The plight of the working SAHM

Here it is September. And I am not writing this from a jail cell or a psychiatric ward, meaning that I have officially survived my son’s first grandes vacances (summer break). Hooray! The French public school system can now resume its life-saving role of civilizing him encouraging his deep sense of right vs. wrong to win out over his possibly deeper urge to wreak havoc on his mother’s fragile sense of self-worth. 

I will let you in on a little-uttered secret among us working SAHMs (Stay At Home Moms): YOU HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO DO THIS. Seriously, who does this? Kinda no one. Why? Because it’s absurdly difficult! Working from home while trying to be a passably decent mother means that your brain is on constant overdrive and yet you never seem to actually accomplish anything. You pour your whole heart into making sure that your kids are rested, fed, safe, clean, and entertained; that your clients are satisfied and faithful; that your husband is … like your clients; and that your house is cozy and relatively free of clutter. Without forgetting your own appearance of course (because c’mon now—French women manage to drop their kids off at school at 8:20 am looking bloody perfect in their 10-piece outfits and sexy-yet-somehow-bicycle-friendly heels).

And yet, despite making what feels like a constant, gargantuan amount of effort, despite multitasking in your sleep (which you get precious little of, incidentally), at the end of the day your kids are dirty and whiney, your clients are requesting last-minute changes, your house is a wreck, you haven’t so much as glanced in the mirror, and your husband, arriving home to pure chaos, surely wonders what in tarnation you’ve been doing for the past 11 hours (other than tweeting insults at Donald Trump, which is a given). Come to think of it, what have I been doing?

I’ve been coaxing little eyes to open, little ears to listen, and little mouths to eat; I’ve been picking out little clothes, wrestling little clothes onto squirming little bodies, washing little clothes, folding little clothes, and putting little clothes away; I’ve been trying to prevent little feet from sliding down the stairs, little hands from getting pinched, little heads from getting bumped, and little fingers from going where they shouldn’t; I’ve been reprimanding for hitting, for not sharing, for drawing on the table for the 50th time, for being rude or crude or mean; I’ve been searching for a lost teddy bear, a lost pacifier, a lost toy car, and a lot of lost marbles (mostly mine); I’ve been taking temperatures, making doctor appointments, going to doctor appointments, picking up medicine, and administering medicine; I’ve been cleaning the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and everything in between with sponges, antibacterial wipes, brooms, and my friend the Magic Eraser; I’ve been changing diapers, changing undies, and explaining how peeing INTO the toilet is preferable to peeing NEXT TO it; I’ve been giving baths, brushing teeth, reading stories, singing lullabies, and promising that witches don’t exist; I’ve been hugging, kissing, swinging, dancing, laughing, and crying too. I’ve been feeling guilty for not seeing my friends more, for not calling my parents more, for not reading more, for not running more, for not doing more, and for not doing it better.

And somewhere in there, I’ve also been managing a business.

The mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion of being a stay-at-home-yet-working mother is impossible to put into words. Normal people know better. Normal people either stay at home with their kids and don’t work, or arrange some form of daycare for their kids and then work. Trying to do both simultaneously is insane. However, my answer to seemingly impossible situations has always been “Yes I Can,” or more accurately, “Don’t Tell Me I Can’t.” And so here I am, with a 4-year-old, a 1-year-old, a writing business, and a new home that we just finished renovating because hey, at this point who’s counting? Add to that the fact that we (still) have no reliable babysitter, no nearby family, and that I promised myself I would only put my kids into daycare after their first birthday, and there you have it: it’s, as the French would say, compliqué (translation: IT’S A COMPLETE SHIT SHOW, BUT I CAN’T VERY WELL GO AND ADMIT THAT NOW CAN I?).

