to bother in French is déranger so you are derange-ing them, putting them out of sorts (as ranger means to straighten), you’re de-straightening them). You must apologize. You can’t start with hello if you want those onions (because they might know where they are but they aren’t going to tell you if you don’t ask right). Any time you approach a shelver—OR ANY FRENCH STRANGER TO WHOM YOU MEAN TO POSE A QUESTION—you absolutely must start with “Excusez-moi.” If you want to go that extra mile, you can say, “Excusez-moi de vous déranger.”
Their answer will inevitably be “Bonjour.”
At this point, you may already have the words oignons frits on your tongue but you’ll need to swallow that. You must not proceed forward without a return greeting. Only then can you ask for the location of those onions.
My French teacher/mentor once told me that in order to survive in France you must be either cute or interesting. Reader, my forearms are riddled with ink my head is almost entirely shaved (and the little bun that’s left is blue from pre-covid galaxy hair dye remnants.) I wouldn’t say I’m cute but I probably look pretty interesting. If you don’t have a punk hairdo going for you and you’re not a supermodel, you might have to lean on the element of distress. You can’t LIVE without those onions or you wouldn’t be derange-ing them. Ham up the drama—everything your feminist mentors told you NOT to do.
Here’s a prototypical exchange:
I approach the shelver: “Excusez-moi.” Excuse me.
Shelver: “Oui, bonjour.” Yes, hello.
Me, demure: “Bonjour. Est-ce que vous Hello. Would you happen to
sauriez où je pourrait trouver des know where I could find
onions frits?” fried onions?
Shelver: “Des onions frits? C’est quoi, ça?” Fried onions? What’s that?
Me: “Ce sont des petits onions craquants They’re little crispy onions
qu’on mets sur les salades, etc?” to sprinkle on salads, etc.
Shelver: “Je connais pas.” Never heard of it.
The exchange could stop there depending on if you’ve been cute, “interesting” or desperate enough and whether or not this shelver is having a good day, feeling generous and benevolent. Supermarket employees are gentle tyrants who believe they own the store and you are lucky to be allowed access (I say this because of how many times a shelver has said, “I don’t have any of that” instead of “we”). You’re in their house and you need something of theirs AND you’ve interrupted their important work. IF the shelver is in a good mood, they might ask a colleague, (or better yet, act like they know where to look). The shelver might word the question to the colleague as if the original shelver knows what fried onions are and have been eating them all their lives. The colleague might know. The colleague might tell you with confidence exactly where the onions are but you’ll go there and they won’t be there. But, there’ll be a new shelver and you can start all over, depending on just how truly desperate you are to have a traditional Green Bean Casserole. You might toy with the idea of just deep frying some onions yourself, maybe trying to buy them on the internet, asking a friend in the States to send you some in their next American care package.
(The way this story ended in real life was, after I had looked in all three places suggested by various shelvers, I was just about to give up when I was approached by a woman. “Excuse me for derange-ing you and I’m sorry for overhearing but, I’ve seen those crispy fried onions over at the self-discount area.” I gushed my gratitude and tried to soothe her continued apologies for having listened and talked to me unsolicited. And sure as shit, those crispy fried onions were right where she said. As I started to search for THO and the cart, containers of crispy fried onions in hand, I spotted her at the end of the aisle—like, y’all, she had followed me to make sure I had found my onions. French people WILL surprise you.)
To illustrate what a trip to the supermarket is like, we made you a little movie:
Parlez-vous?
OU v. U
If you took even high school French, you might know how difficult it is for an American mouth to pronounce the French U. If you have never been intimate with the French language, you may not know that there are two sounds associated with U. There’s an open U usually spelled “ou” as in vous, tout, nous, etc. and there’s a closed U that doesn’t really exist in English. That’s the one I want to talk about. There are all kinds of videos online that will teach you how to say it like this one and this rather long one. My go-to explanation is one that my French phonetics teacher gave me in undergrad: You make your mouth into a chicken’s asshole and say an English “E.” It works every time.
