You have your convention de stage. Your RIB is set up for the gratification. You know where the office is.
What nobody tells you is everything else.
The Bisous Question
You walk in on your first day. People are greeting each other with cheek kisses (la bise). Do you?
In a professional setting: usually no on day one. The handshake is the default introduction with colleagues you are meeting for the first time in a formal context. The bise comes later, once you have been established in the team.
Exceptions: if everyone is doing it and someone leans in, go with it. If you are in a small startup with a relaxed culture, the bise may happen immediately. Read the room. When in doubt, extend your hand. No French person will be offended.
After a week or two, you will settle into whatever the team's norm is. This becomes automatic.
The Coffee Machine Is Not About Coffee
The machine à café is the most important meeting room in any French office that does not have a Parisian startup culture.
This is where alliances are formed, where gossip circulates, where your manager is actually accessible, and where the informal decisions that later appear in formal meetings are pre negotiated. Show up at the coffee machine. Even if you do not drink coffee. Get a tea, get a water, stand there.
In India, this happens at the water cooler or over chai. The mechanism is different, the function identical. The French colleague who ignores you in a meeting may become genuinely warm at the coffee machine. This is not inconsistency. It is the French separation between the formal and informal registers of work.
Lunch Is Sacred and It Lasts an Hour
In India, you eat at your desk. You eat quickly. Lunch is a refuelling stop.
In France, lunch is a social institution. The legal minimum is 20 minutes, but most offices operate on a genuine one hour lunch break. People leave the building. They go to a restaurant, a boulangerie, the company cafeteria. They sit together. They do not discuss work.
You are expected to participate. Eating alone at your desk every day is noticed, not criticised out loud, but noted. It signals that you are not integrating.
Find out where your team goes for lunch in the first week and join them. The conversation will be in French, often fast, and about things you know nothing about (local politics, French TV, weekend plans). Sit there anyway. Nod. Contribute when you can. This is how you become part of the team.
The Ticket Restaurant: Most French companies give interns a Ticket Restaurant or Chèque Déjeuner, a meal voucher worth €8 to €12 per working day, co financed by the employer. Make sure you receive these. They are part of your compensation and you are legally entitled to them.
Hierarchy Is Real But Hidden
French companies have clear hierarchies. The directeur is not your friend. The responsable de pĂ´le has authority you should not underestimate.
But the French hierarchy is informal in tone. Your manager might be on a first name basis with everyone, joke around at the coffee machine, and eat lunch with the team. Do not mistake this informality for flatness. When a decision needs to be made, it goes up. When something goes wrong, it is tracked to a person.
As a stagiaire (intern), your default is to execute, not to propose. This is different from the Anglo American startup culture where interns are encouraged to share ideas in their first week. In a traditional French company, earn trust first. Share opinions when asked. Deliver what is asked of you, reliably.
In smaller structures and startups, this is less rigid. Your ideas will be welcomed. Read the culture of your specific company.
Emails Are Formal. Meetings Are Not.
French professional emails are significantly more formal than English ones. They begin with a salutation (Madame, Monsieur or Bonjour Mme/M. [Name]) and end with a closing formula that sounds, in direct translation, almost absurd: "Veuillez agréer, Madame, l'expression de mes sentiments distingués", please accept the expression of my distinguished feelings.
You do not need to use the most elaborate formulas, but you should:
- Never start an email with just a name and a colon ("Sophie,")
- Always use "Bonjour [Prénom]" at minimum with colleagues
- Use "Cordialement" or "Bien cordialement" to close, safe for all contexts
In meetings, the tone flips. French meetings can be quite direct, even blunt, with debate and disagreement expressed openly. This is not aggression. It is intellectual engagement. Do not be startled when a colleague argues forcefully against a proposal. It is not personal.
The One Thing That Will Make You Stand Out
Show up, every day, on time (or five minutes early), and deliver what you said you would deliver.
This sounds obvious. It is obvious. And it differentiates you immediately in a culture that has a complicated relationship with punctuality and deadline adherence. Reliable execution is the rarest and most valued trait in any organisation.
Do that, eat lunch with your team, and show up at the coffee machine. The rest takes care of itself.