But, and this brings me back to my initial point, I have made it through the summer, i.e. full-time two-kid management while trying to work. Little g is now back in school and Baby c has just begun daycare two full days a week, meaning 18-odd hours of potential concentration time for yours truly. NETFLIX BINGE! Perhaps not, but the next best thing—real, honest-to-God, uninterrupted intellectual work. I don’t much care for the adjective “amazing,” but this calm? This silence? This ability to finish a thought and complete a sentence? It’s amazing. My Bitch-O-Meter is slowly descending from “molten lava” to “somewhat pleasant,” which is a solid win. I’m finally getting stuff done, after what feels like an eternity of bicycling through sauerkraut (pédaler dans la choucroute—a great French expression).

I know that one day I will think back on this period with great fondness and nostalgia—assuming I survive—but I would be lying if I said that it’s anything this side of “stupefyingly hard.” But this is where the little voice in my head pipes up to quote the well-loved line that Tom Hanks’ character delivers in the movie “A League of Their Own,” and it instantly makes me feel somehow lighter: “Of course it’s hard. It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” I’m not saying that the comparison is entirely spot-on, but the message is: who the hell ever said that playing two full-time roles, that of Super Mom and that of Super Entrepreneur, would be easy? Jean-Philippe NOBODY, that’s who.

The truth is, I’ve never been one to shrink from a challenge; I actually sort of thrive on them (even if I bitch and moan the entire way). So yeah, this is tough—but maybe that’s the whole point. It may kick my ass today, and it may keep on kicking my ass until my kids move out (undoubtedly to go live in the U.S., because karma), but it’s also doing what challenges are supposed to do: improve us. And I am becoming a better person. For one, I’m a lot more compassionate. I laugh at myself more freely. I laugh at a lot of things more freely. My ability to relativize has greatly improved. I may be gaining more gray hair by the day, but each twinkle of silver has significance: a lesson learned, a ray of wisdom received, a jagged edge polished smooth.

The bottom line? My kids are doing great; my business is thriving; my new home is almost fully decorated. In other words, maybe it’ll all be okay after all. 

NO PROMISES THOUGH.

Photo by Jeff Holt

Won't you be my neighbor? Part II

As some of you may recall, I have already discussed my beloved neighbors and their eccentricities, but such is the magnitude reached by said eccentricities over the past several years—nay, over the past several weeks—that I feel the subject warrants revisiting.

Like I mentioned in January, I am now officially self-employed, working from home, a free agent, etc., and am (mostly) loving it. The new boss in particular is one cool chick. The office, on the other hand, could use some work. Let me explain:

Prior to being self-employed, I worked long days far from home, meaning I missed out on exactly what goes on in my apartment building between the hours of 8:30 am–8:00 pm. In my blissful naïveté, I always assumed that nothing much went on at all, aside from the occasional delivery (mainly for me). But since merging home and office, I have realized that no such peace reigns in my apartment building. Quite the contrary, actually.

First off, nobody works. I don’t know what my neighbors are all up to, but they are definitely up to it at home. Victims of France’s 11% unemployment rate? Fellow freelancers? Rentiers? Whatever the case, they’re all here, all the time. I am thus treated to a smörgåsbord of weirdness all day long.

Undoubtedly lives in my building.

Let’s begin with my certifiably insane next-door neighbors and the 1-inch partition separating them from me. Crazy Neighbor #1 is an elderly Japanese gentleman, who judging by the noises coming through the wall is a true connoisseur of gay pornography. He is also the victim of some form of extortion by an old lady to whom he refers as “ma pauvre dame,” and who regularly calls him demanding money. Their conversations go something like this: “WHAT? No, ma pauvre dame, I will NOT send you any more! Pardon? Forty euros? OK, but this is the LAST TIME!”

As if that weren’t entertaining enough, last week Crazy Neighbor #2, a.k.a. Crazy Neighbor #1’s 20-something Brazilian alcoholic boy toy, returned from wherever he had been for the last few months (not rehab in any case), and the pornography fest ceased..., only to be replaced by drunken shouting matches, slamming doors and gangsta rap. The novelty wore off within the first 24 hours since, let us not forget, the aim of my being home all day is actually to work. And I don’t know about you, but I need some modicum of calm in order to succeed.

