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Friday, July 17, 2015

First day in Paris: Mean Girl

My first full day in Paris began....miserably. Air France had lost our luggage and we hadn't yet gotten around to a Monoprix to get some needed items. We felt disheveled and dusty, more scruffy than usual. To cheer ourselves up, we decided to go to the Louvre: 2 weeks remained on the year membership we bought the previous year.

We were both pretty crabby because of jet-lag and so, a bit of miscommunication ensued. When we arrived, we only had Mr FS's card. We went to the office and Mr FS explained in French what had happened. 

And then we encountered our first bonafide French mean girl. She said that she couldn't look up the card. We explained that the previous year, Mr FS had LOST his card and the rep looked it up and replaced it. 

The rep said that was the procedure for lost cards. Forgotten cards were different. 

(?????)

Then the mean girl line. The rep said (this was all in French and even I could understand it!): "There's one way you can get into the Louvre today." LONG PAUSE. We looked hopeful. "Buy a ticket at the booth!" I swear she cackled. We got up to leave and didn't say anything. 

I think she was a bit embarrassed by her performance because she smiled rather sheepishly as we left.

We decided to walk around after that and somehow ended up in Hermes. No kidding.

P.S. Thanks to all for comments while we were away. My electronic devices were ill-performing and had teeny keyboards. So i could READ the comments even though I couldn't respond. Merci beaucoup!

4 comments:

tess said...

oh man! how do people like this get into customer service?
a mean girl at the Chinese Consulate yelled at me
for wanting/needing to change travel dates,
yelled at other people to as I was waiting in line,
hope you are reunited with your luggage

Anonymous said...

Not a good start. Tomorrow will be better!

Frugal Scholar said...

@tess--We have been having trouble with Air France getting promised money for delayed baggage. UGH.
@exacting--We're already back! The next day was better! And so were most of the ensuing days.

Shelley said...

I'm told that the bad times are the ones we remember best and laugh about later; not sure a cackling, unhelpful service person will qualify as humour at any point... you'll have to let us know!