Working and Living in Paris for 4 Months
- Feb 1
- 9 min read
I have one day left in Paris. How'd that happen? It has gone by way too fast. Let me fill you in a bit, because it's been a while since I wrote and lots has changed. I'm going to talk about my work life, my daily life and my artistic pursuits in this highly artistic city, and my cost breakdown. On Feb. 3rd I'm headed to Japan! I will participate in karate seminars with my dojo friends from back home for about a week, then we will go to Osaka, and then if I can't find a way to stay on the karate grind I will go to work and live with an apiarist (bee farmer) for two weeks. Then, who knows! My exit flight is end of April to Seoul, where I will probably just spend a quick little time.
The Jobbe
Work stayed pretty consistent with my last post. I was working about 50 hour weeks, and my days off were Monday and Tuesday. I worked in a small brasserie, with most of the clientele coming after work or before a theater performance, united over a common goal of alcohol consumption. I waited on tables, serving drinks and food, but on Saturday and Sunday I spent several hours working alone and thus had to go behind the bar too. In a sense it was the perfect introduction to restaurant work, seeing as I got to do a little bit of everything.
My biggest takeaways from the work were learning about the way I communicate and seeing how I work with people other than engineers. The pride that restaurant staff have is different to that of engineers, and at first I think I stepped on my coworkers' toes by overcommunicating, which I learned to do with my disastrous capstone project in college. I figured it's good to just announce what I'm doing so that other people know I'm on it, but they took it as me telling them what to do. Or sometimes when I'd take my break I'd still communicate to my coworkers what needed doing in my section, just to fill them in. Not to be a bossy know-it-all! Not my intention at all! But luckily my manager was frickin awesome and gave me really good feedback every month, so I was able to work on it and I noticed significant improvements over time.
Something I didn't appreciate was how we were trained to push consumption. There were subtle ways to get people to order more, and it felt dishonest. I don't care for that capitalist mindset. I get that that's how restaurants stay in business, but it felt a bit sleezy and against my morals. Also, now when I go to restaurants or bars I feel very aware that I'm not spending very much and automatically assume the staff is annoyed by that, because our staff was annoyed by tables who didn't order a lot.
City Livin'
As for my life in Paree. I started by staying on a Congolese woman's couch for two months at Porte de Vincennes (eastern Paris). I met her on Facebook and she offered to let me stay for $250/month and if I helped with her kids sometimes. It quickly became exhausting. I'd get home late from work, sometimes not until 4 AM, and the kids woke up around 5:30-6. That, combined with the couch slowly caving in, meant that I was poorly slept and always tired. The month of December, my coworker said I could stay in her centrally-located studio for the month since she wasn't really using it and wasn't ready to formally rent it out yet. It absolutely reinvigorated me. I was sleeping on a real bed for the first time since July. I had a space to myself. Wow, wow, wow. I forgot how important that is. Or how good it feels when you have it. Then, for the month of January I found a French woman through Facebook who lent me a room in her apartment in Montmartre. We had pretty opposite schedules so it worked out really well in the sense that we never got in each others' ways.
On Mondays and Tuesdays I didn't really do too much, to be honest. I was usually so exhausted from the work week that I didn't have any juice left. Being a waitress means constantly talking with new people, so on my days off I'd recharge my social battery and hunker down. When I first arrived in Paris with my ma we stumbled upon a lovely bar called Au Chat Noir, where I quickly felt welcomed and at home. I continued to go back there all the time, and it was cool because they didn't mind people working on their computers there. And, I discovered that Monday nights they hosted Spoken Word Paris, a poetry/writing open mic night. You had five minutes to do whatever you wanted, although mostly it was reading a work or occasionally performing a song. This worked well for me because there are very few events on Monday nights in Paris, especially free ones, and I was on a strict budget the whole time I was in Paris. At the chat noir I’ve become friends with Ali and the other bartenders, and I often just go alone since no one I know has the same free time, and because of that I ended up with a lot of old man friends. Great conversations and lots of sweethearts with really cool stories, like being an accomplished photographer or a famous rock musician from the 70s.
I was encouraged by the open mic attendees to share my writing, and over the last few months I gained so much confidence and had an amazing time performing what I write. Usually it was a combination of short stories or poetry, but twice I played a song on guitar! One of those times was with my cousin Zoe, who I've been reunited with since living in Paris, and it was so sweet to be able to do that with her.
Tuesday nights I shared many a dinner with my friends Ava and Sam, and eventually started climbing with Ava's cousin Louis, who also became a close friend. So my weekends were lowkey but usually a good time. Louis invited me to come climbing with him and his friends, and I decided to buy a monthly pass because I figured it would help me stay in shape and get ready for the karate in Japan. Also, it just felt really good to climb again. It's been almost two years now since I had an accident that really hurt my shoulder, and I think it's been good to use it again.
The rest of my week I didn't honestly do much. I'd often find myself Au Chat Noir to do some writing or other organizational stuff, but mostly I'd lay in bed on Instagram. Phooey. I just had NO energy left. I don't think I ever felt that depleted before, even in peak grind moments of my studies. Waiting tables is admirably exhausting and I've gained so much respect for everyone in that line of work.