At one point, I actually resorted to an online white noise generator in a vain attempt to block out the insane loudness of all that vodka-soaked screaming. Sad, I know. And ineffectual. So I took it up a notch. As I was working on a project involving the Middle Ages, the idea came to me to crank up some nice loud medieval music. And as it turns out, nothing combats the sound of two drunken, shouting men like a bunch of chanting monks. So that is my new secret weapon. When things get out of hand next door, I release the holy brethren.

You want a piece of me?

So that was last week. THIS week has been a whole new adventure. Monday I came home from having tea with a friend only to find a baby carriage, baby included, sitting in the apartment entryway unattended. I wouldn’t dare leave a piece of luggage unattended in the entryway, let alone a baby, but then I’m not insane. My conscience told me to stick around, so I kept the forsaken child company until, some 15 minutes later, his (clearly incompetent) mother, a.k.a. Crazy Neighbor #3, came strolling nonchalantly down from the 6th floor singing to herself.

Me: It seems you have forgotten someone here.
Crazy Neighbor #3: Oh! I was just upstairs getting some diapers!
Me (seeing no such diapers): Mmm hmm.

On Tuesday, a plumber showed up at 10 am to break apart our shower tiles. I’ve oft mentioned the disastrous state of our ceiling, so one would naturally assume that any work done on our place would involve first and foremost the ceiling. Not so (our landlord is evidently also crazy). Monsieur le plombier was nice enough, although I can definitely confirm that “plumber’s crack” is an international phenomenon. Is there a specialty clothing store for plumbers, where all the pants have ridiculously large waistlines and no belt loops? Anyway, so we now have some new, entirely unasked-for tiling (in the wrong shade of white, but who’s keeping track?). Meanwhile, our ceiling is getting to the point where the sound of pieces of it breaking off and exploding on the floor no longer makes me jump. It’s become a sort of familiar background noise, not unlike the cheerful humming of the refrigerator.

Wednesday was pretty uneventful, aside from our upstairs Crazy Neighbors #4 and #5 spending a good part of the night dragging heavy objects across their 19th century wooden floors. Judging from the sound, and the guests, I can only assume they were having a nocturnal furniture-rearrangement free-for-all. They do that sometimes.

We’re not crazy, we just enjoy doing this at midnight.

And then on Thursday came the crescendo. I arrived home with my husband, laden with sacs of groceries, only to find that our entire block had been sealed off with yellow crime scene tape, flashing lights, stationed police agents, the whole thing. They let us pass, but upon reaching our building, we saw the reason for all the hubbub: a body. As in, a dead body. There it was, just lying on the sidewalk, hidden under the gold foil that the French use to cover dead bodies, shock victims, and the homeless during winter. No explanation, nothing on the news, zip. I called my mom:

Me: So there’s a dead body outside our front door covered in gold foil.
Mom: Gold foil? The French gift wrap their dead?
Me: I told you it’s an elegant culture.
Mom: Did they put a bow on it?

I figure that the day one’s own mother no longer seems surprised by the theater of the absurd that has become one’s life, one needs to perhaps consider making a change. So as fun as this all has been, I think it’s about time we looked to greener, saner pastures. I was reluctant to leave our “nice” neighborhood, but you know what? I think I can handle it after all.

Eye of the tiger

I have become a Parisian runner. As some of you may recall, sports aren’t really my thing—and by sports I mean competitive, sweaty, potentially violent activities; I’m not counting any namby-pamby New Age ones (those I obviously engage in, like any self-respecting Californian). The very word “sports” for me conjures up images of junior high gym class: donning a pair of ridiculous knee-length fleece shorts and being forced to engage in competitive group activities, demonstrating—regrettably—that the age-old stereotype of “girls suck at sports” is actually kind of true (I mean as it pertains to me, so save your righteous indignation). Messing up my painstakingly sculpted teenage hair by pulling that stupid gym shirt over it was enough alone to leave psychological scars, but repeatedly ending up last to be chosen for the softball team, dog-paddling my way through aquatic relay races and never managing to execute even one sorry chin-up ultimately created a profound distaste in me for “real” sports.

