Darcy's Paris Blog

Too many social plans to handle for one day

Today was a better work day than I’ve had in a while; over the past two days I just feel like I’ve been able to get more done. I learned something interesting about French employment law, too. In the US it’s very standard to have a noncompete agreement – a part of your contract that prevents you from quitting and taking your company intelligence to a competitor; it generally only applies if you quit, not if you get fired. Here apparently, noncompete agreements are common, but if the employer doesn’t release the noncompete clause of the contract, an employee can sue for a year’s salary, even if they don’t go to work for a competitor. So basically the employer knows they can get screwed, unless the employee specifically goes to work for a competitor. Very strange.

After work I met Majid at park near the office, and near where his parents live, before picking up Mike at the airport. Majid spends the weekends at his parents’ place, since it’s much nearer to Paris than his house. We went to the little park in Le Blanc Mesnil, which is funnily right next to his high school. We sat out on the grass by the little lake for a while, then when it started to get cool, we went to grab a quick bite to eat at a Greek restaurant. It was just a little take-out joint and there wasn’t any space there, anyway, so we drove back to the park and ate outside the park in an open city square. We walked back into the park but got kicked out when it closed at 9:15. (The guy walked right past us on his way to lock the gates and only unlocked them when we yelled at him – good grief – it’s not like he didn’t know we were in there.) Anyway, we walked back to my car and drove around corner to where he’d parked. Majid told me his university was having a gala this weekend and that he’d want me to go if my friend weren’t here. Damn! Why couldn’t that be another weekend?! When he went to say good-night, we did the kiss-kiss thing (very close to the front again.) He looked at me, and then kissed me again, this time more like adults than 8th graders. It was very sweet, and we spent a few good minutes in the car before I had to go. As he walked to his car, he patted his pockets like he was looking for his keys. As he walked back to my car, I rolled down my window, and he said “I forgot something.” Then he leaned in and kissed me again – extremely cute, I have to say. He wasn’t going in the same direction as me, but he led me to the highway I needed to take, anyway. At the red light just before the highway, he got out of his car, ran back to mine, told me which way to go, and kissed me again. Again, very cute.

I got to the airport just in time. Mike’s flight was early, and I met him in baggage claim not 5 minutes after I got there. Mike wanted pizza and an easy night, which was fine with me, so we decided not to go downtown. We just got take-out pizza from the joine (Pizza Factory) down the street. (Admittedly they remembered I’d just been there last night, but oh, well.) Later on we drank wine and watched Seinfeld. Naturally I fell asleep.

posted by Darcy @ 10:42 PM