No matter where you are in the world, personality varies wildly from person to person – but there are certainly a lot of countries with a discernible national character that pervades the populace. Australians tend to like dry, ironic humour. Kiwis tend to also like dry, ironic humour, but without the meanness. British people love being outwardly polite. Canadian people love apologising. American people love stockpiling military-grade tactical weaponry just in case they see teens loitering on their street. But no one loves anything as much as the French love being snooty.
Admittedly, they’ve got a lot to snoot about: France has produced some of the world’s greatest wines, cheeses, chefs, philosophers, novelists, painters, and sex positions, and the French Revolution was instrumental in paving the way for modern representative democracy. They might well have earned it.
Whether or not being French grants you license to be a bit of a dick is now an issue being considered by the Human Rights Tribunal of Canada‘s British Columbia, which has received a complaint from a waiter who was fired for rudeness but insists that, actually, he’s just French.
As the BBC is reporting, Guillaume Rey launched the complaint against restaurant Milestones and its owner, conglomerate Cara Operations, claiming that his alleged “rude” and “aggressive” behaviour towards other staff was a result of his upbringing in French culture, which “tends to be more direct and expressive“. According to The Guardian, Rey described the firing as “discrimination against my culture“.
Rey is arguing that he was fired for the high standards he honed in the French food industry and his “direct, honest and professional personality“, while his former employers maintain that it was because of his “aggressive tone and nature“, citing an example where he left a coworker “borderline in tears” following a workplace disagreement.
Milestones and Cara Operations attempted to have the claim dismissed but the tribunal rejected their application, meaning that Rey’s hearing will go ahead. Vive la France.
