In France, Start With a Few Words of French: An Interesting Way to Win Over Unhelpful Staff Abroad

I recently watched a documentary set at a Japanese airport and saw an interesting scene.

The staff suddenly had to find accommodation in Paris for the pilots and cabin crew arriving there.

They searched online and found a hotel with available rooms. So they called.

They spoke English.

The hotel hung up.

They called again.

The hotel hung up again.

After about three failed attempts, an experienced staff member suggested something:

“Let’s try speaking French just at the beginning.”

The idea was not to negotiate the entire booking in perfect French. They would open with a greeting and a few introductory words in French, then gradually switch to English.

This time, the person who had repeatedly hung up on them listened. They had a normal conversation and even managed to make the reservation.

It felt very French.

We often hear about French pride in the French language, but the example was so blatant that I had to laugh.

At the same time, I thought it contained a useful lesson for Japanese people traveling abroad.

Being right does not guarantee that someone will help you. First, you may have to make them feel that helping you is worth the effort.

In China, Serving a Foreigner May Simply Feel Like Too Much Trouble

I once saw a similar example in a travel video made by a Japanese visitor to China.

The traveler tried to book a hotel but was refused because they were a foreigner.

It was not necessarily anti-Japanese hostility or a policy aimed specifically at Japanese guests.

Registering a foreign guest involved extra paperwork. Communication could be difficult. If anything went wrong, the staff would have to deal with it.

So the easiest answer was simply:

“We do not accept foreign guests.”

From a Japanese customer’s perspective, this seems strange. If the hotel has an empty room, accepting a paying guest should increase revenue.

For the owner, that is true.

But the employee answering the phone does not receive that additional revenue directly.

The hotel makes more money by accepting one foreign guest. The employee, meanwhile, gets more work.

From the owner’s perspective, refusing the guest is a problem. From the employee’s perspective, it can be oddly rational.

This is where I sense a significant difference from Japan.

In Japan, Employees Are Expected to Act in the Company’s Interest

In Japan’s service industry, it is difficult for an employee to turn away a customer simply because serving them would be inconvenient.

They are the company’s customer, so you serve them.

Their purchase contributes to the store’s revenue, so you serve them.

You serve them even if your own pay does not increase by a single yen.

For better or worse, Japan has a strong expectation that employees will work for the benefit of the organization.

Customers therefore assume that if a business is open, it will provide a certain level of service.

That assumption can collapse when they travel abroad.

The company may want the customer. The owner may want the revenue. But the employee standing in front of you may think, “I do not want to work that hard for this.”

The interests of those three parties do not always align.

What you need, then, is an incentive that appeals directly to the person in front of you.

Seen This Way, Tipping Is a Clever System

From this perspective, tipping begins to look a little different.

Many Japanese people find tipping annoying.

You have already paid for the food. A service charge may already be included. Why should you have to give the employee even more money?

It can feel like paying twice.

But suppose we begin with a different assumption: the company’s profit alone may not give the employee in front of you a reason to make an extra effort.

You want someone to handle a complicated request, carry your luggage, or bend the rules slightly to help you.

Tipping tells that person, “If you take good care of this, you will receive something directly.”

The money does not merely enter the company’s accounts. It goes into the employee’s own pocket.

That is a powerful incentive.

Opening the hotel call with a few words of French worked in a somewhat similar way. The callers gave the other person a reason to engage.

People do not act on logic alone.

They often need some reason to think, “For this person, I am willing to make a little extra effort.”

That reason might be courtesy. It might be an attempt to speak the local language. Sometimes, it might be a tip.

Incentives Easily Turn Into Obligations

This is where the problem begins.

A tip makes sense when it is an additional reward for good service.

Once tipping becomes an established custom, however, the logic changes from “I am paying because the service was good” to “Paying is mandatory.”

Judging from the many videos and discussions about tipping in the United States, frustration with this shift is widespread.

Even businesses that offer something close to self-service ask for tips. Payment terminals display options such as 20, 25, or 30 percent. Nothing exceptional has happened, yet declining to tip can make the customer feel cheap.

At that point, the system becomes a very strange kind of incentive.

What began as a reward for extra service has turned into a payment demanded in advance.

“Do a good job and you may receive a tip” becomes “If you do not tip, do not expect decent service.” The relationship has been reversed.

People become accustomed to systems. Once they do, they begin to see the benefits those systems provide as rights.

This is not limited to tipping.

A mechanism may originally be introduced to make something work more smoothly. Leave it in place long enough, and people begin to assume it should always be there. Try to remove it, and someone will get angry.

Abroad, Being the Customer Who Is Technically Right Is Not Always Enough

Let us return to the hotel in Paris.

The people calling in English had done nothing wrong.

The hotel had vacant rooms. They were willing to pay. English is commonly used for international communication.

Logically, that should have been enough.

In reality, the hotel hung up on them.

Then a few words of French at the beginning of the call changed the response completely.

It was unreasonable. But when traveling abroad, you sometimes encounter barriers on the ground that logic alone cannot explain or remove.

Getting angry and shouting, “I am the customer,” will not necessarily help.

It is often faster to look for the switch that makes the other person willing to act than to try to change their attitude.

In France, that switch may be opening with a few words of French.

In another country, it may be a smile.

And in a country with a tipping culture, it may be a few dollars.

The old advice “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” has survived for a reason.

Still, when I return to Japan and visit a convenience store, an international employee will often serve me in Japanese without any difficulty.

I do not leave a tip.

They still ask whether I need a bag and even offer me chopsticks.

When I think about it that way, Japanese service really is unusual.

The moment we decide that receiving all of this for free is simply our right, however, we Japanese become no different from Americans who see tipping as an unquestionable obligation.