A church and a MC Donald every 250 meters The sheer size of everything
Sugar in everything
Crocs
Tipping
Oh we realize, but it’s difficult to stop once it’s been ingrained in the culture. Not only that, employers took advantage of that and therefore tipped employees have a much lower minimum wage.
It’s not the healthcare that bothered me most, although it did.
It’s the cognitive dissonance around the unavailability of healthcare in order to avoid anxiety over the fact that a traffic accident can bankrupt you with no relief. Ignoring the risk takes some serious mental gymnastics and basic math failure to get there, but when brought up in this environment - where a TV show about a teacher who has to cook and sell meth to get hospital money is actually a plausible plot where no one actually examines the mercenary care at all and the main character just pays it - it’s just a part of their existence.
Not understanding that few other people love like this - cubans don’t live like this - is absurd.
Yeah, as an American it’s disturbing and makes it hard to believe we can change things. You’ve described it very well.
Why were Cubans emphasized out of all people?
Signs telling you not to bring guns into shopping centers.
In some states, these signs don’t even mean that a person can’t carry a concealed weapon into the shopping center. In my state, for instance, assuming you are otherwise able to legally carry a gun (meaning you took a class and aren’t a felon), the list of areas where you can’t legally carry a gun is very limited: Federal buildings, courthouses, etc. If a business has a sign posted stating “no guns allowed,” you can still legally carry your weapon in that business. If an employee sees that you’re armed, they can ask you to leave, and you’re trespassing if you refuse, but nothing legally stops you from carrying a gun into the establishment in the first place.
As a disclaimer, I’m not arguing this one way or another. I have a license to carry a concealed handgun, in fact. Just sharing information.
Does this give you any increased sense of security as a non-american?
the opposite for me
Going out in public in your pajamas.
How difficult it is to find fresh produce in small shops (food deserts)
How much fat is in all the meat.
How old and badly maintained many of the roads and bridges are (I am from Africa, so that says something)
The levels of national arrogance.
Going out in public in your pajamas.
I have seen this on very few occasions, and each time, the pajama-wearing individual is very obviously only out in public so they can either stock up at the liquor store or meet their meth dealer. I don’t think this is common.
Ive done it before because im ill as fuck and need to go get food so I survive, I dont hate it.
It’s common at the high school level. It’s a byproduct of pandemic lockdowns.
I had coworkers in the early 2000s who would do this, working in a white collar profession, and pretty sure they weren’t alcoholics or doing (hard) drugs.
Being overly fake nice because you want a tip. Tbh I’d be more inclined to tip you if you left me alone and stopped talking to me.
The whole tipping thing in USA is weird. Everyone wants a tip, it’s entirely random (as a non-American) how much tip to give. Just pay your staff a wage they can actually live on ffs.
There’s actually a loose set of rules to it. Im not sure where the specific numbers came from, but 22% of the bill as a tip is considered “excellent service”, 18% or so is considered “mid” or “acceptable” service, and anything below that is a sliding scale of how bad you think they did. 0% is either you being rude and/or saying “i dont believe in tips”, but giving a $0.01 tip is basically saying “fuck you, you piece of shit,” (because fishing out a penny or writing it in takes more effort than opting out).
Those numbers used to be 12, 15 and 18. They’ve increased, but I’m not sure why, since they’re percentages. They keep up with increased food prices automatically. Not sure why tip growth has outpaced food prices.
Yeah but how do you consult those rules? How often are they updated? How do you get notified of updates?
The fact that there are no answers to these questions and therefore everyone is working with mismatching rule sets makes the whole thing useless. You can be totally well meaning and still piss off a server because somehow you don’t know what the currently acceptable magic number is.
I recently visited the states for the first time in a decade and didn’t find out until afterwards that 15% is now considered by some people to be “low”. Sorry everyone who I tipped, I shafted you without realizing it. 🤷♂️
As an American I agree it’s fucking weird. Tips should be for exceptional service and not an obligation.
To name a few:
Calling yourself Americans, after the entire dual continent. There are two continents and many other countries in the Americas, you know… [I know you know. And, what are you supposed to call yourselves, ‘USAians’? ‘Americans’ makes more sense and is easier to roll off the tongue. But it’s weird.]
Holding the door open for me. Smiling at me on the street. Those are sure signs of a swindler, but it’s the norm in the USA. [I am not suggesting USA folks are swindlers, only that those actions are what swindlers in much of the world use. USA people are generally super nice and a genuine pleasure to be around.]
Turning right on red light. Red means stop. It’s weird and confusing.
Edit: I added a third thing.
Edit2 in []
With regards to right on red. It (legally at least) requires that you must first stop at the light. So if you are turning right the idea is that you are supposed to first check for active traffic and treat it as if it is a stop sign. If someone ahead of you is waiting to turn right and then goes. Then you are supposed to pull up and then stop again before turning. Though in practice a lot of people will at best treat it more like a yield sign and just roll through without stopping. In super low traffic times or places where traffic is a non-issue (like a rural road where as you pull up to the light you can clearly see open roads without anyone) then this isn’t really an issue aside from learning bad habits. Though heavy traffic places are much more of an issue.