Budgetty Stuffs
My salary was €2000/month after taxes for 43 hours of work per week, so approximately 11.62 €/hour, = $13.62. I probably made about €80 in tips each month (huge oof). I managed to keep my for-fun spending to almost only my cash tips, so I was able to save most of my salary, apart for transportation costs and medical stuff. It helps enormously that I mostly ate at work and when I wasn't working I'd eat really budget-friendly options (it's hard when you don't have a kitchen). I went to the same bar every time and drank the cheapest things, and also working in a bar means that if I wanted to go out after my shift I could make myself a hefty drink before leaving. I paid €250 for each month at the lady's couch, then €500 for December and January each. So my total rent for four months was €1500, which I'm very happy with considering lots of people are paying minimum €600-€700/month in Paris, but probably closer to €1000 on average. My flight to Japan cost me €415, so all told I have about €6000 saved up after four months of work.
My spending breakdown, exclusively from my salary. Probably spent about €320 in bar shenanigans, but it was all from cash tips so it's not included below. This is for October 1st to January 20th when I'm writing this.
Total: €3227
Rent: 46% - €1500
Transportation: 11.9% - €384 (but my work will refund half my metro card when I leave)
Health: 11.4% - €367 (medications, glasses, shampoo, deodorant)
Restaurants: 10% - €325
Groceries: 6% - €194
Services: 4.5% - €144
Shopping: 4% - €129 (includes my work shoes, snacks, random things I needed)
Sport: 3.2% - €103
Phone plan: 1.3% - €42
I asked Chat GPT to build me a realistic frugal budget for my situation, and it gave me a tight goal of 1200-1500/month, and when I said I managed off ~800/month (averaged), it responded: "I’m genuinely impressed — and a little concerned for your sleep and stress levels." Girl same.
It also described "elite-level frugality" which made my mountain-dirt-bag self real happy and probably will make my mom roll her eyes.
Anyway. I'm proud of that, I worked really freaking hard, and was super careful with my spending. I also occupy privilege that allowed me to make that possible. I'm not financially responsible for anyone but myself. I'm a young white woman with a powerful dual-nationality and was able to use this to gain the trust of strangers on Facebook who agreed to house me. And it's not lost on me that the first to house me was a single mother of three from the Congo, and that she was almost the only one to respond to my post. When her French friends told her she was crazy for reaching out to me, she told them she would have loved someone to host her when she was my age and trying to make ends meet. I remain extremely grateful to her openness and humanity. I try to give back when I can, inviting my friends or a friendly stranger for a drink or something. Partaking in laughters and good memory-makings. Bringing food or cookies or wine. I like to make little drawings for people. Anyway. Hopefully someday I'm in a position that I can return the favor for others.
Favorites and Good Stories Of Paris:
The diversity. Everything can coexist here. You can find literally everything and anyone.
The artistic encouragement. Being an artist isn't necessarily pretentious here as I have experienced it to be elsewhere. It was really refreshing to be around such a welcoming community.
The metro. 'Nuff said.
Walkability.
Delicious frickin bread.
Cheap chicken stands.
Tons of people pass through Paris and I was able to reconnect with some lovely friends that I hadn't seen in a long time. Sam from the Dolomites, Mathilde and Maxime from Mongolia, Izzy and Michael from Boulder, Katee also from Colorado, Kaz and Victor from Nepal, and my mama who came for a few days before a work trip!
Sometimes I'd walk past all the grumpy lookin grumps and we're in such a frickin beautiful place and I'd just start skipping.
Befriended a homeless guy whose artist tag is Marg, which he says is because marguerite (daisy) is his favorite flower.
Played guitar in a reggae jam at an African jazz bar in Barbes. Did lots of dancing. Good fun all around. Also we might be in a music video?
I was able to take a few days off to go see my friend Flore (from Mongolia/Nepal) at her apartment in Brussels, where she was hosting a DJ set and we had a blast.
Non-Favorites and Challenges
Human poop on the metro (sometimes).
My work schedule.
Parisians are often hard to connect with. They usually have well-established groups of friends and aren't really interested in meeting new people/making new friendships. Or even if they are, it can take a while to get in.
Apartment surfing was really destabilizing.
A small baby child was crawling around the floor at the restaurant and after kindly asking the family to make sure it was sitting in a chair several times, I tripped over it with a full tray and almost squashed it. I was so freaking scared and they barely batted an eye.
I quite dislike the French terminology surrounding travel, when they will ask which countries you've "done" instead of "visited" or "been". It feels very colonialist.
Getting chewed out by my boss or managers for things I didn't realize were problematic. Learned a lot but was infuriating at times. I explained to my manager that I absolutely don't mind being told what to do as long as it's not to the tune of "you're an idiot."
My grandpa passed away on Christmas Day. Really hard to not be there and then realize that I won't be there for the service. It put things into perspective, what's really important? It made me really happy with my decision to go home last summer and see my family.
I have pictures I could show of the metro poop but figured no one would actually appreciate that. Feel free to send me a message if you're curious.
To not end on the negative things is important. Thank you Paris for being my first time living in a big city like this, and by the end I really loved it. I'm sure I'll see you sooner than later and I can't wait, I know now where I want to go and that there are lovely people to see.
Gros bisous,
Stella
So proud of you Stelly! You continue to inspire me to slow down and enjoy the beautiful moments of life in a naturally chaotic world. Thank you for showing me around Paris!!! I can’t wait to hear about your next adventure!