This is why I put off learning to run for years; I figured I’d be bad at it. I was tempted to seize the proverbial bull by his proverbial horns and release my inner Olympian when I began college—as a stress reducer if nothing else—except that at the time, I wanted something more original, more impressive (I was 18; give me a break). So I joined a Kung-Fu class in North Dallas, run by a guy who, fitfully enough, looked like a younger, greasier version of David Carradine. He made us call him “Master,” loved to spout random bits of wisdom from the Tao Te Ching and taught us animal-inspired stances so bizarre that if ever we had found ourselves actually needing to use any of them for self-defense, the attacker probably would have fallen over laughing—which would technically get the job done, so I’m not knocking it.

Don't make me use this.

In the grand tradition of B-grade martial arts movies, our “Master” firmly believed in the “no pain, no gain” approach to apprenticeship; he imposed bare knuckle push-ups on any misbehavers and took obvious pleasure in humiliating his advanced students by flat-out kicking their asses at the end of every class. I hung in there until the day he claimed to have cured his mother of cancer over the phone, at which point I realized with fortune cookie clarity that a mad teacher teaches only madness. And since I’ve never been lacking in that department, I decided to move on.

When I first arrived in France, I spent a lot of time in parks. I like parks; they’re green, peaceful, bucolic. They make for fantastic lunch spots if you can manage to snag one of the perpetually-occupied benches. While hanging out in such parks, I often noted a fair number of presumably French joggers. Nothing strange about that per se, except their clothing, which looked as though they’d initially come to the park just to relax, but were suddenly seized with an irrepressible urge to break into a jog: khaki shorts, polo shirts, canvas shoes.... Odd. Where, pray tell, was their sports gear? Now, G. has mentioned on multiple occasions that we Americans are totally hung up on sports equipment; even the average American housewife who wants to go out for a stroll around the neighborhood somehow feels she must put on a visor, headset, spandex shorts, sports bra and cross-trainers beforehand (with or without ski poles). OK, he has a point; it is a well-known fact that my fellow countrymen and I appreciate le stuff. But hey, at least we don’t go and try to exercise dressed like we just stepped out of a Lacoste casting call.

French jogger, ca. 1999.

In any case, it’s a moot point because over the past decade I have noticed a clear evolution in French sports apparel and now, when I go running (I’ll get to that in a minute), I see the same kind of Nike-clad, iPod-adorned, aspiring marathoners that I had expected to see all along.

So, after reading the hundredth women’s magazine article about how anybody can learn to run, I figured I’d Just Do It already. And in the end, it wasn’t so hard. Unsurprisingly, the first step was buying the appropriate gear, which actually played a major motivational role and clearly demonstrates the advantages of dressing like you mean it. I got through the requisite side stitches, the huffing and puffing, a brief episode of runner’s knee (also a question of proper outfitting), and today am a confirmed runner! My live-in “coach” and I run every week, come rain, snow or shine (mainly because he will not tolerate any whining what-so-ever).

Our territory of predilection is the Champs de Mars, a big green semi-park encircling the Eiffel Tower—I know, poor us. Running there is always an adventure, mainly because of the constantly changing obstacles. On any given day, we may have to outmaneuver masses of gaping tourists, unsupervised children, pétanque competitions, copulating dogs, marauding gypsy families, bridal photography sessions, homeless wanderers, rallying Copts, Segway enthusiasts, African immigrants hawking cheap Eiffel Tower replicas, and much, much more. Sometimes we’re treated to live music; other times we leave with free lettuce. Not wanting to trip over/crash into any of the afore-mentioned, we’ve learned to practice preternaturally aware running.

