Majoration Blues

At the moment, I have the every-type-of-blues, I think, but to anatomize foreign country depression, the specific blues in question refer to an evening out at the Salty Kiss jazz club that boasts free jam sessions on Monday nights. J-dogg and I proceeded upstairs to jazz land without having to pay a cover for entry-- jazz-tasic we thought. Then ubiquitous Surly Waiter brought us menus for drinks and there was something about 7 euros for the first drink. The word accompanying this information—a word I didn’t know—was majoration. Being an ever optimistic American who feels like, if there’s no cover, the jazz jam session really is free, I generously interpreted this foreign word with no near English cognate as something that would benefit me, a reduction on the first drink to get you to order more or to get people to come out on a Monday night. The fact that this word appeared twice on the menu was clearly French advertising encouraging us all to take advantage of the majoration. However, I asked surly waiter to make sure. What’s this majoration thing? Does it mean that the first drinks are only 7 euros? He indicated a positive response which he would later explain as meaning that he either hadn’t understood the question or that he had actually explained what a majoration was.

J-Dogg and I obviously ordered drinks that cost more than 7 euros to take advantage of the fabulous Monday night majoration offer. The jazz was great, the musicians were having a blast and started bantering with the audience a little. Everything was jazz club cool, and when my drink came like 4 hours after I’d ordered it, it was nothing extraodinary.

What was, however, extraordinary, was the 32 euro bill that came with our 2 over-iced-to-conserve-the –actual-alcohol-at-the-bar cocktails. The next time surly waiter delivered drinks I confidently told him there was a mistake and our bill should be 14 euros. He responded in surly fashion that, no, that was right because they added 7 euros to everyone’s first drink of the evening. This is what the “majoration” acutally meant, which I verified by asking random bar patrons. It comes from the verb to major, which in French means to increase. (What is that, secret code? Jazz club slang? I’d never heard it before and made a point of sharing the lexical discovery with all Americans in my masters program—grad school did not prepare me for the Parisian Jazz Club— so that they would avoid a similar fate and not embarrass themselves in front of visiting college friends—especially ones who told me upon arriving that my French must be great, thanks to graduate program and my 5 months in friendly and helpful, always willing to lend a hand when linguistic misunderstandings arise Paris).

After much arguing with surly waiter whose nickname was now surly drink-vending-under-false-pretenses-waiter, the explanation was that they added a drink surcharge to pay the musicians and that it was expected that everyone order a drink to make it worth the musicians’ time. This is the Beckettian logic that I have come to expect in France. Maybe the next time I’m at the post office they’ll say that stamps are free, but I have to buy the teller a sandwich. Instead of a sensible cover that everyone pays, there is an order an overpriced drink expectation. What if no one orders drinks—does surly French waiter kick them all out? Do the musicians not get paid and leave in a music diva hair-flipping huff or would they stay in the hopes that one person would order a drink which would allow them to split 7 euros 5 ways so that they could buy food for their children? What if you just stared at a menu for the duration of the concert and constantly pretended you were about to order something and then didn’t? “Who would create a system like that,” I find myself wondering about everything from jazz club prices to the post office (even when sandwiches are not involved) to the University of Paris.

How do you say majoration in French, my translator bar pal asked his friends after giving several synonyms in French—all of which I understood perfectly. Majoration, someone replied, the same word with an American accent. The bar found this hilarious—they’d downed several non-majoration drinks already. After my best Listen, Mister directed at false pretences waiter (“ecoutez, Monsieur”-- this is a French phrase that you can use either for very friendly or very angry situations—I did the angry face with it as I did not want to part with 16 euros for glass of ice with lots of ice, mint and a vague odor, if not much of a taste, of rum), I had to conclude, however, that if the money really went to the musicians that was ok, since they were very talented so I paid for it in my best sullen waiter way. I seriously considered signing: Your club sucks, you majoration bastards, instead of my name (it’s about as long) on their copy of the credit card receipt.

I thought back on the jazz jam session and imagined myself on stage playing a mournful “I just bought a 16 euro cocktail without realizing it and it was mainly just a glass of ice” saxophone riff and then explaining, that one’s called Majoration Blues. Before all the French-as-a-second-language patrons got their bills.