Why does it matter? Well, there are some fun minimal pairs in French here’s an example of a few but my favorite was learned the hard way. When speaking a foreign language, because you’re working hard on doing things properly and you haven’t formed the muscle memory or habit yet, it’s tempting to hypercorrect yourself. It’s even easy to do this in English (think about Lady Gaga’s song Yöu and I which is not grammatically correct but still pretty damn catchy as a song): I wanted to tell a French person I was en route (meaning, as you know, “on my way”) but instead, I said I was en rute (meaning “in heat”… like an animal).
It’s VERY easy to accidentally say NUMBER 13 of this amazing list of things you better not say: “Merci beau cul” (“Thank you, nice ass”) instead of “Merci, beaucoup” (“Thank you very much”)—in my opinion, you should try to be able to say them both but know what you’re saying when you do.
Of all things French linguistics, it has been my experience that this distinction (ou vs. u) is the most important in making yourself understood and avoiding saying something inappropriate without knowing it. Please do say inappropriate things! I’m here for it! Just mean it!
jacasser
I just learned this word! When you say it, you sound like a French person saying, “Jackass, ‘ey!” Wouldn’t that be awesome if there was a verb that mean “to jackass?” Like, “hey, what are you doing this weekend?” “Oh, I thought I would lie around and jackass a little bit.” Or, “hey, what was that guy doing yelling at that waitress?” “Oh, don’t mind him, he was just jackassing.” But alas, jacasser doesn’t mean “to jackass” but instead means literally “to caw” like a magpie. The connotation of the word is to ramble on about unimportant/uninteresting things. So, I guess it DOES kind of mean “to jackass” depending on how you feel about the loquacious.
lâcher une caisse/lâcher une perle
Of course, I learned this one from having teenagers. It transliterates as “to drop a box” (caisse) or “to drop a pearl” (perle), but it’s an expression meaning “to fart/pass gas.” Obviously, if your post-op surgeon walks in to see if you’ve passed that first toot, don’t go saying you haven’t dropped a box or pearl yet. In that case, you can say that yes, you have had gas (avoir des gaz) or you can use the popular verb péter which means “to explode.” ie. J’ai pété. = I farted. (Un pet. = A fart. ) That said, péter can be used for other expressions, too (here are a few).
BONUS: REGISTER… My mention of hypercorrection (Lady Gaga song) and how you wouldn’t tell your post-op doc you “dropped a bomb” after surgery reminded me of the existence of register. Though in English, most will say there’s just formal versus informal (as does this site ), but if you get an applied linguist (ahem, me) especially a sociolinguist, you’ll get a this explanation or this one. There are VERY clearly defined registers in French. When I was in school, there were only three (littéraire, élévé and familier). Now, according to this site there are six.
Most communicators understand that there are things you don’t say to certain people, but it’s not always obvious. One time, as I landed in Paris, I missed my connecting flight to Lyon. I went to the help desk and the airline representative was super helpful, complimented my French—“you have no accent!” I was chuffed because it had been six months since I had been in France. I thought to myself, “Still got it.” When he asked which train I’d like to take, the 8am or 9am, I said, “Je m’en fous.”
Reader, when my memoir HOW I LEARNED FRENCH comes out, you’ll discover that I learned most of my spoken French while living in a residence hall and working in a high school. A lot of my knee-jerk French is in a, ahem, “student” register. When I met this nice airline representative, I had just spent all night trying to avoid the smelly armpit and manspready knees of my in-flight neighbor instead of getting any rest. It’s no wonder my student French came spilling out of my mouth.
“Je m’en fous,” is a familiar way to say “I don’t care.” (It literally means “I don’t give a fuck.” Here (in French) is a video about the origin of the word foutre). EVERYONE says this….. in their house to their family members, in the hallways at school, to their friends and close acquaintances… One does NOT say this to a helpful airline representative who has JUST complimented one’s competency in his language.
Like magic, the airline representative’s face fell, his voice went cold. He printed out the ticket, handed it to me as he looked away and gave me a “polite” smile when I wished him a bonne journée and I deserved nothing less for dropping my register and treating him like he was someone I knew intimately (you should sense a milligram of sarcasm in my tone, but still, some truth). While the French seem to have NO sense of personal space (it’s a little better since the coronapocalypse), in general, they very much do have a sense of personal distance linguistically, hence the need for register.
Some more polite (think “dang” v. “damn,” “shoot” v. “shit”) ways of saying “je m’en fous” are “je m’en FICHE” or “je m’en MOQUE.” (HERE is a cool vid about that.)