Today, thanks to my new-found recreation, I no longer fear sports. I’m not exactly what one could call a sports fan, mind you, but when I go in for my annual check-up and my doctor asks me whether or not I engage in any regular physical activity, I am proud to say that I can now reply with a triumphant “HELL YES!”

Won't you be my neighbor? Part I

Parisian apartments have thin walls. In the case of older dwellings, this often stems from the division at some point over the last century of what were once large bourgeois family apartments into multiple smaller, separate ones, which Parisian landlords today rent out for a small fortune each. Sound insulation between the now separate residences was—and has remained—virtually nonexistent. Thus, what goes on in the apartments on either side of one’s own is generally perfectly audible, and more or less easy to live with depending on who the neighbors are, what kinds of noises they tend to make and what time they tend to make them.

But the walls aren’t all; Parisian apartments also have thin ceilings. Coupled with the frequent presence of hardwood floors, what goes on above one’s apartment is almost as difficult to ignore as what goes on on either side of it. This all adds up to the average apartment dweller being exceedingly well aware of the most intimate details of the personal lives and habits of those who live all around him, while not actually knowing any of them. A kind of box, if you will, of uninvited intimacy with people who are just this side of strangers.

In Paris, apartment neighbors tend to not know each other from Adam, which is perfectly fine by them. I mean, why bother? You will NEVER see a Parisian knocking on a neighbor’s door to request a spare egg or a cup of sugar, or to pop in for a spontaneous chat. Instead, it’s the opposite: they pretty much avoid each other like the plague. Stairwell encounters are particularly undesirable. Thus, if you are getting ready to go out, and you hear a neighbor’s door opening, you wait. Once the coast is clear, and the risk of having to make pesky, time-consuming small talk is gone, then you can venture out. Not before. 

G. and I live in just such an apartment. We don’t know many of the other people in the building, despite its relatively small size, but this is obviously normal. Besides, the lack of intimacy between ourselves and 85% of our neighbors is more than accounted for by the extreme intimacy we cannot help but share with the remaining 15%. Take the couple living above us, for example: their lives are an open book of sound that never fails to draw our attention because really, what choice is there?

At 7:00 am, they(?) are in the bathtub splashing water about and brushing their teeth. We can actually hear the brushing. At around 9:00 am, clomp clomp clomp! The perpetually high-heel-shod girlfriend comes tramping down the wooden stairwell. At 7:00 pm, she comes tramping home, jangles her keys into the door, opens and slams it shut behind her, tromps over to what I assume is the bed, removes her heels, which she lets drop—BAM! BAM!—to the floor, and then, all is relatively silent. Until after dinner, that is, when either she puts the latest Mika single on perpetual repeat, or she and her boyfriend get into a shouting match. They tend to intersperse their shouting with what sounds like rearranging their living room furniture.

Then there’s our next-door neighbor, whose noises are almost as bizarre. He is an elegant Japanese man in his late 40s, very well-dressed and polite. But once inside his apartment, things get very weird. He has this answering machine whose volume must be set on “hearing impaired” because when the thing picks up, we hear the entire message as though it were being screamed through our wall. Then, the machine starts beeping at 5-second intervals to notify our neighbor that he has a message. In the beginning, when we had just moved in and hadn’t grasped that beep = answering machine, he left on vacation for an entire week. Lots of people called him during that time: BEEP BEEP BEEP, all week long. I thought he had installed some kind of heavy-duty medical equipment or an industrial security alarm. This neighbor is also in a “complicated” relationship ... with a 20-something Brazilian male fashion model, who spends his days drinking and slamming the front door. Sometimes I run into him in the stairwell as he staggers down, hiccuping. I really need to work on my neighbor avoidance skills.

