STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

What I've learnt in 11 years of living in France is that getting good service here is anything but a divine right. It's like learning to play a computer game. You've got to press the right buttons or it will be game over before you have had a chance to buy a single croissant.

Before play even starts, you have to realise that your opponent, the French person offering service, is not your friend. I've been served in California by people who seemed to be offering me their body when all I'd ordered was a glass of seaweed and echinacea juice. You won't get that in France, unless of course you happen to stumble into a brothel that also offers health drinks.

If you bear this in mind, you won't be put off as you try to progress through the three levels of the French service game.

Level one
Ignore The Customer

My worst experience of this was when I tried to get a cup of coffee at the trendy Café Beaubourg, opposite the Centre Pompidou.

The decor is by Philippe Starck and the prices suggest that they are still trying to pay for the furnishings. The round metal tables are welded to the floor, which really ought to have warned me that the basic attitude to the customer here seems to be that (s)he is a potential table thief.

The place wasn't very busy, and there were only three occupied tables up on the mezzanine. I sat in a steel armchair and waited to be served. Sure enough, after 10 minutes or so, a waiter ambled up the stairs, a very tall male-model type in a black suit.

As you should always do with a French waiter, I looked him straight in the eye. As soon as he blinks in your direction, you have to blurt out your order before he can get away.

In this case, though, he met my gaze, pouted moodily as if I were a Vogue photographer snapping him on the catwalk, and turned his back on me. He took the orders at the other tables, ambled back towards me and, avoiding eye contact this time, went downstairs.

What did I do wrong? I think I made two fatal errors.

First, I didn't follow my own rule, and hesitated for that millisecond when I had his attention. I let myself be beaten into submission by his withering look. I ought to have got out my 'Bonjour, un petit café, s'il vous plaît' in that minuscule window of opportunity between stare and pout.

Second, I now suspect that I was on the wrong side of an invisible border. I wasn't at one of 'his' tables. If this was the case, the other waiter was obviously excused stairs that day (fell off a catwalk, maybe?) because no one else made any attempt to serve on the mezzanine. Whatever. This kind of thing will happen to Parisians and visitors alike. Don't take it personally. The only solution is to laugh and leave. There are enough cafes in Paris where you can get served.

That was an extreme example, of course. You're much more likely to come across shop assistants who carry on gossiping about their boss as you wait to be served. In that case, if you really need what they have on offer, you should interrupt the conversation with a cheery but insistent 'Bonjour!' , which is French for 'are you going to serve me or what?'

The key thing is not to get annoyed. And this is going to be especially important when you reach ...

Level two
Just Say No

In France, when a girl says no she often means yes. So does a guy for that matter. Indeed, sometimes getting good service in France can feel a bit like non-consensual sex.

Here is how the French 'no means yes' works.

I was in Reims to visit the champagne cellars and didn't want to leave the city without seeing the most spectacular of them, at the Pommery winery. Only trouble was, it was Sunday lunchtime, we were due to leave on the five o'clock train and you have to book a place on a guided tour.

I phoned Pommery and asked when the next tour was. 'Oh, we haven't got any vacancies till the 4.45 tour,' the hostess told me.

'You've got nothing at all before that?' 'No, sorry. We're completely booked up.'

At this point, the faint-hearted customer is supposed to ring off and leave the hostess in peace with her neat reservation list. But I've played the game before.

'But we've got a train at five,' I said, 'so 4.45 would be too late.' 'OK,' the hostess replied, 'how about 2.30?'

'Perfect,' I said, and reserved.

There was absolutely no point entering into an abstract moral discussion about why the hell she hadn't offered 2.30 in the first place. I'd got what I wanted, so who cared? Again, the vital thing is not to take it personally, a feat that becomes almost impossible when you reach ...

Level three
Drive The Customer Mad

I don't think they do it deliberately. It is just their way of showing you that it's the service provider, not the customer, who is always right.

The most frequent cases of this happen when there are two or more people serving at the same time, at a tourist office, the bank, in a car-hire place or a shop.

One customer inadvertently causes a problem. Let's say someone wants to make an unusual transaction at the post office. Approximately three seconds after the problem has arisen, all the counter assistants have stopped serving their own customers and are gathered at the window where the non-standard transaction dilemma has cropped up.

This happened to me when I was selling books over the internet, and I'd nipped (or intended to just nip, anyway) into the post office to send off a few parcels before work.

I had just got to the front of the queue and plonked my parcels on the counter when an old man at another window revealed that he wanted to wire money from his post office account to each of his 11 grandchildren, and that the total sum to be wired had to equal the square root of their combined shoe sizes. Or something.

