Upon embarking on a 6 month placement in a French marketing
and PR agency in Bordeaux, I was fairly confident of what to expect; lots of
coffee-making, plenty of scanning and many embarrassing language-barrier
moments. Officially only an intern in the ‘Community Management’ department (my
job description in French … really), my expectations of tedious and trivial
tasks were quite wrong.
It goes without saying that the communication issues were
incredibly prevalent at the beginning of my placement, often leading to
hesitant nodding in the affirmative to tasks even if I didn’t have a clue of
the instructions. However, the scanning and barista tasks were few and far
between. Instead, I was treated like a fully capable employee, reflected in
every part of my life at the agency, except rather unfortunately, by my salary
(a big thank you to the European tax payers, the Erasmus grant is a wonderful
thing when your salary just about covers your rent). This means that although I
only earn about 2 euros an hour, doing ‘real’ work means that I am getting to know
my colleagues quite well. Perhaps too well.
An eclectic group of personalities, made up of more interns
than full-time staff (no, I’m actually not joking), by the end of the first
week I realised that formality was not necessary in this office. The telling
moments included being added on SnapChat by more than one colleague in week 1,
over-hearing someone in the creative department ask someone on the PR team if
she was pregnant in front of the boss and a client (she wasn’t) and being
offered something quite strong at our first work soirée. Needless to say I am
always on my best behaviour, much to their disappointment and often pretend to
find understanding French a little harder than it is.
Although my first few weeks were made up of memorable and
fantastically inappropriate moments, my most amusing occasion in the office so
far has to be the day when I stumbled across the profile of one of my
colleagues on an online dating website (I know you’re wondering what I was
doing on there myself, well you can read all about my online dating experiencein France in my previous article). Thinking of this as the perfect way to
contribute to lunchtime conversation and get a foot on the banter ladder, I prepared
to bring it up over a baguette-induced silence the following day. I perfected
my speech, ensuring I had the right vocabulary to hand…their response? “Oh, of
course we know all about it, our previous intern found him on there too!”
I could not have asked for a better year abroad job, and I’m
not just saying that through fear that my boss will read this article. My
colleagues are patient with my language gaps and encouraging of initiative and
responsibility. Usefully for me they don’t speak any English (except the
mandatory Friends quotes) and they are
rather keen to teach me both formal and informal French. Although I do make
plenty of cups of tea every day, they are mostly for me and, as of yet I have
never been asked to photocopy anything.
