G-J-B

Is it me, or is there a lot more testosterone in French men? I'm not saying you can't find plenty of it back in Britain, but the mannerisms, husky voices and male dominance of French men seems more stark. They seem to love to argue their point of view in a way that can might be mistaken as aggressive by any foreign bystander.

A rather over the top example of this, comes from last week when I was in La Poste. A couple of the nearest Post Offices are being renovated over the next month, so the queue in the next nearest Post Office was pretty large. A French woman came in by the other door, and tried to sneak her way into the queue (I notice this quite a lot in France!), but a Polish lady clearly instructed her where the back of the queue was (although it was already very evident), to many smiles of the women around us.
Then two morons behind me (suited men in the 50's, bearing in mind this is quite a posh district of Paris), started an extremely loud conversation directly behind me, moaning about the length of the queue and demanding the manager shows himself. They then raised their voices and became very hostile (I could feel drops of spit on the back of my neck as he spoke). Eventually somebody came to one of the windows, and they barged their way through the display items (selling cards and envelopes etc.), knocking some over, and started shouting their heads off, and slamming their hands down on the desk. Obviously the post office guy wasn't too impressed, nor was anybody in the queue, as we all knew the situation and understood we had to queue patiently and quietly like everybody else. The two angry men seemed quite proud of their behaviour though, as though they spoke for everybody within La Poste. They told them they were going to send in bailiffs to inspect their records (their threats were quite comical, and I'm surprised they weren't turfed out and asked to leave), and then barged their way back into the queue. When it came to their turn (I was at the counter by then), one of the men picked up one of the commercial items on sale from the display worth about 10 euros and announced he was taking it without paying (surely to compensate for his lost time in the queue), and so picked it up and walked out of the Post Office. Nothing was said or done.
I've never seen such behaviour in a Post Office before.

treskillard

Funny story you tell there G-J-B. It wasn't getting near to lunchtime by any chance was it? Fear of being late for food seems to have the most bizarre effect on people's moods over here.

Andrea50

I must remember that when I run out of money to buy envelopes ..........