Even in France there is the occasional Frog

22 octobre 2011 part 2  Also written on the train to Auray

Took place 19 octobre

As a little kid, my favorite creature was, hands down, frogs.  8 year old Willie thought they were perfect in every sense of the word: they jump, they hide, they swim, and they eat.  What else do you need in life?  I think I often assumed that if I was around frogs enough, their coolness would rub off onto me.  So far did I take this infatuation that I was even known to take the occasional amphibian into the Colonel’s for breakfast, and at least one time the frog got lose and started jumping all over the restaurant, with me jumping in hot pursuit.  I don’t understand why I wasn’t banned after that.  I guess they knew it would be a bad business decision to ban the kid who comes in ever day for his “oatmeal toast, lightly toasted lightly buttered, please.”  After all, that’s a big sale.  

Anyway, it wasn’t until some time later that I learned that not only were frogs awesome animals, but they it was also a derogatory term for a French person.  I’ve been looking around since I arrived for any French person that I feel would be worthy of being called a frog, and for a long time I thought I might be on a wild goose chase.  Well stop the presses, I found the most despicable, miserable, froggy Frenchman, and here comes that story.

  

Background:

So, this coming week is our vacation from Trinity and SciencesPo.  Called Toussaint, it’s a very religious holiday for a “secular” country.  Well, I wasn’t really sure where I was going until Thursday the 20^th, when I finally went and bought my tickets for a week in Belgium, covering Brussels, Antwerp, and Bruges.  Well it was about that same that we received a death-threat email from Trinity that we had to get our OFII forms dealt with before we left on vacation, otherwise we’d pretty much be F’ed in the A if we were stopped at border control since we’d slacked off on our duties in France.  So, I received permission from my morning professor on Thursday to miss class if need be to get my OFII dealt with.  

Story:

That night I went home, gathered everything that I thought I would need, and half the stuff I was sure I wouldn’t need, and prepared to meet Ann Lawson at Trinity the next day a 9am to make some more photocopies of my passport and then to go to the OFII place at the Cité Universitaire (aka clear to Hell and gone).  I should have known that things were going to be a mess when I literally had to bribe a man to give me access to the Trinity rooms so I could do my work.  Excuse me, do I look like a creeper or a terrorist?  All I had to do was hijack the photocopier for 3 photocopies, I didn’t want his first born or right arm.  

So we arrived at the metro stop around 9:50, and promptly got lost.  Finally, around 10:15 we arrived at the Cité Universitaire, an enormous campus of students from all over the world, in buildings that “represent” the associated countries.  At 10:20 we sat down in line for round 1.  Now, in the US we might take a slip of paper with a number on it and sit in a big room.  Oh no, here we sat in a line of chairs, and as each person was called to the desk everybody got up and moved one seat.  It was like a silent game of musical chairs.  We sat in the line for a while, and then it came time for me to be called up to the desk for my interrogation.  I knew that the man was a bit gruff already, but I figure that he was either hungover or had a splintered boom handle lodged in a most unfortunate position (couldn’t quite figure it out).  Well he looked everything over and told me that I needed a facture (a bill) from my host mother to prove that she was who she was and lived where she said she lived.  So, dejected, I trudged off with my tail between my legs to the 16^th - on the OTHER side of the city- hoping like hell that my host mother would be there and could give me a facture right away.  

By 11:25 I had my facture in hand, a piece of bread in my belly, and I was headed back to  the OFII office for round 2.  Having now guaranteed that I was going to miss my class, I had to choice but to do what I had to do: OFII or bust.  A bit before noon I sat back down in the line,  this time a bit longer, and with only one person doing the initial interrogation.  After sitting in line for at least a half an hour, of course having left my book at home, I finally hear the lady announce that if you’re here for your OFII, the OFII person is at lunch, so you have to wait longer.  Oh great, I thought.  Well I stayed in position for a while longer when my favorite OFII man appeared, happy as ever having just had his daily meal of undercooked roofing nails and shard glass sauce.  Actually it was sort of like a having Lord Voldemort enter the room, as any aspect of even moderate happiness was sucked out as if he was a super sucker toilet.  

So, still in line and behind a few people, I waited patiently, like the polite American that I pretend to be.  Finally I was my turn, so I (re)handed him all the documents, this time with the facture on top.  He looked everything over, and then held up the facture.  “What’s this?” he asked.  “It’s the facture you requested,” I responded.  “Well it’s a facture from a mobile phone.”  “So?”  “Well why did you bring it?” he asked, clearly unimpressed.  “Because you told me to bring this with me, so I went all the way home, talked to my host mother and this is what she was able to find right away,” I said, fearing being turned away again.  “Well why did she give you this?”  “I’m not really sure, but you just said to bring a facture, so here’s a facture.  Will this work, or not?”  Like government workers worldwide, I figured that he just liked being as asshole, but I wasn’t prepared for his next maneuver.  He looked at the girl next to him, interrupted her conversation with another student, and started making fun of me for bringing a phone bill.  I was right there!  It’s not as though I’m deaf.  I can hear you, and I can understand you even thought we don’t speak the same mother tongue.  Finally he gave me my red ticket with a number on it and told me to move on to the next section after he felt as though he had sufficiently embarrassed me.

So I moved to the other side of the room, from whence I got a great view of how enormous the line had become behind me.  I mean HUGE!  Apparently I made it just in time.  So, sitting there, I had the chance to see my froggy French friend F with others.  He was horrible!  With one girl he looked at her said “I don’t understand why you came to France if you can’t even speak the language.”  With others he would take their paperwork and make fun of them with the person next to him.  I was really just in shock.  To make matters better there were many other workers there, but one by one they would take their (very long) lunch break, right at their desk, spreading out their food, newspapers, and magazines, looking up at those of us waiting while they chowed down.  I felt like saying, “don’t worry, it’s only 1:45 and I haven’t eaten since 7:30 this morning, I’m not hungry.”  Since they were short staffed, my happy friend would take a few students at the first desk, then move across the room and work with people in the second section as well.  I was terrified I would deal with him twice.

In the time I had to wait I got to see some serious antics.  At one point there were a lot of people waiting, and there weren’t enough chairs.  Everyone was quietly waiting their turn when bigmouth Froggy got up started screaming at them about how stupid they were to be standing there and how they needed to go into the hallway to wait.  Well, most of them were not French speakers, so they didn’t understand.  Then he continued on about how if you need an OFII form, you’d better just leave, because he didn’t want to do more that day.  Again, not many moved.  Finally he lost it and said “Fine, if you don’t want to do anything, neither do I.  I’m not going take any more people until you’re all in the hallway.”  With that he sat down, crossed his arms, and scowled.  

Finally they got the memo, and things got back underway.  This guy was a piece of work!  When he wanted somebody to come over and translate, he whistled like a dog trainer to get the attention of the person and instructed them to come over to translate.  It wasn’t posed as a question, it was an order, and they had no option but to accept.

While waiting I befriended a girl from Morocco who was trying to go back home for her school break, and had to get her OFII dealt with first.  She was very nice, albeit a bit chatty.  Finally, around 2:30 I had my forms dealt with (I got really lucky and didn’t have to deal with the asshole again, and had a nice girl with a 5 o’clock shadow).  By that point, having missed two classes, and thoroughly starving, I was ready for things to be over.  

Bref (as the French say):  Not all French are as phenomenal as others.  There are some incredibly successful douchebags to be found, in this case among government employees.  You really have to love how some things never change.  


There, 2 blogs posted in one night.  I have outdone myself.  Get reading!