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In the full-employment France of today, it is surprising that anyone will work the long hours at low pay required of the concierge. René Laffon, head of the biggest of four concierge unions, says, "People do it just to get housing. It used to be a sort of profession. Now you have young couples who can't find an apartment, or elderly widows with no income and nowhere to go." Frédéric-Dupont claims that concierges are not so much surly as suffering, from loneliness, illness, malnutrition and exhaustion. He adds: "They are continually interrupted at whatever they're doing by people who burst into their loges without knocking, who are demanding and impolite and who sometimes treat them like subhumans. They are badly housed in tiny, airless corners and hardly ever go to the doctor because they can't afford it and can't leave."
Since World War II, the number of Paris concierges—who are about 95% women—has dropped from 80,000 to 64,000, and the decline is continuing, largely because most new apartment buildings dispense with concierges entirely. Yet those who still have jobs cling to them as long as possible because, on retirement, they are entitled to only a minimal social security payment. Touched by the dismal prospect facing aged concierges, Union President Laffon raised money from the government, property owners and insurance companies for a retirement home to open this spring at Lardy, 27 miles from Paris. When completed, it will house 83 persons who can happily spend their declining years refusing to answer knocks on their doors, or peering down long corridors at other ex-concierges who peer suspiciously back at them. Still unfound: someone willing to be concierge for Lardy's ex-concierges.