My urgent parcels were forgotten as the four counter assistants on duty all flocked to the scene of the transfer to compare notes on post-office procedures concerning square roots of shoe sizes.

It wasn't unkindly done. The counter assistants were all trying to help their colleague. If anything, they were adhering to that old French musketeer philosophy 'all for one and one for all' (subtext: and everyone else can sod off).

But it was insultingly obvious that simple parcel-posting operations like mine were just too routine to interest the woman who was supposed to be serving me.

In cases like this, you have to rise to the bait. Without losing your temper, you have to show them that you are not going to let yourself be trampled on.

So I walked across and informed the throng of assistants that I was in rather a hurry and had to post my parcels before going to work. (Always put the moral onus on your opponent).

After enough of a delay to show me that I hadn't trampled on her, my assistant returned and we got the parcels off and wished each other 'bonne journée' .

Game over
Result: An Honourable Draw

I don't want to suggest that service in France is always bad. French shops, for instance, can be temples of good service. After all, this is still a nation of small shopkeepers, so you can buy your stuffed olives, perfume, fish or lingerie from an expert.

The women in boulangeries are experts not only at selling bread but also at customer management. They should be hired by the UN to do the crowd control during G8 summits. They'd prevent riots and they'd also make sure world leaders didn't spend too long posing on the conference hall steps.

The boulangerie is pretty well the only place in France where everyone forms an orderly queue, and anyone misbehaving, like one poor woman I saw who dared to be on her phone when it came to her turn, is made to miss at least three turns while she has to listen to a barbed exchange about the manners of some people these days. In future that woman will make damn sure she takes the urgent call from the police about her stolen car after she's bought her bread.

But the greatest service professionals have to be the ones with the worst reputation - waiters. Until you've been served by a good French waiter, you've never been served at all.

I once had lunch at the Jules Verne restaurant up on the Eiffel Tower. There I was, with one of the most beautiful restaurant views in the world spread out below me, being allowed to enjoy it by waiters who didn't force me to spend half the meal scanning the kitchen door for signs of life.

The service was swift and polite, and the waiter practically knew the name of every cow, sheep or goat that had provided the cheese on the trolley.

It was pure class, like playing a game with a champion and getting treated as an equal.

Which is the bottom line of French service. You, the customer, aren't a king, you're at best an equal.

And if you're tempted to get uppity, just remember what happened to Louis XVI.

The magic words that will make a difference ...

A few magic words can turn getting served in a French caf¿ from embarrassment to delight.

Garçon!
One to forget. No one shouts 'garçon!' in a French cafe unless they don't want to get served. To attract the attention of a waiter or waitress just raise your arm and call out 's'il vous plait' .

Express
If you like espresso, you can ask for 'un café noir' or 'un petit café', but 'un express' is what the waiters call it. Use this word and they'll think, 'This person has been in a French cafe before. No point trying to rip him/her off.'

Allongé
Café allongé is the waiters' word for an 'express' with extra water. It's weaker than an espresso, but less like bison pee than American coffee.

Crème
Waiters' jargon for a café au lait. All too often I hear English-speaking tourists asking for 'un café olé si voo play' and I know they're going to get a tureen of beige soup. Make sure you get the pronunciation right - as in 'krremm', as if trying to dislodge an oyster from your tonsils.

Noisette
If you want an espresso with a dash of milk, ask for this. It's short for 'un café noisette', or hazelnut-coloured coffee.

Demi
The standard beer measure in France is 'un demi', literally a half. That's not half a litre (don't expect the French to make things that simple); it's 25 centilitres, about half a pint. In summer, the Champs-Elysées is lined with foreign visitors struggling to finish two-litre flagons of lager when they rashly asked for 'une bière'. Some waiters are so determined to make an extra euro that even if you ask for a 'demi' they might reply with 'petit, moyen ou grand?' (large, medium or small?). The correct response is a baffled 'mais un demi est un demi, non?'

Carafe
Only the snootiest of restaurants will refuse to serve you tap water. But you've got to ask for 'une carafe d'eau', a small jug of water. Failure to specify this will produce a litre of Evian or Badoit, which is fine, but more expensive.

Marcel Marceau
The French have long since forgotten who Marcel Marceau was, but his legacy lives on. So when you want to pay, catch his or her eye and mime writing on a notebook while mouthing 'l'addition' (the bill, pronounced 'laddi-syon').

· Stephen Clarke is the author of A Year in the Merde (Bantam Press)