Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [14]
It is commonly accepted by the French public that one’s physical presence has little to do with whether or not an item requiring one’s presence will in fact be delivered. On the yellow avis de passage slips, there is not one but several reasons which may be checked to indicate why your package could not be delivered. If none of the choices seems to apply, the agent will feel free to add one of his own, inscrutably encoded in private acronym.
Needless to say, you will then have to hunt your package down yourself. In the simplest scenario for me, this involves going to my postal office branch, bringing along the yellow slip and a piece of identification. If by chance the item has been addressed to my company, I must also bring along my documents of its organization. Already I’m weighed down and I haven’t even picked up the package yet.
When picking up a missed delivery, I usually walk to la poste because there is absolutely nowhere to park nearby, except in the bus stop zone, which stretches the entire length of the building (the length of several buses). I take a shopping caddy with me as I have no indication on my yellow slip as to the origin of the item, so I have no way of judging what it might be or how heavy. I yank my empty caddy up the three steps of the post office, avoiding the eyes of the chômeur (unemployed person) who is allowed to station himself at the door, opening it for you in the hopes of getting a handout.
A wave of stifling heat blasts my face, and I immediately unwind the scarf from my neck. Three seasons of the year, the post office is heated to broiling temperatures. In summer it is not air conditioned.
I eye la queue, or line, gauging its length against the number of guichets, or windows, open and functioning, in order to estimate the probable length of my wait. Appropriately, there is a chair available for aged or ill persons who cannot remain standing this long.
One of the main reasons that the line in the post office advances so interminably slowly is that, in France, the post office offers financial services similar to those of a bank. This means that in any given line, over half of the customers are likely there for a financial transaction of some sort. And given the enormous seriousness and discretion required for any financial transaction in France … well, you get the picture.
Add to this the fact that any public transaction here requires the exchange of pleasantries, and the attitude of the French that, after they’ve waited through everyone else’s interminable transaction, they’re darned well going to take their time for their own turns, and—well, let’s just say you never go to the post office if you have a pressing appointment in the near future.
If the wait looks as if it will be lengthy, I take off my coat, so that perspiration won’t soak my inner garments while I wait, an eventuality that I know will add to my sense of panic at the amount of time I’m wasting. French people absolutely never remove their coats—not in the boiling-hot post office, not in the ovenlike department stores, not in stuffy, overheated Métro cars. This is one of the things that makes me realize I’ll never be French enough to be French.
On such a Monday last month, right before the holidays, I was standing in line, clutching a letter from Chronoposte in my hand. Somehow I had missed the delivery of a Wi-Fi network setup and ADSL modem sent by France Télécom, who had notified me in a very well-organized and efficient manner that the package would be delivered between nine a.m. and one p.m. the previous Friday.
During those hours I had stayed in the house, not even daring to take a shower, play the radio, or talk too loudly on the phone for fear of not hearing the door buzzer. I was especially anxious to receive this delivery because