A Waiter Was Fired for Bad Manners. But Was He Super Rude or Just French?

In August 2017, a French national by the name of Guillaume Rey was fired from his job as a waiter in a Vancouver chain restaurant after admonishing a junior member of the team.

Rey says he dealt with his colleague in a “very professional” manner. His manager says it was “aggressive, rude and disrespectful.” Moreover, it was simply the latest in a long line of gruff, combative and unacceptable incidents at the Milestones restaurant (signature dish: coconut calamari) that had led to both verbal and written warnings for Rey. Berating this member of staff to the “point of tears” was the final straw. Why would anyone treat a colleague this way?

For Rey, the answer was simple: he’s French.

Rey filed a complaint with British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal, citing discrimination against the French culture. After all, he grew up in France. He trained there. No one at Milestones complained about the quality of his work, he said. They merely took against how open, honest and direct he was. And this openness, honesty and directness is part and parcel of the “French hospitality industry,” which although it sounds like an oxymoron, is not.

This fundamental clash of cultures — the notoriously polite Canadians rubbing up against the notoriously direct French — is brought into sharper focus perhaps because of its setting: the service industry.

In North America, servers are expected to be cheerful, helpful and ever-present. They perform their politeness almost like a dance. A French waiter, however, dances for no man. The job of garçon de café is taken seriously; performed with pride. A well-trained French waiter will not constantly interrupt conversations to ask if everything is okay with your meal, because a French waiter will know.

To some, this self-confidence, lack of deference and sense of authority will be taken as arrogance. To the French, it’s simply par for the four-course meal.

Yet deep down, we all worry what others make of us. France has itself in recent years engaged in a national conversation about its own behavior. Sixty percent of French people asked in an IPSOS poll cited rudeness as the number one source of stress in their lives. That was higher than unemployment or debt. And they worried that to outsiders, the French might seem just a little too … French. Sure, we’ll buy books about French parenting (Bringing Up Bébé), French style (Forever Chic), or French dieting (French Women Don’t Get Fat). But even the country’s then-foreign minister was in 2015 forced to diplomatically suggest that the welcome tourists receive in France is “not always extraordinary…”

This called for action. The Parisian Chamber of Commerce immediately developed a booklet aimed at helping the French cope with foreign visitors who might be upset by French behaviors. It told them British people like to be called by their first names and eat dinner at an absurdly early time (but that this should not be mentioned); it explained Americans expect high-speed wi-fi absolutely everywhere and will immediately call you by your first name (but that this is not to be taken as an insult).

Elsewhere, employees at four-star hotels were encouraged to know two languages. Employees at five-star hotels were encouraged to know three. Border control police were ordered to say both “hello” and “thank you” to people, which sounds sensible — you have to wonder what they were saying before. Particularly when we consider that this lack of an “extraordinary welcome” has been shown to be so upsetting for some tourists that they go into genuine shock. I’m serious.

It was Professor Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist living in France, who first identified something called Paris Syndrome. One million tourists a year travel from Japan to France, in search of the ideal they’ve been sold: the moonlit Seine, the cobbled streets, elegant women in Louboutin heels sipping champagne served by handsome waiters with accordions. When these tourists arrive, of course, the realities — including the waiters — can prove somewhat different. And the effects are real.

Affecting almost exclusively the Japanese, Paris Syndrome can cause an acute delusional state, anxiety, dizziness, hallucinations and excessive sweating. Up to twenty Japanese tourists a year fall foul of “a transient psychological disorder exhibited by some individuals when visiting a place drastically foreign from their own.” They are generally women in their 30s on their first trip abroad — one which, crucially, does not match up to the magic promised in the guidebooks. They are put straight on planes and flown home accompanied by qualified nurses. The Japanese embassy has become used to this. They have a 24-hour hotline for those suffering from this precise kind of culture shock.

How other people treat us matters — whether on a Parisian street or in a Vancouver restaurant — but while we judge those people by our own standards, it is important also to consider theirs.

Guillaume Rey did not consider his behavior in that Vancouver restaurant to be unacceptable. He considered it to be professional, direct, open, French.

The restaurant and its parent company have attempted to have Rey’s complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal dismissed. After all, you can’t just say you’re French and get away with anything. Where would it stop? Armed robbery?

But this month, tribunal member Devyn Consineau has denied that application to dismiss. She is intrigued to hear more. In her decision, she wrote “Mr. Rey will have to explain what it is about his French heritage that would result in behavior that people misinterpret as a violation of workplace standards of acceptable conduct.”

We await his explanation, and how he delivers it, with interest. But it looks like someone — whether Guillaume Rey or his manager at Milestones — is set to receive quite the rude awakening.