At any rate, all of the written communication in the plant is in french. Until this week. A new sign showed up in the cafeteria:
"Please take on a full piece. Dont cut the cheese."
When we walked into the cafeteria on Thurs, 6 people read the sign and immediately looked at me and started laughing. The sign was obvioulsy not posted for them. I told them it wasn't very good english.
Some observations we can make here:
- Assumes all french speaking people know how to behave in public with cheese.
- Assumes all previous mal-handling cheese purchasers do not speak (or at least read) french. This is a very small population.
- Conversely, we could assume the actual fromage abusers are french, but to save face, the sign is posted in english as a diversion.
- Assumes that the offenders are compliant with written instructions - so obviously does not apply to the french
- When it is important to communicate, even a frenchman will stoop to english.
I will just say this: I did not cut the cheese in the cafeteria. (and I will not explain this expression to the locals, just yet).
