"Fermé" - Every other French shop

When we were in Paris last year, as soon as anyone we were dealing with realized we were struggling with our French, they pretty much immediately switched to English. While we were travelling through Brittany and Normandy, the people there took a somewhat different approach. Most, upon realizing that French is not our first language (or even second language, come to think of it...), simply slowed down their speech a bit and refrained from using big complex sentences. So we've actually had an opportunity to practice! And it's heartening to see just how much we've been able to take care of in French.

Some of the nicest people we've run into here have been the taxi driver from Dinard airport to our hotel in St. Malo (who had a nice conversation with us in slow French about our travels, and then even cut us a deal on our fare - " un cadeaux"), the hotel manager in Caen (who explained everything very clearly and cordially to us, often pausing to confirm we understood), and the train ticket agent in Caen (who was very helpful and who did quite a bit of work to straighten out a mix-up with the tickets I bought online, as opposed to the online agents I communicated with before who were most unhelpful).

On the other hand, we've also often run into what seems to be one of the favourite words in the region's vernacular: "Fermé". We arrived at an internet cafe in Caen just before 22:00, since our guide book showed its hours of operation ran until 23:00. The decal on the glass front door confirmed these hours. But the proprietor was just letting out his last customer. Our intrusion was met with a firm "fermé". I was slightly stunned for a second, and he must have mistaken my disbelief for lack of comprehension, because he followed up with an annunciated "closed" and pointed to a piece of paper affixed above the business hours decal, stating the cafe closes at 22:00. I guess you can't argue with the official air of blue ink scribbled on looseleaf.

What you can argue with, though, is a waste of food. Especially savoury, delicious, French food. The next "fermé" we encountered was at the cafeteria at Mémorial de Caen (WWII museum). Just as we approached the line-up, a server pronounced the now familiar phrase and, to dot the exclamation point at the end of it, blocked our passage with a cart laden with trays and dishes. This time it was too much. They wouldn't even need to prepare anything for us. Being a cafeteria, and still having some platters filled with food, they just needed to trasfer some of that food onto our plates instead of probably transferring it into the trash five minutes later. We snuck into line from the front, and pointed at two random platters from which a different server scooped us some grub (which turned out to be duck à l'orange and roasted lamb chops... not too shabby I must say)