Friday, August 22, 2008

A French Concession


As I walked in our local DIY BricoMarche store yesterday, something caught my eye. Hardly a day goes by (except Sunday of course) that one of us doesn't pay a visit here. We've finally trained ourselves not to be sitting in the parking lot at 7:30 in the morning or expect to find the doors open at lunch time.


But I never noticed that there is ever so slight a shift in the hours of operation on samedi (Saturday). While the store still closes at 19:00 (7 pm), it opens 15 minutes later, at 9:15 am---a small change. The major difference, and one that I imagine the employees particularly think is foolish, is shortening the lunch hour closure by 15 minutes to a mere 2 hours! What is this world coming to?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I read in the newspaper recently that the French are going to lose their 35 hour work week. They soon will have to work longer work weeks, I can't remember if they will get overtime or not. I think it is sort of sad that they would become more like the Americans in their daily schedules. I have always admired the French schedule, the thing I like most is that the longer lunch hour allows families to have a meal together in the middle of the day. In this day when some Americans only see their kids for an hour or so after work and while the tv is on at that, is seems that the French have a good system. Leslie