Parislog 58
September 11, 2006

I got to thinking today about something that I had read in many books about the culture in Paris. The authors said that one of the irritating things about the French was that they wouldn’t give you all the information you needed unless you asked them just the right questions. It was assumed that they were being cryptic on purpose and that it was a cultural thing to hide information. Today, it occurred to me that maybe it had nothing to do with that but rather had to do with what we assume that another person already knows. I would be willing to bet that a foreigner in America would have the same experiences because we all assume that certain things are just things that everybody knows. And if a person has lived in one place or one country their whole life then chances are true that this information is common knowledge.
I think back to when I first got here and didn’t know that every phone call that you made was charged by the minute and that calls to cell phones were at an even higher rate. It never occurred to my roommate to tell me that because in his way of thinking everyone knew that. He had no idea that we did things differently where I come from. He wasn’t trying to keep a secret at all.
When I deal with the service people in stores and in offices, I have the same problems of not getting all the information that I need but it is because the people I am dealing with assume that I already know these things because it is just common knowledge. I am going to have to go back to the employment office to clarify some points because I know that was happening. The lady I talked with said that I needed to come back in November but I can’t imagine that that is it. It just feels too simple. I bet there is a whole bunch of details that I don’t know that I should.