Y’all, I didn’t even MEAN “I don’t care.” What I WANTED to say was, “Either one is fine.” The polite-ish way to say this is “Ça m’est égal” which means “it’s all the same to me” and I thought about it the SECOND I saw his sweet, flirty smile melt into disapproval.
just ask joj
This week’s question is a simple one with a DOOZIE of an answer. It comes from my friend Susan who lives in Virginia:
TAXES! Do you pay more (percentage wise) there or US? I already know your taxes actually go to the people, unlike the US.
I’ve gotten this question a LOT over the years. Fiscally conservative friends used the question as a barb, to insinuate that life in France is burdensome because you have to give “half your money” to the “government.” Fiscally permissive (liberal) friends usually ask behind their hand, hoping the conservatives aren’t right as many of them look to France as a model for how to better the USA.
The good news is, someone has already done all the legwork for us in this Wikipedia page ! The bad news is, the contributors did a very thorough job. Maybe too thorough for those of you who just want a quick rundown…
So, here’s the quickie:
Sales tax
Called TVA (Taxe sur la Valeur Ajouté), the rates are the same for all of continental France* but tax rates vary depending on the product (like food vs. toiletries, etc.) The TVA is included in the price displayed in the store—you pay the price displayed—but it is detailed at the bottom of your sales receipt.
*EXCEPT (cuz France): There are anomalies like zones that are tax-free on certain products such as butter. It’s called “beurre de zone” because it’s in a certain geographical location (called the “zone franche”), examples of zones franches are within a certain distance from the Swiss border and many urban areas considered to be sensibles but are now called prioritaires since 2015—these are the areas FOX NEWS tried to call “no-go zones” back in 2015 and Paris threatened to sue the tabloid channel.
Tax rates may vary in non-continental areas like Martinique.
Income tax
This site gives a good primary explanation:
At first glance, French income taxes look like they’re insanely high, and that it’s just better to live in the US. However…France makes a very clear distinction between Taxes and Social Contributions. Basically, [your net income] is how much money you’ve got leftover after paying your taxes and contributing for social benefits, such as unemployment insurance, retirement plans, healthcare, etc. If we were to only take taxes into consideration, these rates would be much closer, and French people might actually pay a little less depending on the category…. In fact, unless you’re extremely rich, you’re likely to have more money left over to spend for yourself in France than in the US. The main difference is that in France, it’s mandatory to contribute to social benefits, while it’s up to your preference in the US.
And I think that’s where the distinction lies. In the States, your pay stub may have five or six lines of taxes—federal, state, local, social security. But in France, the tax and social contributions can take up several PAGES of your pay “stub” because they itemize where your money is going. Here is an example (and explanation) of a basic French pay stub.
Filing your taxes
The French equivalent of our US tax day (April 15th) is June 1st. In France, there are private tax assistance companies but there aren’t sites like Turbo Tax (etc.) because the French government does that for you for free. If you do not have a computer at home, you can make an appointment at an in-person tax center called a centre des impôts run by the Centre des Finances Publiques where they help you file (or let you use their computers). If you choose to file electronically from your home computer, you go to the website, type in your tax number and a form appears with all of your information (similar to a W-2 in the States) already filled in. You verify whatever you want to, itemize for deductions, add income they don’t know about like cash earnings or foreign investments, etc. and click VALIDER. Then, it takes MONTHS for them to process it. Eventually, you get a notification (via email or mail depending on how you filed) letting you know how much of a refund you will receive or if you owe anything.
Your local taxes are filed and processed on the same website.
Before 2019, folks paid their taxes at the end of the fiscal year partially because they wanted to guard their personal information (such as spousal income, side investments, etc.) from their employers. French citizens resisted filling out the equivalent of the W-4 for this reason—they didn’t want their employers all up in their personal biz. SOME PEOPLE chose to pre-pay quarterly to the government to avoid paying a lump sum at the end.
Starting January 2019, the French government imposed on the employers to collect income tax. Here is a short video (IN FRENCH) explaining the change to a prélèvement à la source.
BONUS CONFUSING DEFINITIONS: There are four kinds of “tax”…
Impôt—does not correspond to a specific public use or charge. Goes to the general budget of the federal government. Is used to fund all major public services—government, law enforcement, public safety and rescue, research, education, military (and public servants or fonctionnaires).
