For instance this year in those areas where the Four day School Week is in place, back to school day is Wednesday, August 29. Why shorten children’s summer and trouble parents who may have access to vacation rentals that run from one Saturday to the next?

Especially given that six weeks into the school year, arrives another 10 day vacation period for them, except this time its Fall, with its drizzle and cold in most areas of France. The dates are quite absurd as well: october 26 th to Thursday November 8th… Why not just break for a week? And why come back on a Thrusday? Make it a Monday!

I remember escaping to Washington, DC to see beautiful foliage and celebrate Halloween where its a fun time for kids the last time that break came around.. And of course, the children missed a couple days of school.

You want a country that likes things complicated? Choose France!

-> The official national school Calendar and a link to The Four Day School Week calendar by area ( in French)

Just so you know, the country is split up in three major zones ( A, B , C) with different school vacation dates, to limit the amount of people traveling for vacation at a given time…

Internet access, cable TV and cell phone service providers seem to top the list, but banks are not bad either.

Take two cell phone providers I’ve tried so far (between 2004 and 2007).

One is Bouygues Telecom, the other is Neuf mobile.

Both (and all others to my knowledge) have the same great policy:

• When you’ re a prospective client, you can contact them for free,
• As soon as you indicate your wish to sign up, you’re charged for any attempt to contact them.

And I don’t mean peanuts, I mean phone numbers with a surcharge compared to a regular number! The rate these days is .34 Euros per minute, and the hold time is charged as well! Is that believable for my American reader? Probably not, yet its the trend here.

• I lost my cell phone after 3 years with Bouygues, and what do I get as a thank you? The option to get the lowest quality model for 30 euros with another year term contract, and to buy a new sim card at 25 euros!!

Can you imagine charging a current client 25 euros for a 1 euro component, when they have no cell phone and are prone to changing providers? Is that customer service or customer vice?

Of course changing is not so easy here because we are tied in to one year or two year contracts and owe whatever months are due on the contracts. But the feeling from clients is ” Hey, why so much hate?”

With Neuf Mobile I recently joined, it started earlier than with Bouygues. They indicate we should call a number with a .34 euros a minute charge or use their web site to register our phone once we receive it and get our number. I tried both, both automated systems told me I failed miserably in registering my phone. So I had to call the expensive customer service line again, wait to be put in touch with an operator, give my SIM card number yet again and wait, online, while Neuf kindly activated my phone. The rep did not seem one bit surprised by my call. What a vicious way to make a few extra dollars and lose all customer trust in the company at the same time…

As for Internet access providers, Club Internet, despite being considered better than others on customer service, regularly resets my connection without indicating this to me.

At the beginning I spent 45 minutes on the expensive customer help line to try and find the reason for the access failure – given they acted as if I was a retard and the connection had not worked already for months before quitting- and then I found out just reinstalling the software and restarting the ADSL modem got my connection up again. Isn’t that a pathetic, vicious attitude towards customers?

You have to live it to believe it, really…

Individuals disregard technology and newness in general

Although the French are brilliant at building major technology infrastructure, at the personal level, they are technophobes. Just the idea of voice mail and answering machines has not yet made its way into the majority of people’s minds, even in a professional setting…It still happens that the phone is left ringing endlessly as you try to contact colleagues or business relationships. ( I didn’t even get into government services did I?) Blame it on a latin attitude that’s fearcely entrenched behind all the French’s proud claims of Rationality… I.e, if you really want to reach me, then you’ll have to catch me. Who am I, your servant? Do I know you? Are we distant cousins, or did our parents spend their summer vacations together? If you really want to talk to me, just drop by and say hello, like a real person, someone who really cares about me. I also have little time to work, with all this vacation and limited pay, so I don’t need work piling up on my voice mail system while I’m out having lunch and a tight espresso in the neighbourhood brasserie!

The younger crowd (less than 40) has largely been won over to new technology like voice mail and does not consider the two hour lunch as sacrosanct, but the older, populous babyboomers in France, entrenched in their dominant positions for a few more years, still consider in-person communication as the only one worth the qualification. How do you expect them to use email? Let alone the web!! They decide, however, what their corporations’ web sites should say and do, and which web-based services are useful to them…

The web as a purely Californian and to a lesser degree, American creation

The web is about sharing information, about giving away content, about anarchy too… All those are in total opposition to the French culture as we know it today.

a/Information sharing:

In French culture, information is like a gem, it is only to be shared in exchange for honors or retribution or maybe friendship. but to exchange it with not only ‘le premier venu’ (the new kid on the block), but one you can’t even see or talk to?Mon dieu! Vous n’y pensez pas! So it’s no wonder that major companies’ web sites still lack invaluable information and that asking a question via email is akin to sending your missive into a dark, deep hole where it will land on top other such hopeful missives, only to rot slowly in a digital grave… Sharing information in and of itself is not a French preocupation, unlike in California, where you can’t wait at a bus stop without finding out about your neighbour’s sex change!

b/Giving away stuff:

Giving away stuff…This is what made Yahoo, CraigsList, and other marvels of the web. ( What also undid Webvan and others..) Who ever heard of that in a small, densely populated, and old country where the state provides for those who need it? Giving is nearly irresponsible in such a culture; it isn’t encouraged in any case. The rationally trained French also do not see the benefits of a business model where the product or service is given away free of charge…Huh? And you call that a business? My two-year old could start such a business, but me?

c/Anarchy:

Finally anarchy… California is cool dude. Self discipline and letting nature take its course are two of the precepts the locals live by. The French admire a beautiful construction, well thought out to withstand various contingencies, no matter how long it takes to build. The opposite of anarchy. The opposite of how the web and numerous web sites were built…The web’s a mess, but at least, it’s a worldwide medium, isn’t it? The web therefore still has a very adolescent and largely male user base in France.

Hopefully within twenty years, that’ll change! ( Sorry for the un-Gartner Group like prediction, but I know a little bit about France. It’s not Yurop, i.e., the UK!);-)