I am an immigrant worker

I feel like more of an immigrant here in Paris than I ever was in America. Going to class, looking for a job, in daily interactions, I’m acutely aware of how competent I am in English. (Have you ever used a cappuccino machine before? No, only simple coffee machines, but I’m sure I could learn. I’m a hard worker. Non, jamais.)

Despite feeling in over my head applying to a job where I would speak French all the time (Why would they want to hire me??), I neglect to realize how many are forced to do that all over the world. So I stopped worrying about applying to French jobs, even though it still surprised me that French restaurants would consider me at all. That’s when I realized I had passed from tourist to immigrant.

Yet I’m still a First World immigrant—I have English to revert to (and use as an asset) when French does not work, an international language that most speak at least a little of. People will always see me, an American in Paris, as more of a tourist than an immigrant. Interesting how the term “expat” itself tends to refer to a certain class of immigrants.

And I’m of course also just not an immigrant. A boy I babysit for actually told me I was French, since he didn’t understand I was leaving soon to return to the US. Having tried to not be a bum on and off for a month now, I have resigned myself to retiring back into my bubble of expat privilege, though the application process was an eye-opening experience.

Moral of the story is…don’t be mean to immigrants.

Word.

Bartending in Paris (aka the first blog about Paris)

…is not so easy. Not that I can say that I’ve tried too hard. After hearing from a friend that bartending at an expat hangout was a relatively ideal job for an Anglophone student in Paris, I started out asking at two bars near me if they were hiring, one of which had actually advertised in the expat magazine Fusac. Two weeks more of continuing to sit around feeling sorry for my broke self, I found out I didn’t get the job.

That somewhat propelled me to launch Phase Two (or, really, Serious Phase One) of the job search. Fortunately this time I had recommendations from a friend of trendy bars in Paris that tended to hire Americans. Trying to get a job at one of them took a hilarious three hours of my life today. I started out at one, which got me an interview at another member of the chain, where I had to wait an hour for the boss to arrive. At least I got to explore the République neighborhood a little?

Casual, unacademic cultural comparison time:

1. General Trends. French are infamous for bad (or complete lack of) customer service. America, on the other hand, is based on a service economy, where we have Q&A for shampoo, IBM will replace defective batteries free of charge, and clothing can be returned fairly easily. Mentalities regarding who owes who are very different.

2. Specific Manifestation of a Social Phenomenon. Trying to work in French and expat establishments has showed me a little bit of what different cultures expect from their servers. Experience seems to matter more than personality in French establishments—they don’t need you to chat it up with all the customers, make friends with regulars, etc. One French café even warned me that waitressing would be more difficult in France because you’re assigned to 20 tables, not five like in the US (supposedly).

We’ll see if this point of view changes, especially because interacting with customers is the main reason I enjoy waitressing. If I do end up getting a job, they’ll want 28 hours a week from me…a good chunk of my time I’m not sure I’m ready for, but the 200 – 300 euros a week that I can make is certainly very tempting. (Especially with the depressing exchange rate!) For the next few days at least, I’m back to sitting on my butt feeling sorry about how much money I don’t have.

Maybe I should just go babysit Parisian kids.

PS Happy birthday to me. :)