When French children go back to school in September its called ‘La Rentrée’.

In September local authorities give parents of school children around 400€ to help them buy books and rucksacks etc. Some supermarkets help by giving out voucher booklets as well. It must have been my letter that precipitated a ‘Chéquier Rentrée des Classes’ to be posted to us, not the fact that we had a school aged child. There were 20 tear-out vouchers but each one gave a massive, enormous, extremely generous 200 loyalty points. Over the previous 5 years, I had been used to collecting 5 or10 at a time. I could recuperate the 3 year’s of points that had been unjustly reclaimed. I could get gifts from the display case that were more interesting than cheap Chinese umbrellas or a bottle of wine. I had seen exactly what I wanted. Our church had moved to a new building and a small room had been labelled as a ‘Salon de thé’. I was to be responsible for it, but it was just 4 bare walls. I had to beg, steal (not really) or borrow furniture and equipment. The supermarket display case had some individual teapots that stood on their own cup. In France they are called ‘solitaires’. The ‘tasse’ was at the bottom and the ‘théière’ fitted on top.They were plain white, but I had ceramic paints. They retailed for about 10€. However, by spending 2 tokens I would immediately amass 400 points and could claim my FREE teapot or even several FREE teapots.

Time was of the essence. I didn’t want to wait long to redeem them and find that there were no more teapots.To get the first 200 points, I only had to spend 5€ on cartons of juice. The art was to spend not a penny more and not a penny less. By carefully selecting 3 products, I spent 5.19€. On the Saturday I was back, buying toothpaste and bread and now 400 points were on my loyalty card – enough for a teapot. The customer service lady was happy to hand one over. The next Tuesday 2 packets of salted nuts got me another 200 points. But the cashiers were becoming suspicious. I was amassing loads of points for spending only a little. They started scrutinising the vouchers. The small print was examined – my purchases were checked to see if they tallied with the voucher. When I presented one for fruit, I was told it was only for ‘fresh’ fruit and I had selected ‘frozen’. I had had 5 years of dealing with this store. I pointed out that if the cashier read the small print ‘frozen’ was listed.

When I went to claim my second teapot, there was a change of atmosphere. ‘Chilly’ summed it up. ‘The vouchers are in the name of Mr. G and not Mrs J’. I sighed. ‘Do you want me to go home and come back with my husband?’ I asked. They gave in.

Giving away 2 free gifts to the same customer in less than a week had perhaps never been done before. For the third teapot, I was asked for proof of identity, and had to show my passport. Each visit was stressful. My heartbeat would increase as I approached the till, wondering what objection they could try to find this time. Getting teapots made me feel close to a heart attack level. The ladies never warmed to me. I had explained why I wanted the pots and even invited them to come and visit the teashop one day. I was to them perhaps, a foreigner cunningly exploiting the system. They were like Russian boarder guards, trying to find a way of preventing me. It was no skin off their nose if I claimed several teapots. Why did they take it so personally? I found that the teapots were not even very good ones. They were all seconds and sat unevenly in their saucers, so the price to the shop was probably centimes. I persevered though July, August and September until all the vouchers were used. I even asked a friend who had a dog, if I could buy something for him in order to get the last 200 points. The most expensive spend had been 10€ on salted nuts and the least expensive had been 3€ on bread.

One explanation for bad customer service is that jobs are pretty secure in France. Sacking someone can lead to expensive lawsuits. Therefore, why be nice to the customers? In 2012 I read that Charles De Gaule Airport was going to teach staff to be friendlier by starting a ‘Service University’ aimed at training staff to be more responsive to customers’ needs with the aim of improving service quality and customer satisfaction.

By contrast, a friend in the UK was so friendly and welcoming in her job in a cosmetic shop that she was head hunted by the bank next door. She started working as the person who goes up and down the queues of customers advising them that they could use the machines and need not wait in a line. Waiting for 25 minutes was not seen to be the lot of its customers!