Shopping

France is a strange old place. Think of getting anything done on a Monday, and you better forget it. Although the parking in town is free, all of the shops are closed. The same between 12 and 2 on any of the other (few) remaining weekdays.

To make up for this lack of working time though, the zeal with which people work, on the rare occasions that they do, is legendary. Take for example the checkout women at the supermarket. I have never seen anyone perform the task of picking an item with their right hand, passing it through the scanner and then discarding it with their left done so quickly. The bar code beeper makes one single continuous beep for 30s while you're struggling to get the first plastic bag open. Once the beep stops, you have one pile of food waiting to be bagged and one french woman looking at you in that "oh for fuck' sake" kind of way that I always feel I'm looked at when my lack of nativeness is spotted.