Today I noticed a new French bakery opened up by Columbus Circle. I thought I'd try it out and selected a slice of chocolate cake called tout choco or "wholly choco." When I said this to the woman behind the counter, she gave me a look of confusion and I had to point out what I wanted. And when it came time to pay, you can imagine my surprise when the price was double what the sign said. When I asked her why it was so high, she said I wanted two. Okay, so in French there's this tendency to drop the last consonant of a word, so how you pronounce tout choco is something along the lines of "too shoh-koh." She heard the tout as "two."

I'd be willing to forgive her if she weren't working in a French bakery. After all, French is like pinyin: If you haven't been taught how to decode this shit, there's no way you can intuitively figure out from the spelling how to say a word. But again, this is your job. If it were one French pastry out of apple pies and rainbow brownies, I'd be willing to let it slide. But you're surrounded with gâteaux aux fraises, tartes au fromage blanc, financiers vanillés, and macarons de Saint-Emilion. If I ask for a "gah-toh oh frahz," "tart oh froh-mahj blan," "fee-nan-see-ey vah-nee-yuh," or "mah-kah-ron duh san-e-meel-yon," and you don't know what any of that is, we're in trouble. The signs are in French. I can translate for you, but considering you don't even know French to begin with I doubt that's going to help as you scan helplessly over the labels.

Also, I said, "I'd like a tout choco." I used the indefinite article. In English, which you should know, that means one. Singular. That's it. Because otherwise you thought I said, "I'd like a two choco." What the fuck does that even mean? Thank god I didn't ask for two tous chocos or I might have blown her fucking mind.