Taxe—like impôts but for a specific benefit (or prestation) but every French citizen pays it whether or not they directly benefit from it (which means that even though the TVA is CALLED a taxe, it’s ACTUALLY an impôt).
Redevance—(in English, a royalty) the opposite of a taxe in that you only pay for it if you benefit from it. The most well-know is the contribution à l’audiovisuel which is a yearly fee for public television channels. When you purchase a TV, the government gets your name. (And when you file your income taxes there’s a little square to check saying you still have a TV.) The other obvious one is local trash collection (as opposed to taking your trash to the dump (called a déchetterie)).
Cotisations sociales—(social contributions) amounts you pay in advance for your own benefit (and to the benefit of the entire citizenry). It’s like insurance. Everyone pays it and everyone benefits when they have a need. Things covered by social contributions are unemployment, health care, retirement, and family benefits like childcare, maternity leave, school supplies, and other aid. This is the stuff that makes France “socialist” by most folks’ definitions.
the jojdom
L’Organisme
If you’ll remember from last week, I went to the cardiologist and he agreed that because my heart attack was SCAD-provoked (the importance of which is that I don’t have damage to the organ) and because it was nearly six years ago, I no longer need beta blocker.
Reader, I was so excited to stop taking the extra pill I didn’t think about how I might need to taper off something that was helping to slow my heart rate. It has been a week and the withdrawal has been quite a jerk. It started with vertigo (the main reason I inquired about stopping the beta blocker was the vertigo I was getting, so FAIL), moved on to racing heartbeat, heightened anxiety, shortness of breath and now I have splitting headaches. It all sounds covid-y, eh?
I took my blood pressure because I was seeing stars. 143/96. Before stopping the betas, I’d been hovering around 120/70 or 80. I am also getting a different reading for each arm (L=140/90-ish, R=120/80-ish) and according to the internet—which everyone knows you should never consult—this could mean some scary-scary.
SO I’m laying low this week. I had this great new workout all organized (that’s what happens when I don’t have a physical way to release my stress, I think about working out… or smoking) and ready to share with you but that will have to wait until next week or later. This week, I’m going to chill on the treadmill, walking (flat road) for 30-45 minutes a day. I want to maintain all the work I’ve done this month but I don’t want to collapse from a heart attack or a stroke. I’ve read online that getting back to “normal” after stopping the betas can take weeks or months. Cross y’all’s fingers it’s the former for me, thanks.
Info Brico
So, in Europe (and thus, here), most gardeners and farmers are careful not to set their plants out until after what they call Les Saints de Glace. Here is a Wikipedia entry on it in English (here en français). Basically, since medieval times, farmers have reported three days in May (traditionally 11, 12, and 13) that tend to get colder and the more delicate crops and plantings will freeze.
You saw the pictures last week of the tomato plants we bought and put in the ground. It was this time last year that we started our covid garden (and we’re way down south in Provence) so we thought we were safe. Wrong. The night day after we got the plants in the ground, it snowed. (In many places in France, the snow flurries that happen in mid-March are called les giboulées de mars.) We should have kept all the plants in until at least early May.
A heartfelt salute to fallen tomato plants (and zucchini and basil):
Boulot
I wrote the “essay” about becoming a teenager while living on the road. But I think I either have one long essay that needs to be doubled in word count or three completely different (shorter) essays. I had to take a few days off from it, to get some distance, but I’m looking forward to picking it back up tomorrow.
I’m working on one of the hardest chapters of the French thread of my braided memoir HOW I LEARNED FRENCH. When I started trying to trim it down, it was 26 pages. I’ve worked on it for two, 8-hour days and it’s now only 25 pages, lol. I’m not finished with it, so I think there is still a great deal to be cut but I like the results of the work I’ve already done on it. I’m making headway and that’s good. I feel like it’s taking me way too long to finish this project, even this time around. I don’t know why I feel such a sense of urgency. Maybe some part of the writer in me is worried I’ll catch covid any day now and not make it to the finish line.
In happier news, I got my micro memoir—literally a 100-word paragraph—published on a fantastic site called Five Minutes (and they accepted another piece this weekend). I’d be honored if you’d give Sunday School a quick read (seriously, 2 min read at the most).
