P.s I work in a tourist office

I’m working in a tourist office for my internship. It has certainly been an interesting experience so far and is very different from anything I’ve ever done before. The basic and obvious objective is to inform the tourist of everything they should see and visit so that they can benefit of the city just like a local would.

Everyone I work with is really nice and are always there to help me in case I need a hand. They even teach me French phrases and words that are actually used by French people. It’s really entertaining and I’m learning. Yay, active language learning, way better than reading some boring book.

I am surrounded by French and it is the main language I’m speaking now so I’m picking up little things and hopefully my accent is improving. I’ve been told by tourists that I have ‘in petit accent.’ I’ve also been told by my colleagues that French guys would love my accent because it’s really attractive to hear someone speaking French with a foreign accent. 🙂 bring on all the gorgeous brown eyed and tanned French guys!

I recently found out that I phrase I’ve been using a lot and very innocently has, let me just say, other connotations! Whoops, I thought it meant fine or that’s grand. The phrase is ‘c’est bon’ just in case you happen to use it like I did. I’ll have to try and use some other phrase instead.

Anyway back to talking about my work. It is great because it is different everyday as the tourists vary depending on their country and language. We had two Japanese tourists visiting and they asked a lot of questions. After printing out pages, giving out brochures and making reservations over the telephone. They were finally satisfied with everything. Just as they were about to leave one of the girls put her fist and the counter and then opened her fist to reveal four or five little sweets. They had rewarded me and my colleague for our help. It was really kind of them and it made me feel really good that I had helped them.

However we do also have some people who are ‘méchant’ or ´impoli.’ We had one visitor and I asked the normal question how could I help her. Thinking I had received enough and the correct information. I went in search of suitable brochures. As it turns out I had misheard her. One of the tough things about being foreign. She got really angry and also took her anger out on my fellow colleague. I was honestly trying to help but she was just some grumpy woman. She also made it clear that she was extremely unhappy when she filled out our little survey based on the visit to the tourist office.

We have some interesting, well more like crazy people who visit the office. Ranging from the old, dreadlock guy who gave me his business card saying I could contact him and he would give me sports classes free of charge in Paris (I dumped the card as soon as he left, creep!), then we had the toothless man with a disturbing laugh who wanted us to search for two illegible addresses someone had written on a piece of paper (he couldn’t even read the addresses himself), then we had the guy who arrived in shorts (it’s dressing here and was snowing that day). We also had a woman who was searching for a permanent residence! Ha! IT’S A TOURIST OFFICE! Not a real estate agents! She was surprised we didn’t have such information and asked multiple people in the office the same question, everything getting the same answer.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of helping a young couple book some guides visits. The woman was extremely rude and laughed at my accent in front of me!

I sometimes get asked by the French would I prefer to speak in English. I don’t know if they think they are helping or what but I want to speak French so I just reply politely informing them of that.

For the most part I have met nothing but nice people. Wishing me luck with my internship. I’ve also met some people who are delighted to hear I’m Irish and they then express how much they would live to visit Ireland.

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is ‘are you German/English?’ God no! I’m Irish! I even had one guy say to me that I had an English accent after I clearly explained I was Irish. I don’t know people recognize instantly that I am an English speaker. If a French/Italian/Spanish person were to speak to me in English, I would be really unsure which of those three countries they came from.

There are also locals who come into the office asking for really bizarre things like maps of Paris, Dijon and Geneva. Uh sorry but the sign outside does not read ‘tourism office of France/other European countries’, does it? No, so quit asking for things we clearly are not going to have, ever.

It is challenging being Irish speaking French as some picky people ignore me and prefer to speak to a native. I get but I’m also capable of giving it the information they are looking for. I aim to get better at French so that at least people can’t recognize that I am an anglophone. 🙂