Why France is different... #1 (draft)
11/12/07 18:37
So, I've been
seeing a woman here in Paris. I'll call her S.
S. is from Sweden and like myself, she dreamed of living in Paris, so she came here to make a go of it. She'd studied and lived here before, so she knew something about Parisian living. Right now, S. unemployed and looking for work after her employment initial contract expired. Also, she's looking for a new apartment as her cozy studio just off the Champs Elysees has become expensive.
So, while we've been out being unemployed and adventuresome in Paris (and that is a great thing), there's been a lot of mobile phone ring-ring-ringling on our mobile phones about apartments and job interviews (moreso for her than I). S. is charismatic, hard-working and very marketable. There is no doubt that she will find something soon.
The other day, while she was out, she was called about a job by a woman who perhaps went too far. S. relayed to me that there conversation was something like as follows:
"Hello, this is S."
"Hello, my name is Mme X. I am calling about your CV."
"Oh hi."
(Insert random banter, job description things here.)
"So," Mme X. asks, "do you want to stay in Paris, S.?"
"Yes."
"What assurances do I have that that would be the case?" I might have made a snide remark, which would have ended the whole thing, but I might have been just as taken aback by the woman on the phone as S.
"I would really like to live here. I've worked and studied here. I left a good position in Sweden in order to be in Paris."
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"Yes."
"Is it a stable relationship?"
"I'd like to think so."
"How long have you been together? Is he going to stay in Paris?"
This is where the desperation of a Parisian job search got to S. "A little over a year. He wants to stay as well."
"How do you know that? Does he have a job?"
"Yes. He has a four year contract with a university here."
S. had to lie. I only wonder what she would have said if the woman asked her to expound upon my work here in Paris (there isn't any yet). S. knows enough about me that she could have said, "something concerning literature, " or "he doesn't like to bring his work home."
All of the interviewer's questions would be considered illegal, impertinent and in bad taste in the United States. Now, I just looked out my window and all the street signs were in French, so I am reasonably certain that I am no longer in the U.S. However, most French hiring practices are unsettlingly alien to me. Many employers submit your cover letter for handwriting analysis and your CV must include a picture.
The curiousity could be cultural. Once, when I was staying in an artist community in the South of France and redesigned my website, using a template that did not include pictures (I hadn't linked to my galleries yet), the community's administrators went out of their way to find the older, cached version of my site so that my new French roommate and other arriving artists could see what I looked like. Perhaps the French might just like to know what they're getting.
Still, in huge signs on the Metro and in the newspapers, I've been reading about the problems that France has been having with employment discrimination and the lengths to which the government is going to end it. Perhaps not far enough?
Lately, I've been reading this book that my Jewish mother gave me called "The Nature of Prejudice. In it, the author relates an anecdote about a man who two identical letters inquiring to hotels about the same room in each hotel. One was signed "Mr. Greenberg" and the other "Mr. Lockwood." Mr. Lockwood was almost always offered accommodation (over 95%). Mr. Greenberg was offered accommodation about a third of the time. Granted this was decades ago, but the State of New Jersey as well as several others have recently done similar things with identical resumes and the results are pretty much the same.
But France is different. S. assures me that many of our daily ennui would not happen in Sweden. Still, in each place we have annoyances of our own. We choose to live here, because we feel that they're outweighed by living in the organism of Paris.
S. is from Sweden and like myself, she dreamed of living in Paris, so she came here to make a go of it. She'd studied and lived here before, so she knew something about Parisian living. Right now, S. unemployed and looking for work after her employment initial contract expired. Also, she's looking for a new apartment as her cozy studio just off the Champs Elysees has become expensive.
So, while we've been out being unemployed and adventuresome in Paris (and that is a great thing), there's been a lot of mobile phone ring-ring-ringling on our mobile phones about apartments and job interviews (moreso for her than I). S. is charismatic, hard-working and very marketable. There is no doubt that she will find something soon.
The other day, while she was out, she was called about a job by a woman who perhaps went too far. S. relayed to me that there conversation was something like as follows:
"Hello, this is S."
"Hello, my name is Mme X. I am calling about your CV."
"Oh hi."
(Insert random banter, job description things here.)
"So," Mme X. asks, "do you want to stay in Paris, S.?"
"Yes."
"What assurances do I have that that would be the case?" I might have made a snide remark, which would have ended the whole thing, but I might have been just as taken aback by the woman on the phone as S.
"I would really like to live here. I've worked and studied here. I left a good position in Sweden in order to be in Paris."
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"Yes."
"Is it a stable relationship?"
"I'd like to think so."
"How long have you been together? Is he going to stay in Paris?"
This is where the desperation of a Parisian job search got to S. "A little over a year. He wants to stay as well."
"How do you know that? Does he have a job?"
"Yes. He has a four year contract with a university here."
S. had to lie. I only wonder what she would have said if the woman asked her to expound upon my work here in Paris (there isn't any yet). S. knows enough about me that she could have said, "something concerning literature, " or "he doesn't like to bring his work home."
All of the interviewer's questions would be considered illegal, impertinent and in bad taste in the United States. Now, I just looked out my window and all the street signs were in French, so I am reasonably certain that I am no longer in the U.S. However, most French hiring practices are unsettlingly alien to me. Many employers submit your cover letter for handwriting analysis and your CV must include a picture.
The curiousity could be cultural. Once, when I was staying in an artist community in the South of France and redesigned my website, using a template that did not include pictures (I hadn't linked to my galleries yet), the community's administrators went out of their way to find the older, cached version of my site so that my new French roommate and other arriving artists could see what I looked like. Perhaps the French might just like to know what they're getting.
Still, in huge signs on the Metro and in the newspapers, I've been reading about the problems that France has been having with employment discrimination and the lengths to which the government is going to end it. Perhaps not far enough?
Lately, I've been reading this book that my Jewish mother gave me called "The Nature of Prejudice. In it, the author relates an anecdote about a man who two identical letters inquiring to hotels about the same room in each hotel. One was signed "Mr. Greenberg" and the other "Mr. Lockwood." Mr. Lockwood was almost always offered accommodation (over 95%). Mr. Greenberg was offered accommodation about a third of the time. Granted this was decades ago, but the State of New Jersey as well as several others have recently done similar things with identical resumes and the results are pretty much the same.
But France is different. S. assures me that many of our daily ennui would not happen in Sweden. Still, in each place we have annoyances of our own. We choose to live here, because we feel that they're outweighed by living in the organism of Paris.
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