Writing flash nonfiction is like therapy for me. I am plagued by attention to detail and that makes for a VERY verbose story. With flash, I get to capture moments that might seem extraneous to my various memoirs but which are important or significant to me. I’m also forced to trim it down to the bones and try to find the words that will make the moment as powerful as possible. For some reason, flash feels more low-stakes to me, too, when it comes to submitting them for publication. Maybe REAL flash writers don’t feel that way. For now, I’m using these pieces to practice being brave.
La bouffe
My two favorite foods of all time are French fries and popcorn (separately … that said….).
Growing up, I lived a few years here and there with my Grands in Arkansas. We didn’t have electricity or running water or plumbing, so our main sources of entertainment were sitting around the wood stove of an evening, playing music—Grumps would play his mandolin, I’d fiddle around with the spoons and Grandma would fill the house with strains of church hymnals and folk anthems, accompanied by the zinging vibrations of her autoharp—OR filling an enormous stainless steel bowl with stovetop-popped corn. Grandma always sprinkled it with brewer’s yeast, making it even nuttier (and “healthy,” riiiiight?).
As a mom, I re-discovered the Orville Redenbacher air popper (then melted butter and drizzled it on there), effectively indoctrinating my kids in popcorn worship. We even decorate our holiday tree with popcorn garlands, making the house smell amazing (and keeping us snacky) for the whole month of December.
When I’m in the States, I try to go to the movies at least twice a month. Of course, I go to the cinema to enjoy the movie, learn something new, support the arts and all that. But, if I’m being honest, my main reason for going to the cinema is the popcorn. I usually join whatever points-racking membership I can so I get discounts and freebie popcorn. You won’t see me ordering the ladylike portions, either. I go for the hoss serving. And, I usually ask them to “layer the butter” (meaning they’ll fill the bucket or bag halfway with popcorn, douse it in butter (or let me do it through the self-serve), fill the container the rest of the way and then douse it again on top. In my years of faster metabolism, I could eat the entire large bucket to myself and at least half of the refill.
So, when I went to my first movie in France I was surprised and dismayed that they do not have buttered popcorn! Back then (late 90s) they only had sucré (kind of like kettle corn but not as awesome). Eventually, I grew to like the sugary corn but one of the first things I did when I got back to the States was go to a theatre purely to buy the a huge bucket of popcorn doing the backstroke in butter. In the mid-aughts, they started to serve both sugary and salty (salé)—but still, NO BUTTER—always shooting me an annoyed look when I asked for them for half and half.
When I first got to France, the only popcorn you could find outside the cinema were bags of stale, sugary, pre-popped corn! There was no microwave popcorn! (That was one of the things my friends who visited from the U.S. brought me was a ginormous box of movie theatre microwave popcorn). There were no unpopped kernels of corn for me to pop stove top (I think the first time I saw those were in the early-aughts at a health food store. When I moved back here as a mom in 2008, you could find the corn but none of the poppers worked. They were expensive and left half the kernels unpopped. We have probably spent 200 euros total on popcorn machines trying to find one that works.
Finally, in spring of last year, near the beginning of our covid lockdown, THO found us a silicone microwave popcorn popping bowl. It only pops 1/3 cup of kernels at a time, but it pops almost all of them! (That said, my microwave seems to wimp out after five or six poppings.) We fill our ginormous bowls with popcorn and I melt Breton salted butter on the stovetop and drizzle it, sprinkle it with finely ground pink Himalayan salt. If I don’t do this at least once a month, the kids get mean.
I made you a little movie about it:
HERE is also a video (IN FRENCH) about a French company who makes popcorn and actually exports it to the States, whuuuuh? (HERE is another (also in FRENCH)—a little longer and more interesting because they even talk about whether or not they prefer salty or sugary and include that popcorn started with the Native Americans). HERE is the company’s website (IN ENGLISH).
Merci.
Thanks for reading me! And thanks to all the smarty pantses and cool cats/kittens who have sent me the great questions for just ask joj. Keep all that coming (and feel free to comment here).
And don’t forget to share the joj show with all your favorite francophiles.
These stories are fun and informative. I feel like I'm there with you. Can't wait for the next installment!
Thrilled and proud!