POSTCARD FROM PARIS

I fully anticipated that my experience working in Paris this summer for three months would enhance my appreciation for French culture, language and the daily working world. That might very well happen. But even before I left the Charles De Gaulle airport, my first encounter with the French left me with a renewed pride in the good old red, white and blue of America.

When my two bulging suitcases failed to arrive in Paris, lost in transit someplace between Boston, New York and Amsterdam, I became another number for the baggage retrieval services. Jetlagged and wearied from flight delays and air turbulence, with my rusty French I tried to convey to the unsympathetic baggage retrieval workers that I desperately needed my suitcases. I filled out my address, identified my luggage from a chart of pocketbooks, duffel bags and suitcases and was sent home with a shrug and callous wait-and-see attitude. I remained cool for the first 24 hours, fully confident that the system would work--that the combination of my clearly printed name on the suitcases as well as those white and black flight markers would somehow guide my luggage home. I joked with my new roommates that there was, on the bright side, no need to unpack.

But as the day dragged on with no word from the airport and I spent two nights shivering in borrowed shorts and tee-shirt, my calm demeanor soon deteriorated. The baggage office answered only every third time I called, and the noise in the background at De Gaulle sounded like a World War II resistance fight led by Charles himself. However, the most upsetting part of the whole experience was the cavalier and almost hostile attitude of the flight attendants, personnel and those whose job it was to help me. They seemed to be saying: How presumptuous of you to expect that, in addition to arriving yourself in Paris in one piece, you expected your luggage to do the same. You spoiled Americans.

I was stunned when, after my thirtieth phone call to the airport, someone told me that I would have to come and pick up my own bags. I had always assumed that in cases of lost luggage, the airline takes full responsibility for delivering your belongings promptly to your door. Furthermore, they are supposed to compensate you with petty cash for your first few nights sans toothbrush and clothing.

There was no money, no delivery, but what's more, no sense of culpability. I guess I had naively assumed that companies, especially businesses such as airlines, which are so highly competitive, aim to please their customers. I realized, however, that this consumer ideal does not necessarily extend beyond my own American experience. My assumptions of consumer/retail conduct are culturally grounded. The image of clean, bright-eyed, smiling salespeople looking up to the next person in line with a cheery, "Can I help you?" is as blatantly American as the white bread peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which I sometimes bring to work.

As I walk around the Champs D'Elysee, I see the invasion of the GAP, American restaurants, and dubbed Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio flicks. Americanization, with all of its money-hungry capitalists, cunning advertisers, flashy lights and technological miracles, has fully transformed the city of Robespierre, Victor Hugo and Jean-Paul Sartre. This transformation is unfortunate. It is an even sadder reflection on our country that, internationally, America has come to represent shopping malls, MTV, Big Macs and E.R. However, many of the social and behavioral norms associated with consumerism have not crossed the ocean back to the old world. Perhaps because of the semi-socialist basis of the French government or the eternal quest for liberty, equality and fraternity, the American cult of the consumer as we know it does not exist here. Purchasing power does not seem to wow and dazzle, nor does it engender sympathy or goodwill.

After reading hundreds of pages of Marx this year and spending a year indoctrinated by the liberally slanted Social Studies Committee, I have come to associate capitalism and all of its ramifications as, well, evil. But I didn't realize until I left the U.S. that I--and probably the rest of us--take certain advantages of our capitalistic society for granted. Consumerism makes our life much easier; the glitches of daily life have been paved over. When things go wrong, someone in uniform and badge is usually there, with a smile and a degree, to fix it.

Of course, there were unusual circumstances exacerbating my tribulations at De Gaulle Airport. Because of the Air France strike, the airport truly resembled the Paris zoo. Luggage of all shapes and sizes spilled out into the hall and angry passengers were fighting to reclaim their precious suitcases. My trek out onto the runway to grab my luggage resulted from the lack of any noticeable ground transportation.

Instinctively, as a naive-seeming young American, I felt preyed upon. I was infuriated by the experience and the fact that neither the airlines nor the baggage services had felt any responsibility. However, part of me felt spoiled by the easily accessible, instantaneously pleasing society of which I am a product, a society which places a high commodity on services.

Call me a capitalist pig, but I fully appreciate our high expectations for consumer service. Being a spoiled American is not a bad way of life.

Dafna V. Hochman '00, a social studies concentrator in Adams House, is interning for the State Department in Paris this summer.