perhaps I should have added “polite” insistence…
Don’t be so rude as to ever expect 2 staff who are having a conversation in a shop, to stop their conversation until they are ready and offer help. The best you can do is make eye contact and then say “Bonjour”. You do have some chance that they will choose to offer help then.
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That can happen anywhere, especially with younger staff.
Yes, I find it irritating as well.
The customer is never right, c’est mon magasin, bordel ! Et si ça te va pas il y en a d’autres 
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I always say Bon Appetit to the dog as well. To be fair though, he isn’t allowed to leave his Sit and proceed to the bowl until he hears it. 
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French customer service drives me up the wall.
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I didn’t even think a person might, arrgh 
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The joke is you say ‘bon courage’ instead of ‘bon appétit’.
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This may be a rural thing but French women seem to dress reasonably smartly to go out, even to the shops. I’ve started doing that for the first time in 50 years 
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Number one has to be learn french, and make sure you greet people and say goodbye in just about every situation.
Learn to like black tea and coffee - certainly after 10h. And if you have to have milk in coffee then aim for a “noisette”.
Eat your cheese course before the dessert (I think the UK may have gone down this route to now? - long time since I had a proper meal there).
Be prepared to have to wait ages at an apero before you actually get to drink your drink or eat anything. Maybe that’s a generational thing, but it can be well over 10-15 minutes after serving that you get to lift a glass…
Most surprising thing given how much good tea there is in France is how (badly) they make it! Placing a tea bag on a saucer next to a cup of rapidly cooling hot water is not making tea!
wicked
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better than my Italian friend I stayed with who woke me with tea she’d made by boiling teabag in a pot on the stove for 15 mins
At least it was morning…had she done it in the evening I would have had nightmares!
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I would say that this is highly dependent on social status, education and personal estimation of self-worth.
I have known some French women who couldn’t give a flying … about how they looked before going out, and it showed, whereas others wouldn’t put a foot out of the door if there was a single hair out of place and the Elle’net hadn’t been liberally sprayed all over the place
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Having often heated political discussions, yet thinking nothing of it - not sure whether this has become more prevalent today than when I first moved to France, but the ding dong discussions became quite animated, even among (French) friends, and no holds barred with members of the family !
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Yes, that’s a good one. It did surprise a bit when we first started having evenings with french friends. Gave my inbuilt british reserve a bit of a battering, plus my family’s “no religion or politics at the table” rule went in the bin.
Thank you soooo much everyone - keep ‘em coming!
Waiting until the last person arrives before anyone gets anything to eat. Which can be painful when the buffet is all beautifully laid out and the last people to arrive are an hour late.
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Be direct in saying what you want…
Conversation in England:
“That was delicious!”
“Would you like another piece?”
“No thank you”
“Sure?”
“Oh, alright them, just a small piece”.
Same conversation in France:
“That was delicious!”
“Would you like another piece?”
“No thank you”
“OK, I’ll put it back in the fridge”.
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