Rue Caulaincourt - on tourists and the legendary rudeness of Parisians

The other day an American woman stopped me on the street and asked me a question - just launched straight into it, no hello or bonjour, whatever the language, no excuse me, nothing - just "where did you get that?" (I was holding a lush looking and smelling sandwich...). Now by French standards that is INCREDIBLY rude, and most people would react negatively to being approached that way - thereby sending the lady back to the US complaining about how nasty the locals are, nobody would answer a simple question, etc etc... Pffft.