I have invited my neighbours for lunch tomorrow and I went down to the local nursery to buy poinsettias.
They were not open at 10.20 and there was a sign saying to consult their website for opening hours.
I came back home, I don’t have a smartphone, looked up their opening hours and they should have been open.
I telephoned them and there was a recorded message to say that they will only be open on Friday the 20th.
Absolutely nothing on their website at all.
They are a huge nursery, so are probably supplying their own customers, but they like us to go and buy our bedding plants and hanging baskets there in the summer, so I cannot understand why they are closed for local trade in the week before Christmas.
Bah humbug!
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So irritating! The number of times I’ve trekked off to a shop only to find an “exceptionnellement fermè” on the door! Sometimes I do question the commercial sense of some local businesspeople…
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This is surely one of the biggest cultural adjustments ‘anglo-saxons’ have to make to life in France, and has many aspects… Two that spring to mind are:
- that the French really do put a lot of other things before the commercial (I recently wrote about this in another thread - They think it's all over, it is now!)
- and small businesses in France tend to be financially structured differently - more own their own premises, for example, or pay relatively low rent - so they are not under anything like the same pressure to ‘sweat their assets’ as UK businesses.
If you step back from the immediate inconvenience, I think most people will see such conditions as actually good things about France.
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Maybe they’re doing family stuff or personal stuff. Maybe they needed a holiday.
Some people live to work but some work to live. I’m planning to take next week off and if anyone contacts me with work they’ll get a message saying I’m not available. My choice. Earning money isn’t my top priority. I don’t see why I should be at clients’ beck and call the whole time, my life is as important to me as theirs is to them. One of the reasons people choose to run their own business rather than be an employee is because it gives them scope to put their personal needs first.
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And before we get too carried away about UK opening hours, by the way, I found it fascinating that when the parents of an Indian friend of mine first came to the UK they couldn’t believe that all the little corner shops closed every evening, Sundays, etc - precisely (they thought) when the market for them would be strongest. Big cultural difference between UK shopkeepers and the more entrepreneurial and hard-working immigrants in those days - the latter, of course, ended up taking over many of the shops and making a good living from them.
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Culturally, I think the French are more relaxed about these things… a simple Gallic shrug and a “c’est la vie” and they will be back another day to make their purchase.
Isn’t France wonderful…
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Oh I totally agree that quality of life and family tops other priorities. My winge about lack of commercial sensitivity is that many places don’t communicate very well to customers. You can do what you like, and decide how and when you earn your money but to me it helps if you remember that your customers are actually quite an important part of your business. Yes there are always unforeseen things, but more commonly you can say in advance that you will be away on your website, or at your premises.
Another example is that we don’t often get out of office messages, and having sent off something that was requested or agreed we get silence. And 10 days later X will contact us and just casually say they were on holiday. Sorry, but that is just plain rude and insulting to your customers.
Is it that difficult to do what Anna does and post a message, change your answering machine and tell people if you happen to speak to them?
That’s true but I know some of my colleagues are uneasy about making it public knowledge that they are away on holiday, for security reasons. Working from a terrace house with neighbours both sides, not an isolated property and not a business premises with stock kept onsite, I don’t have too many security concerns. But I understand why not everybody would do it and why most people wouldn’t post it on their website or their Facebook page. Sad, but a sign of the times.
In the kind of business where you have regular clients you can send a round robin email, which I also usually do although this year I just couldn’t be ar5ed; but shops can’t really do that.
This is a large business ie an EARL.
I think my first assumption is the right one.
They are busy supplying other nurseries and shops and local people get what is left on Friday.
They put a notice outside their premises saying look at their website for opening hours, the least they ought to do is amend their website, not just leave a message on their answerphone for people who are trying to give them some business.
It is just rude.
No, of course not. It is polite and shows that you value your clients custom.
Frankly, I doubt they give a shit… If they have it and you want it you will buy it.
Not too dissimilar actually to the seasonal month long (sometimes) close down. We have a number of bakers in our local town each with their own uniqueness. When they re-open, their customer base drifts back because it’s what they prefer.
Don’t get me started on this…I will just recall the time I booked a restaurant via the internet to celebrate a special occasion with my wife, drove 2 hours to get there to find it closed for annual holiday…
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And each year fewer and fewer customers drift back as they swap to getting bread from a supermarket. The second baker in our village is about to close permanently as not enough business to support two any more.
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@JaneJones the dreaded supermarket effect…
In our local village there was a baker who baked bread in a wood fired oven and a butcher - both now long since closed.
We still have a baker in the village, of sorts. I can never fathom out when he’s actually open, seems totally random. My understanding is that he’s quite long in the tooth now, so probably getting up at 2am to pound bread dough until 6am probably doesn’t cut it with him anymore…and by all accounts the quality of his bread is somewhat haphazard, so no surprises then that most people go elsewhere (which means driving at least 8km). The village has 2 bars/restaurants - they are both only open part-time. Even the newly taken over one has seemingly scaled back its activities/opening times, which doesn’t bode well for the future.
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We have five boulangeries in our small town. That is quite unfathomable. And, Aldi has just started doing the fresh-baked stuff. Let’s see how many survive that!
I thought there were multiple bakeries as each has to close for 1 day per week… 
nothing like freshly baked bread… is Aldi making the dough from scratch or importing ready to bake on-site …
Well yes, but with them all closing one day a week that still leave four open every day and five open on two days per week!
Aldi seems to have the same system as Lidl introduced a couple of years back.
As far as i can assertain, Aldi truck in the ready made dough like all over europe. Lidl on the other hand seem to manufacture the dough on site which to me is much nicer and much better.
You are probably right, but, it tastes exactly the same to me!