Is Your Waiter Rude, or Merely French? A Debate Is Revived Photo “The line that ‘I am French so I am rude,’ well, that is not a defense,” said Edith Boncompain, of the French Institute Alliance Française in New York, after a fired waiter in Canada made headlines with such a claim. Credit Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Few cultural stereotypes are more pervasive than the surly French waiter.
In the 1985 movie “European Vacation,” Chevy Chase and his family meet a Parisian garçon who, after insulting the brood, offers them dishwater to drink.
And who can forget the scene from Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” when a French waiter, faced with his unfulfilling existence, swears at the camera then turns for home?
Well, in Canada recently, Guillaume Rey, a waiter at Milestones Bar + Grill in Vancouver, British Columbia, filed a complaint against the restaurant’s parent company, Cara Operations, after he was fired for being combative, aggressive and something of a bully…