4. Work at a French Ad Agency

My first job at a French company was at an ad agency. It's a truth universally acknowledged that an anglophone with okay writing skills and a grasp of marketing speak can work as a copywriter at a Parisian advertising agency.

The agency I worked for, like many other agencies here, had a bunch of LVMH brands on their roster, plus, of course, whatever L'Oréal ventures they could snatch up. On my first day, my fellow copywriters excitedly told me about the (very rare) perks, IE: whatever free perfume, cosmetics, or wine the execs didn’t want. But my eye was on a bigger prize: my first Ticket Resto card.

We were alotted between €99-188 a month for lunch, and this was all available on a little debit card. I should add that I was so obsessed with Ticket Resto because I was two months pregnant at the time, and my days revolved around plotting my next meal or snack. Obtaining my Ticket Resto was the closest I was getting to living out my Supermarket Sweep fantasy.

Needless to say, I couldn’t have cared less about writing catchy copy about anti-aging serums and Argentinian malbec while I was trying to vomit as quietly as I could in the single stall bathroom.

It was hard to give a shit in general. As one of the anglophone copywriters, I was also a de facto copy editor and proofreader of all things English. Occasionally, I would have the gall to suggest a correction, and a coworker would bristle, insisting that tons of Americans would understand what we meant if we said a moisturizer would “pimp your face.”