The anecdote in the OP is definitely a good recommendation. People generally won't expect you to speak perfectly the language of every country you visit. However, they don't appreciate when they're expected to speak perfectly the language of people who visit them, either.
I've been insulted in the street when I was trying to help someone find their way on a map, and they thought my English wasn't good enough (I'm French). That's definitely annoying because you try to help and they're like "you should speak my language better!"
But a huge majority of tourists are nice and even when they don't speak a word of French they understand your English isn't going to be perfect either, so that's good.
Something else that is a bit annoying is people who don't try to understand that things are different. An annoying thing in McDonald's was customers asking what the price was "in real money", or occasionally in their currency, and not understanding that I had no clue.
Sometimes though it's more about not knowing that the customs are different. For instance in North America someone refills your glass and comes to ask you if everything is going alright. It's considered good service. But I grew up where good service is leaving the customer alone, going to their table when asked, and you leave a jug of water on their table and they fill their own glass.
So it took me a long time to stop finding the North American way extremely rude, and I can imagine it would be similar for people visiting France.
By the way, when asking for water in France, ask for a jug of water, or even say "tap water" or they'll give you mineral water and you'll have to pay for it (unless that's what you want of course). I know a bunch of people who didn't realise that and got upset about it. You CAN get free water in France, you just need to ask for it the right way. It's one of these things that I just know and didn't realise wouldn't be as intuitive for other people.