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Early last week, France's armored truck guards went on strike. They want more money, of course, but they also want limits placed on how far they have to walk from their vehicles to collect money. Are these drivers lazy? Mais non. They're tired of being held up during the long journey from their trucks to the banks' doors, according to the Associated Press.
Sounds like a no-brainer, but negotiations aren't moving all that swiftly. By Friday, the strike was beginning to have real effects on French citizens and tourists alike.
With no drivers to deliver crisp francs to hungry automatic teller machines, customers itching for a kilo of strawberries at the local market were finding their plans spoiled when their ATMs ran out of money.
By Friday in Paris, 25 percent of the Credit Lyonnais and Societe Generale cash machines were closed, and 10 percent of the machines operated by the Banque Nationale de Paris were down.
Talks between the drivers and their employers were scheduled to resume Saturday, but that didn't help people who found themselves penniless on Friday afternoon, as most French banks close over the weekend.
Will the city survive? Probably. Most likely, Parisians will take the strike in stride, maybe take one less cafe crhme -- but the tourists? One shudders to think what will happen if the international masses cannot afford to get into the Eiffel Tower.
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