The Evil Empire must be stopped. Today I was unwittingly sucked into one of its local traps. Every time it happens, I swear I will never go back. But when you have a four year old, it is harder than it should be to live up to your promise to yourself to never again set foot in a McDonald’s.
All McDonald’s I’ve ever been to include some sort of unpleasant experience. Doesn’t matter what country. In France, the joy begins at the counter where you order. No, the problem isn’t so much that I struggle to speak French. I mean, a Happy Meal is a Happy Meal. You just have to sort of say it with a French accent. Seriously, if you order your Happy Meal and nuggets by saying appy meel et cheezeberghaire they seem to understand.
The real problem is that people in France do not queue. They just mob. So you go in to order and there’s just a mass of people pushing toward the cashiers. You see an open spot, you fill it. It isn’t what I’d consider polite which seems to go against what you’d expect from a society that has a polite form of the word you which you’d use when actually addressing the order-taker at McDo (as they call it). I’m not the only one to make this observation. It’s the topic of at least one chapter in every book I’ve read on French culture-shock.
Today when I’d finally shoved my way to the cashier and shouted my order at her, she mumbled something back to me at the very end that I couldn’t understand. Not because she was speaking French, but because she was only speaking as loud as the Whos in Whoville before that last little Who joined in so that anyone other than Horton could hear them. So when I shook my head and said pardon she shruged her shoulders and sighed in complete exasperation at having been saddled with the stupid American in her mob. She turned to another woman who appeared to be a manager-type who held up her fingers and said real slowly to me salad deux minutes. Fine. But I’m not moving from this spot. I tried to tell her in French that I was not going to leave the area then come back because with my daughter in tow it is just too hard. I’d wait right there. I don’t know what I actually said. Something like je ne peux pas partir et revenir avec ma fille… I think it was one of those cases of sounding like an American who just puts words together to make a sentence but it isn’t really French. (One of my French teachers accused me of speaking French that way. Well, this just in… I AM AN AMERICAN STRINGING WORDS TOGETHER TO TRY TO COMMUNICATE IN FRENCH!) Anyway, the power-hungry manager woman was not going to let me just stand there and block the mob from moving forward while some one shuffled back to the refrigerator to get another pre-made salad. She made me move to a corner where all unfortunate customers are made to stand. We were probably all Americans, but too frustrated to speak to each other and find out. I watched two armloads of salads go by while the guy with the job of filling unfilled orders made a vanilla cone for the woman in front of me. It was the slowest making of an ice cream cone I’ve ever seen. Finally I got my salad and we were off to the playland.
Playlands are never nice. I don’t care which McDonalds or where. And this one had the added bonus of actually smelling like a toilet. Nothing makes me want to eat like the aroma of sewage. Kaitlyn sucked down her Pom Pot (applesauce in a pouch you suck the food out of. Wildly popular with kids here.) and dashed off to the play area. I showed her my watch and said that at 1:30 we were leaving no arguments. She cannot tell time, but she seemed to buy into my plan. It was 1:15 at the time. The next 15 minutes were some of the longest I’ve ever experienced. Kaitlyn had a good time. After each time she completed the Ronald Maze, she’d run up to me and ask to do it again. I stuck to my 1:30 promise and let her return over and over. One time I heard her crying and looked up to see some little boy blocking the path and refusing to let her get by. So I made a shoving motion and told her to push him. I don’t care if the other mothers understood me. I rather hoped that boy’s mother did and would be prompted to tell him to move his ass out of her way, but that didn’t happen. I walked over to try to help when some French girls arrived on the scene. One held Kaitlyn’s hands and comforted her while the other got the bully to move. Crisis averted. It also helped renew my faith in the French society… at least there are two girls with some promise.
At 1:30, Kaitlyn ate trois bites of her cheezebergaire… the agreed upon number… so that I’d open her Happy Meal toy. I also think the toys here are much lamer than the toys in the U.S. But she liked it. It’s a ball that lights up and spins around on a little stand. I put it up high on her dresser when we got home; maybe it will be out of sight, out of mind.
As we left the Grenoble location of the Death Star, I vowed to myself never to return. But I know it’s a promise I won’t be able to keep… no matter how hard I try. May the force be with me.