Lift etiquette

One of the things I am having to get used to in France is what I call ‘lift etiquette’.

In England, and especially in London, if someone you don’t know says ‘hello’ or, heaven forbid, strikes up a conversation…you basically think NUTTER and develop your quickest exit strategy!

In France, everyone talks to everyone! Bonjour in the street, bonjour when you enter a shop, bonjour when you are already in a shop and someone else comes in. It also applies in lifts at work, bonjour when you get in the lift, then bon journée when they get out. The trouble is that firstly I am not expecting it, and secondly I am not automatically thinking in French. So when the person has whished me a good day and stepped out, by the time my brain has kicked in to gear… I am mumbling ‘good day’ to myself in an empty lift! Today, I was even wished a ‘bon l’après midi’, to which I got confused and meekly said ‘erm…merci’

In the cue at the Post office or the boulangerie, for example, anyone entering the room will greet everyone with a ‘bonjour’ or ‘Monsieur Dame’. Which, by the way, got me paranoid the first time I heard it….”why is he calling me Mr Woman”? In England if you walked in to the local bakers and said ‘hello Mr & Mrs’ you would be carted off to the nearest funny farm.

However, people don’t do it in trains or on buses. Why is that? It might lift the mood of the average French commuter if someone got on board and greeted the sweaty mass of people with a loud and passionate ‘BONJOUR TOUT LE MONDE’. Maybe I will try it….

Or maybe not, the metro line I get in the mornings is the M13, which I am told is ,not only the worst undergroung line in Paris but also, serves one of the worst areas in Paris…Saint Denis. A cross between, New Cross, Brixton and Tower Hamlets!