Anyway, not to JUDGE or anything, but this is the reality of Parisian apartment life. And yeah, we certainly contribute our share of noise as well. I’d even be willing to bet that we’ve irritated the hell out of our neighbors on countless occasions with our tromping around, vacuuming, vibrating laundry machine, long phone calls in English and noisy dinner parties. Plus I’m a bit clumsy and have been known to drop heavy objects on the floor, sometimes in the middle of the night. This is why there is never any open conflict in the building: we all accept that being auditory witnesses to each other’s daily goings-on is normal. And in the face of the cold anonymity of city life, maybe it does us all some good to be somewhat in touch with other people, however bizarrely.

In loving memory

I have recently suffered a loss in the family; I don’t know if I can technically call it a being, but I do tend to “bond” with my material possessions to such an extent that they almost seem to have a soul. I know there’s a term for this (other than “insanity”). Ah yes, anthropomorphism. What did people do before Google? Seriously?

So the family member in question is my late Samsung E840 Candy Pink telephone, which I purchased back in the foggy, innocent days of spring 2008. At the time, I was looking to change mobiles and fell in love with the sleek lines and sexy color of this little slider. The fact that it was quite similar to G.’s own maroon version added a certain extra touch of “buy me” seductiveness. So I bought it.

Having tested multiple phone brands in the past, trial and error had proven Nokia to be the most worthy of living in my purse. Nevertheless, I took a chance on this Samsung because, well, it was so preeeeetty. Sadly, what it boasted in physical beauty it sorely lacked in inner depth. For one, it offered but a shadow of the gadgety personalization options I’d come to so appreciate from Nokia, and two, its texting configuration was an absolute disaster. It steadfastly refused to be taught any new words, and for my franglais texting needs, this was unacceptable. But it had a nice built-in camera and worked just fine as an actual phone, so in the end I figured it could stay.

For years, the two of us built up a certain complicity: Katrin and her fuchsia phone! Despite our rocky beginnings, we came to become all but inseparable. The phone’s memory stored my friends’ numbers and G.’s loving text messages; the calculator function made dividing up the tab after group dinners a breeze; the camera function had my back whenever my real camera ran out of power; the alarm function gently woke me every morning with the song “Paul Simon” by the Russian Futurists. On a side note, I would have preferred a song called “Russian Futurists” by Paul Simon, but whaddya do?

So life was bliss … until, on a Friday night just a few weeks ago, G. proposed that we see the movie “Inception” at the UGC cinema near Opéra. We settled into our seats and as usual, I put my purse by my feet. Now, I’ve always had a little voice in my head that has whispered, “Watch out, someone behind you could just reach under your chair and nab that purse right out from under it!” but I have always brushed off said voice because hey, what kind of an evil person would do THAT?

I’ll tell you what kind. The kind that slips into a theater at 11:00 pm and pretends to watch the movie when really, they just want to take your stuff. So the long and the short of it is this: some punk kids behind us managed to get their greasy little hands into my purse and steal my cell phone right out of it without my noticing a thing until they were long gone. I know this because when we called the number later on—you know, just to be sure—they answered. Morons. I’m lucky they didn’t take my whole damn purse, but that’s beside the point.

I’ve had run-ins with the Dark Side of Paris before, and each time I’ve come away thinking that the city loves me a little less, which is truly sad. It’s an awful feeling knowing that some ne’er-do-well has a cherished belonging that only minutes before was sitting safely in your care, even when it’s something as insignificant as a phone. I liked this little phone of mine, all the more so for the years of saved texts from G., virtual messages having long replaced the written love letter among us Gen Y-ers.

But let’s put this into perspective: it’s not the end of the world. I suppose I should take it as a lesson on the need for greater general awareness, or even as an opportunity for spiritual growth! Are we not supposed to store up our treasures in heaven, where thieves cannot break in and steal? Well, yeah, but … I’m an incorrigible materialist! It’s MY phone and as such, should be in MY hot little hands and no one else’s! Grrrrrrr.

