The Right to Shop on Sunday

There’s been a lot of talk about “repos dominical” around here lately.  Every time I hear the phrase I imagine a priest having a late afternoon cup of tea, but it really refers to the right of French people to relax on Sunday, and (most importantly) not work.  Worker’s rights have always been a hot subject in France, but this week the issue is not the right to work, but the right not to work.  While the original idea was to observe the Christian Sabbath (I wasn’t so off base with my tea-drinking priest), the holiness of this day now revolves around the idea that the government should keep workers from being overworked.  Thus, almost all stores and businesses are obliged to close on Sunday. 

When I first moved here from New York City, the thought of a store-free Sunday was frightening.  After all, I was used to being able to buy a toilet brush at 11pm on a weekday.   Then one Sunday I looked out the window and saw entire families strolling down the Promenade Plantée and it struck me that I rarely saw entire families doing much of anything in the Big Apple.  I thought, maybe it’s worth not being able to buy thumbtacks at a moment’s notice if it means strengthening family ties and upholding cultural traditions. (This was before I learned that those same traditions can turn around and kick you in the butt when you are married to them.) I got used to organizing my life differently, and enjoyed the quiet ambiance of a city Sunday.

Anyway, here’s what happened:  when the court ruled that certain giant DYI chains do not have the right to open on Sundays, said monster hardware stores defied the powers that be and opened anyway.  It was a sort of anti-strike, where instead of refusing to go to work, employees refused to not work.  You see, these mega-stores have been open on Sundays for some time now, due to a recent softening of regulations.  But one of the smaller chains did not get the same dispensation and went to court to complain that it was unfair.  Instead of saying, “gee, you’re right, why do only the big chains get to stay open?” the court simply closed down the big chains too.   Not surprisingly, the big chains were outraged, saying that not only would they lose money, but the workers would also lose precious pay.  Thus, the anti-strike (see ABC news article for details).

It all seems pretty ironic to me.  The government, and the unions (who seem to have taken over from the church on the Sunday question), both trying to protect the worker, are keeping the workers from working.  Which seems like a strange stance to take in the middle of a huge financial crisis when unemployment is a national problem.   Not that I’m a big fan of huge chain stores, mind you.  I’d prefer to pay a little more and go to the local hardware store where I won’t have to wander around for an hour looking for a package of screws.  But I think all stores, big and small, should be allowed to open on Sunday.  Not only would it provide jobs, but it would take a load off your 9 to 5-er, who currently has to do all his or her shopping on Saturday (note to tourists: avoid shopping on Saturdays in Paris unless you enjoy hand-to-hand combat).  True, it means that Sundays would lose their hallowed Sabbath status, but if they can handle it in hyper-Catholic countries like Italy and Spain, I think they can deal with it in “secular” France.

More Café Musings

I’m not really obsessed with cafés, and it’s certainly not as if I spent an inordinate amount of time in them, but the coffee discussion got me thinking about their appeal….The other morning, I was feeling a bit out of sorts, nothing major, just that vague, itchy feeling in the back of my brain that didn’t really correspond to the present reality. I was attending to business at city hall (that sounds important but really I was just signing a form), and I thought, hey, I have a half an hour, why not? And I went to a nearby café and ordered a coffee. The coffee was mediocre (I forgot to try asking for a “serré”) but the experience was just what I needed: a good half hour of doing nothing in particular. It occurred to me that perhaps that is the main draw—in a café you are allowed, nay, encouraged, to do nothing in particular. In fact, the whole café-going enterprise is a royal waste of time—and therein lies the beauty of the thing. How often in our daily rush-around lives do we get to do something as non-productive as sit around drinking coffee and staring out the window?

Here is where café culture in France is clearly superior to that in say, New York City. I am proud to say I lived in New York City for 13 years, but when I think of the difficulty involved in achieving the perfect zombie state in a café there, well, it gives me a headache. I lived on the Upper West Side, but to get to a café that was actually comfortable and welcoming (and not a coffee bar with painfully high stools), I’d have to walk a good 30 blocks to La Fortuna on West 71st street. Assuming it’s still there, Fortuna is the only place I know above 14th street where you can actually find an old Italian grandmother hanging out at the manager’s table. And if you look carefully, she will be staring out the window, doing absolutely nothing, as is only right and proper. For me, it was rare to have the time and energy to get there, and once I was it was already an event, which meant I needed to be doing something important, like talking to a friend, or writing, or meeting the love of my life.

But in France cafés are everywhere, and more importantly, they are not filled with Julliard students or West-siders trying to make a point. They are generally not even filled, just lightly dusted with a quirky clientele (depending on where it’s located) mostly concentrating on doing nothing. Communing with the ectoplasm of lost souls who have haunted said café for decades or even centuries. Outside of an ashram or a cathedral, where else are you allowed to empty your mind and let your thoughts wander in the company of strangers—for the price of a cup of coffee?