Business A La Provencale

Business A La Provencale
I still find attitudes to business and customer relations here rather strange. They range from the sublime to the gor-blimey. In general, family-owned businesses give very good service but chain businesses often the opposite. The idea of excellence in service as a key corporate attribute doesn't seem to have gained much ground here.

One day last week after boules I went for a beer with two of the players to the cafe just below the boules ground. I paid for the first round and was overcharged by a couple of euros by the waitress, who knew me quite well by sight. It could have been an honest mistake but somehow I don't think so. I waited to see if the players with me would notice but, if they did, they said nothing. I said nothing because I was more interested in what was going on than the couple of euros. When the second round of drinks was ordered the waitress came out and said she'd overcharged me, handing me 20 centimes. So, an honest mistake? Could be but I had the feeling that the waitress was playing some sort of trick and covering up. Making a few extra euros out of foreigners is often considered fair game here; in that, at least, Provence is no different from any other part of the world.

Then, I went to my favourite local vineyard and, after two months, they actually had some bags in boxes and so I bought 10 litres of red. I had been in two or thee times before, without luck, so the proprietress greeted me with a thumbs up. She explained that as they had not been able to sell any bags in boxes for two months they had had to put the price up. (I wasn't surprised.) However, to thank me for my patience she charmingly insisted on charging me the old price. What did surprise me was that they had had to wait two months to get any bags in boxes. Weren't there any alternative suppliers?

Possibly not. Friend Steve gets an English newspaper each day at the local Bar du Pont. However, sometimes there are no English papers and the proprietor explained that there was only one distributor that he could use and sometimes the distributor went on strike; so no papers. I don't know if this is the reason for the sole distributorship but the French equivalent of Companies House has the right to refuse registration of any new company whose business it deems superfluous to the designated area. This could be said to give to give all new businesses a chance to succeed but it can also easily create pockets of little or no competition, virtual monopolies. As far as I know, there is no French equivalent of the English Monopolies Board.

Then, just yesterday, I was invited along with all the rest of the villagers to free aperitifs to mark the opening of a new restaurant in the village. In fact it was just a case of new ownership of a pizzeria/restaurant that had not been very successful. A good crowd gathered and I spent a very pleasant hour there. About half-way through I asked for “la carte”, to see what kind of menu the new owners proposed. I was handed a business card. When I explained that I wanted a sample menu I was told that there weren't any; they were “on the computer”. What business manager in his right mind goes to the expense of offering free aperitifs to everyone in the village and has nothing to show of what he will be selling? The idea of, say, focusing on a speciality likely to be popular, making an opening offer of, say, four meals for the price of three and, quite simply, running off a few menus to hand round simply hadn't occurred. The new chef had better be good because the business nous seems lacking already.