The Unwritten Rules #2: Being Right Doesn’t Work in France
If you don’t frame your request correctly, you’ll be ignored.
It was a Sunday lunch at my parents-in-law’s. The room was filled with the sound of knives on plates but no one was talking, so I took my moment to complain about the French exam that I had failed weeks earlier. I told them I’d emailed the test center to see my exam and they never responded. There was polite acknowledgement, but no one offered advice or explained why they might not have responded. The subject change was as easy as, “Does anyone want some Bresaola?” At the time, I thought I was being ignored.
The following week, my father-in-law was sitting at a small table in the kitchen cutting melon for the aperitif. Without looking up, he said to me, “About your test–I asked my colleague about it and she explained that since the exam is done by the ministry of education, you have a right to see the exam so that you can learn from your mistakes.”
He translated my complaint into institutional logic. That’s when it clicked: there were rules that I didn’t understand. And he just showed me how to be heard.
At first I felt a little embarrassed. My original email was written out of frustration. In fact, I bombed the test. I got a 3.5/25 on the reading section. It seemed impossible because of my previous scores. So, my email said exactly that: “I don’t think this is right, I’d like to see my exam.” I even attached past scores to highlight the discrepancy and prove my point.
I asked as an individual test taker who was frustrated by her result. And my father-in-law reframed it as institutional terms. That’s when I understood: in France, institutions respond not to emotion or fairness, but to the language they recognize. I wasn’t ignored because I was wrong, I just wasn’t using the right institutional language. I hadn’t learned the social codes for this type of institutional request yet.
My curiosity was stronger than my embarrassment now. I wanted to see if his framing would work. So, I wrote the email from my phone in five minutes.
I got a response the next day before 10 am. My father in law gave me the magic words to get what I needed. It was the same request, just with the right framing, and I got an immediate answer.
The way I wrote was more important than being right. When I reframed the email with the social codes, my request was answered in less than 24 hours.
Even after living in France for years, I’m still learning how to ask things and that speaking the language alone isn’t enough. If you want to get things done in France, you have to learn the unwritten rules, and how to make yourself understood by the people processing your requests.