
Why the French Love to Complain - jmnicolas
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200831-why-the-french-love-to-complain
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mytailorisrich
> _there’s “porter plainte”, for complaining more officially_

Note that this does not simply mean an 'official' complaint, but a formal
criminal complaint to police or 'procureur' (district attorney). So if you're
unhappy about the service in a Parisian cafe and tell the waiter that you're
going to "porter plainte" the reply will probably only be a sneer even more
condescending than usual.

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krzepah
Actually don't say you are going to "porter plainte" in a café, you will look
like a Karen with extra steps

edit : Porter plainte means filling the papers to a Police station to start a
judiciary procedure against someone, you'd do that for violence, theft, rape
etc...

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mytailorisrich
Yes, exactly what I wrote ;)

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krzepah
yup ^^

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hackbinary
Uhm, I think the British won the "complainer" trophy with our lame ass brexit
project. In fact, now the Scots are complaining about England (& Wales)
winning the complaint trophy, that they themselves will likely win the
complaint contest in 2021. (Please note I support Scots independence, and
Scots complaints with the UK are also long standing and well founded.)

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ciconia
I'm an expat living in France, and I always tell my French friends they don't
know how lucky they are to be living in such a wonderful country. Really when
you come to other countries I lived in, there's no comparison.

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guerby
Moore in the movie Sicko displayed this in a funny way (I'm french):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicko)

"In France, Moore visits a hospital and interviews the head of obstetrics and
gynaecology and a group of American expatriates. Moore rides with the "SOS
Médecins", a 24-hour French medical service that provides house calls by
physicians. Moore discovers that the French government provides many social
services and rights in addition to health care, such as daycare for $1 an
hour, free college education, a minimum five weeks paid vacation by law,
vacation, and neonatal support that includes cooking, cleaning, and laundry
services for new mothers. "

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embarraseduker
Ah the UK, where its okay to be racist against everyone apart from the UK
upper class.

"I speak English without an accent.." \- you mean you speak English with a SE
England accent?

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pjmlp
This applies to most European countries actually.

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yetihehe
Yeah, for poles, "How are you?/Co u ciebie?" is an invitation to complain, not
a figure of speech.

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coldtea
Where complain here means "actually talk about your life/how you
are/situation", and then listen to the other talk about theirs.

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mrath
I was told by a fellow Australian, that was a birth right as Australian :-)

