> there’s “porter plainte”, for complaining more officially

Note that this does not simply mean an 'official' complaint, but a formal criminal complaint to police or 'procureur' (district attorney). So if you're unhappy about the service in a Parisian cafe and tell the waiter that you're going to "porter plainte" the reply will probably only be a sneer even more condescending than usual.

Actually don't say you are going to "porter plainte" in a café, you will look like a Karen with extra steps

edit : Porter plainte means filling the papers to a Police station to start a judiciary procedure against someone, you'd do that for violence, theft, rape etc...

Yes, exactly what I wrote ;)

yup ^^

Uhm, I think the British won the "complainer" trophy with our lame ass brexit project. In fact, now the Scots are complaining about England (& Wales) winning the complaint trophy, that they themselves will likely win the complaint contest in 2021. (Please note I support Scots independence, and Scots complaints with the UK are also long standing and well founded.)

I'm an expat living in France, and I always tell my French friends they don't know how lucky they are to be living in such a wonderful country. Really when you come to other countries I lived in, there's no comparison.

The thinking is that the country probably wouldn't be so wonderful if the people were not in the habit of complaining about some of the things that aren't that wonderful.

Moore in the movie Sicko displayed this in a funny way (I'm french):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicko

"In France, Moore visits a hospital and interviews the head of obstetrics and gynaecology and a group of American expatriates. Moore rides with the "SOS Médecins", a 24-hour French medical service that provides house calls by physicians. Moore discovers that the French government provides many social services and rights in addition to health care, such as daycare for $1 an hour, free college education, a minimum five weeks paid vacation by law, vacation, and neonatal support that includes cooking, cleaning, and laundry services for new mothers. "

Ah the UK, where its okay to be racist against everyone apart from the UK upper class.

"I speak English without an accent.." - you mean you speak English with a SE England accent?

This applies to most European countries actually.

Yeah, for poles, "How are you?/Co u ciebie?" is an invitation to complain, not a figure of speech.

Where complain here means "actually talk about your life/how you are/situation", and then listen to the other talk about theirs.

I was told by a fellow Australian, that was a birth right as Australian :-)