However, time heals all wounds, and one week of mourning was really all I could give. Try as I might, I simply cannot lead a balanced existence without a phone/alarm/camera/converter/calculator. So I HAD to go out and get a replacement. Not considering myself to be “cool” enough for an iPhone (yet), I settled on the next best thing: a smart phone—by Nokia—which even pays homage to my departed Samsung with a nice fuchsia exterior. So everyone’s happy: my service provider, for coercing me into another 24-month contract in exchange for the phone; G., for once again being able to reach me during the day; and of course myself, for having what is quite frankly an awesome piece of technology AND just so happens to be beautiful on the outside as well as on the inside. But if you think I’m letting it out of my sight for more than 2 seconds, think again! No you can’t hold it! It’s mine, I tell you, miiiiiiiiiine!

R.I.P. - May 15, 2008 - September 4, 2010

Working 9 to 5

People often ask me about the differences between the French workplace and the American one. At this, I generally laugh and say that I have no idea, since my entire professional life thus far has been spent in Paris. I was reminded of this fact again yesterday, when a former university classmate of mine, who has recently taken a job in Paris, made the remark that “working in France is ... different.” I think she meant “different” in the same sense as, “Wow, your new hairstyle is ... different.” As in, she is less than enthusiastic about it. I find this interesting, as I have often wondered where I would be today had I never moved to Europe and instead gone to work for an American company (or more likely taken an underpaid but spiritually fulfilling position in an art museum. But who can say?).

I suppose the French workplace must be quite different from the American one, simply by virtue of the fact that there are so many differences in general between the two cultures. Prior to finding my current position in a design agency, I worked for an art gallery, a publishing house/medical conference organizer and a wine brand. Each experience left me thinking that I must have an insanity magnet hidden somewhere in my body, as the sheer quantity of absurdity that went on in each workplace was enough to warrant an entire book (note that). Of course, I never thought that said insanity could possibly have anything to do with the company’s origins, but after typing “mental health in France” into Google, I perhaps should have.

However, I am ill-placed to compare respective degrees of mental stability in the office, for like I said, I have acquired basically zero true professional experience in the US (notwithstanding various campus jobs, internships and summer gigs involving potpourri and dried fruit wreaths, which while fulfilling in their own way, do not count). What I am fairly sure of is that the working hours, the paid vacation and the whole sexual harassment thing are three major differences between the two countries that I can name without needing to have worked in both.

Working hours: depending on the contract, the average French person is supposed to work either 35 hours per week, or 35+ in return for paid overtime and/or extra holidays. Some of us somehow have neither, but it’s illegal and—actually, let’s not go there. Compare this with the 46 hours worked on average in the United States.

Paid vacation: the French get five weeks or more. That is a biiiiiiig plus about working here. Biiiiiig. I shant rub it in more than that.

As for sexual harassment, what an American would consider questionable to flat-out unacceptable remarks, language and physical contact are all perfectly normal to the French, as far as my experience is concerned. I’ve witnessed innumerable examples, in all kinds of companies and circumstances, and it never seems to shock anybody (not even me—I’ve been here too long). Moreover, disapproving remarks along the lines of, “You could go to prison for that in the States” only receive laughter and snide remarks involving the word “Puritans.” Trust me, I know.

So in conclusion, I don’t think the differences are significant. Salaries on average are lower in France than in the US, but French social benefits are so much higher that the difference in pay is pretty much accounted for (so when my heart stops beating after receiving my income tax, at least my stay at the hospital will be free!). The vacation is wonderful, the hours are decent and an admiring male eye isn’t systematically grounds for offense (is he hot?). Maybe I will one day discover what it is to work for an American company and see first-hand all the differences that I have thus far ignored. But considering my plans to become independently wealthy within the next 5 years and never work for anyone ever again, I think it’s a moot point.