Well, this story isn’t going to do anything to help the classic French stereotype that those folks aren’t super friendly, is it?

You can say that again!

But let’s keep in mind that this was an isolated incident and I’m sure that most French men and women are simply delightful.

But still, this is pretty funny…

Take a look at what happened!

You don’t want to sell to the American? Meet my French husband and waste your time.

“So I’m (38F) vacationing with my mother (71F) in Europe right now and she just told me this epic story that I must now pass down to all of you.

Some background: My mother is a very nice person to strangers, especially salespeople. Aggressive salespeople will back her into a corner for an hour until I come rescue her because she doesn’t want to be rude.

My father passed a few years ago at age 81 and he was born in Egypt and was schooled in both French and Arabic and considered both to be his native languages, and then learned English as an adult when he moved to the US.

A few years after they got married in 1976, but before they had kids, they took a vacation to Paris. My mother collects stamps, and she wanted some French plate blocks to add to her collection. She left my father napping in the hotel room and went to the post office a block away planning on spending $300-$400 on stamps.

Well, that’s weird…

She got to the post office and waited in a very long line. When she finally got to the front, the woman behind the counter told her in perfect English that she didn’t speak English, so my mom waited for another post employee to become free.

The second employee finally became available but was very rude to my mother, telling her that she couldn’t help her, couldn’t sell her this, out of stock of that, etc while rolling her eyes and being otherwise nasty and rude, nearly bringing my mother to tears.

My mother was so upset that she decided to get some revenge. She went back to the hotel room and woke up my father and brought him to the post office.

My mother waited until the rude woman was available and had my dad translate in perfect French, telling the woman that my mom wanted the plate block of every set of stamps she had, watching her remove the plate block from each sheet.

There was one little detail…

For those of you that don’t know, when you remove the plate block from a sheet of stamps, the remaining stamps must be counted by hand.

After the nasty woman had a nice stack of plate blocks for my mother, one of every stamp design they had, my mother turned to my father and said, “Tell her I’ve changed my mind”

Take that!

Not only did that woman miss out on a huge sale for being mean and nasty, but she also had to spend a good 30-60 minutes after closing to hand count each individual stamp after they closed for the day.

I am just so proud of my very polite mother right now.”

And here’s what Reddit users had to say.

This person asked a question…

Another individual had a different take on things.

This Reddit user made a comparison…

This person said things are different in southern France.

And this Reddit user had a lot to say about this.

Being rude doesn’t pay!

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.