Why the French don’t like Air Conditioning

March 27th 2007

It’s been unusually warm here in March, 16 C today (x F). It’s a welcome change from the harsh cold just a week ago. A week ago, I suggested that a friend & I eat our sandwiches outside at La Défense on our way back to the office. By the time we finished our sandwiches we were so cold we had to save the desserts for the office! Today was the opposite. We went to a local Italian restaurant and they had tables set up outside on the sidewalk. That’s one thing I love about Europe, eating out on the sidewalk. It was quite sunny today and if one side of my face is red tomorrow you’ll know why. So after lunch we go back to the office and, because we were outside in the fresh air, it feels really hot in the office. Yet no one wants to open the window! Now this is my second day at the client’s site so I’m not going to be difficult but it was like a furnace in there. The afternoon sun blazing against our side of the building. So finally I couldn’t take it any longer, I was about to burst into flames. “Aren’t you hot?” I asked my coworker. “Yes but Isabelle is cold.” he replied. “She can put on more clothes but we can’t take ours off!” I replied. We both laughed. Then later Isabelle came back to our office and I guess he couldn’t take it any more either so he opens the window and says something like if she’s cold we can shut it. And guess what Isabelle says? “I’m hot too!”

So later we’re in a conference room where it’s nice and cold due to the air conditioning and they tell me they’re going to move our office into this room. I say “Great, there’s air conditioning here!” My coworker replies “We have air conditioning in our office too.” “So why aren’t we using it?” “Because Isabelle gets cold.”

So why don’t the French like air conditioning? There are several reasons. The first of which is that in general, the French are more cold natured than the Americans. And I must admit that after living in France for many years, when I go back to the US I am freezing cold due to the air conditioning! So it’s really one extreme versus the other. Sometimes when my wife works late I go pick her up from work. When I walk into the office I immediately break out into sweat like I just ran for an hour. I can’t believe how hot it is in her office. She works with 4 other women, so they don’t seem to mind, but the other guys in the office think it’s hot too.

Another reason is that the French don’t like air conditioning. They say it’s not good for the health, and I think they’re right. It’s not good for the sinuses but I’m not sure about the allergies (opening the windows could be worse). Take cars for example, most cars, including ours, don’t have air conditioning. On our last vacation at the beach it was in the upper 90’s and our hotel didn’t have any air conditioning. The list goes on and on. Pretty funny compared to the US where even the elevators are air conditioned.

The final reason is the French are super paranoid about wind blowing on your face. They’ll do anything to avoid it. Once we built a tunnel out of large sheets of flip chart paper and taped it to the ceiling so that we could direct the air from the AC vent to the other side of the room. It was there for over a year until they remodeled a bit and had to take it down.

This is definitely one part of French culture to which a hot-natured American will have a hard time adjusting. It took me many years to get used to 46C/115 degree heat in Arizona (but it’s a dry heat!) and now it’s taking me years to get used to the hot & humid non-air conditioned Parisian heat.

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