culture clash?

The year has started badly – I have offended several people for reasons that perhaps come down to a difference in the way the French and English look at the world. Well, either that or I am a very, very bad person.

On Monday I arrived home to find the acer in the car park, co-owned by ourselves and two neighbours, "pruned" (more like felled) to within an inch of its life (it's now around half its initial height). Wildly emotional, I totally phased poor Pascal (he of the unscheduled taxi trip to Chambéry) who had simply been trying to do his best, without the expense of professional intervention. Doing us all a favour, in fact.

The tree is within half a metre of our garden, providing a much-valued screen between us and the road, so it is above all Juan and I who will be impacted by the action. The neighbours see it as routine maintenance. "Growing naturally" isn't considered an option. In company with most French people, their style of gardening is characterised by a strong desire to control. At this time of year the air is alive with the buzz of chain saws amputating limbs old and young. Lock up your daughters...

But in the aftermath of my outburst I feel only regret. Nothing is worse than falling out with the neighbours – I will have to think how to make good the damage.

Control reared its ugly head at Berlitz, too. The facts: on 19 December I agreed with a student that I would phone him if I could get to the centre a little early, knowing that an earlier lesson time would suit us both. For reasons too complicated to relate (I had forgotten that Berlitz might schedule a "unit" with another teacher before mine) it ended up with him arriving late, and several people very confused. But no lasting harm was done.

The reaction in the Lyon office was off the scale, however. I had the Director yelling at me down the phone. I tried to right the wrong – cancelling my evening plans, working unpaid extra time, and sending an apology. But I had set in motion an unstoppable juggernaut. Sure enough, Tuesday this week I had a visitation and a very painful rapping of the knuckles in the form of a formal warning. My basic transgression (contacting a student) is incontestable. But the document was a mass of additional half-truths and mis-representations. I couldn't recognise myself in the exaggerated picture drawn.

Is this a cultural issue or am I simply insensitive to privacy issues? Even with all my humble apologising I can't take my "crime" seriously. Big bloody deal if I contacted a student! But it is a big deal here in France. People don't give out personal details willy nilly. And Berltiz, shocked as they were that I could do something no one in Berlitz has ever done (really? - ed), can't see that it's especially difficult for me to take to heart the "no student contact" rule: in another life, after all, I am a shiatsu practitioner, cheerfully opening my shop window and revealing intimate details, like my phone number. So I just thought I was breaking a silly little rule. Mais non. The foundation of the Berlitz empire has been shaken. And woe to those who don't take that seriously.