"This is normal, what I'm doing?", the RATP worker called out after me as I started through the turnstile. I'd just smashed two large bottles of beer in the middle of the floor of the Pernety métro station and he was beginning to clean up the mess I'd made. I'd just come from Bootlegger, an artisan beer shop on Rue de l'ouest in Paris's 14th arrondissement, and was carrying two bags of "biéres de collection" as a dude would later call them. I hadn't noticed that one of the bags had a hole, and as I walked through the station a bottle of Don de Dieu - a tasty ale from Québec's Unibroue brewery - slid through the hole and crashed to the floor. It smashed immediately, littering glass shards over the ground. Luckily, the only other person in the station had just made his way through the turnstile, so I was suffering the indignity of being a clutz by myself. I looked up through the window of the ticket counter, and the agent was peering over to see what happened when the second bottle slid out as well. It landed with a bounce, and began to roll about when it popped loudly and the bottle cap shot off toward the turnstile. It started to spin, spraying beer like a lawn sprinkler. It popped again and shattered into four large chunks.
I was dumbfounded. Winter had just hit Paris, so I was bundled up in a pea coat, with the standard striped scarf, and gloves. I took my earphones off and removed my gloves. I looked back at the ticket agent and started to point and mumble something incoherently. I watched him grab a squeegee and make his way through the door toward the station floor. I stood silently as he started to clean up my mess. He didn't look at me, and feeling quite stupid, I threw away my bag and walked toward the turnstile.
"Hey! Not even an 'excuse me'! You can't say I'm sorry! This is normal what I'm doing?" The ticket agent began to reprimand me in a thickly titi-accented diatribe about my parentage, and my being poorly-raised. His accent indicated he was likely lower-class and from the surrounding Parisian suburbs. My pea coat, back-to-front Gatsby cap, shined shoes, and bags of expensive beers likely signed to him that I was a trust-funded bourgeois bohemian bleeding money for fancy beers and a night in with buddies. "Not even a 'pardon me'! You're ignorant." Seeing as he was right, and my inability to even apologize for creating a giant mess of beer and glass in a train station should have been greeted with the type of reproach I was receiving, I started to speak. But instead of simply apologizing gracefully, offering to help, and then walking away, I stuttered through an explanation that I was embarrassed and tried to offer help, but he wasn't looking at me and that I tried to say something but he was behind the window and he didn't hear me and... and... and... I came unhinged, and started to ramble. And then I realized as the man was glaring at me that I'd made the situation even worse in one very simple way. I called him "tu". I used the informal second-person pronoun instead of the formal "vous." Despite his anger at me, the man continued to offer me a bit of genial respect by addressing me with "vous." I returned the courtesy by offering a stuttered and poor excuse for my behavior while addressing him informally as "tu." I was acting like a jackass, and a small group of about ten people stood around to watch how deeply I could dig myself in the hole.
The man glared as I cut myself off and realized my mistake. I looked at him and offered a sincere, yet whiny, "I'm sorry... but..." The man looked down at my feet, as I was standing in the last remaining puddle of beer, muttered "Whatever" and pushed my foot with the squeegee. Red-faced, angry, and embarrassed, I turned and walked through the turnstile. It was better at this point to cut my losses and leave, instead of offering more excuses and explanations. One more time, he said "whatever." I walked to the end of the quai, found a seat and waited for the train.