Calling yourself Americans, after the entire dual continent
But we never use “America” to refer to North and South America collectively. You can say “the Americas”, or just “North and South America”. And there’s no adjective that means “of the Americas”; you can say “North or South American”. But just “American” unambiguously means “of the USA”.
I’ve always wondered if disagreement over this comes from the fact that in some parts of the world, North and South America are considered to be one continent just called “America”, whereas we consider them to be two separate continents. And we don’t have a word for the pair of continents, any more than we have a word for Europe and Africa together. (I mean we do have “Eurasia”, which kind of pokes a hole in the hypothesis, but maybe that’s a special case because a brief glance at a map makes it clear it’s pure fantasy to count those as separate continents.)
You can even turn left on a red if it’s from or into a one-way street. I think that is state specific though
It’s pretty much everywhere except for NYC and Montreal Island.
Aww c’mon, I was gonna deliver this in a much more conspiratorial tone!
The technical term is 𝕌𝕊𝕠𝕟𝕚𝕒𝕟 just so you know
We are far from the only people that refer to us as Americans.
Very true. I added context as you commented. I’m not putting you down for it. It’s the term that makes most sense. It’s just weird. Not wrong or dumb or stupid or anything else insulting. It’s just a weird term to use, even though it’s the one that makes most sense. I honestly meant no disrespect or offense. I actually like USA and its people (I mean, there are crazies everywhere, but they don’t define the rest of you). I genuinely apologize if I offended you. Seriously, mate, I meant no offense at all.
Edit: clarity
No problems at all, I just see this opinion a lot and think its weird when people think we’re the only ones that say it, when it seems pretty common for other nationalities to do it too.
It is very common. Actually, I don’t think I’ve heard it as anything else. It’s still weird to me hahaha
The brown paper-bag thing with alcohol in public. I mean, everybody and their dog knows what’s in there, right?
And the fact that people ask if you need help if you decide to NOT take the car but instead walk the 5 minutes to somewhere.
Everyone does know. I can’t speak for all states/counties/cities/etc, but the brown bag thing is mostly a legal grey area for allowing folks to drink in public. Most of the time drinking isn’t legal to just do while walking around and can be given fines by cops. However this can be problematic for additional resources being redirected from more important crimes. So as long as the cops don’t see a label or the whole bottle/can, then they can ignore it as “it could be anything.”
For example, in the summer people in my state like to go tubing down sections of rivers. While tubing you can have coolers and stuff, however open drinking of beer or other such drinks isn’t legal. So if cops were to be watching the river and clearly see the labels it can mean that they order you to get out and hand them over and/or be fined. But everyone makes sure to put their cans/bottles in foam cozies, and therefore it is a low-key unofficial understanding that as long as you aren’t smashed and/or causing lots of problems everything is good. The same also applies to other places like lakes and the beach (at least in my state). But if you are super drunk and/or being an asshole, then the cops will use that as probable cause to actually search the bag/cozies and all that.
As someone that sold liquor for a while, if the bag is dropped and the bottle shatters, the brown paper holds up a bit better when you’re cleaning that shit up compared to the thin plastic that rips when you breathe on it,
Sweet bread.
OMG. It’s bread. Why is it sweet?
Depends on which kind you’re talking about. Cinnamon raisin breads and similar are sweet because they’re basically deserts (desserts?).
Standard sandwich loaf is sweet because your weak foreign palate cannot handle the background level of high fructose corn syrup in all American food. It gives us the strength and vitality to enforce pax Americana, build our secret space colonies, and invent all new world technology.
As an American, yeah that’s what gets me. I just don’t understand it and I hate it
Sizes for clothes, drinks and fries are all bigger than in Brazil. A medium size shirt in the US is easily as big as a large in Brazil. For drinks I would usually groan every time I forgot to buy a small drink since I literally can’t drink a medium soda in the US in less than an hour and I hate wasting food.
As an American, my top realization was… everywhere else in the world yall use electric kettles - Americans frequently only have a stove top kettle like it’s the fucking eighteenth century.
Honest truth is that people in the US don’t need to use kettles as much, so for a lot of households it’s just a question of why buy an extra appliance when the cheap $10 kettle from Target or a small saucepan will do for the few times a year a kettle becomes convenient.
Also: Microwave. Apparently, lots of people heat their water in the microwave. (See pinned comment here.)
I will admit as a kid when I wanted tea I used to just fill a mug with water and stick it in the microwave for a minute.
You ever eat instant ramen? You enjoy boiling things? Do you drink tea multiple times a year?
The kettle is worth it.
Ramen is most commonly sold in sealed plastic bags in America. We just cook it in a pot like any other pasta. Lots of people I know don’t own any kind of kettle. If they need to boil water a pot or the microwave both work just fine.
Personally, I like tea, but I also have an induction cooktop, so I just have a kettle for that. It’s great. All the advantages of an electric kettle without having to put an electrical appliance by my sink.
That’s the thing, the answer for a lot of people in the US is no.
After coffee, the most common need for boiled water in US households is probably for pasta, and a kettle’s not really the tool for either of those.
People that do eat a lot of instant ramen or drink a lot of tea in the US are more likely to have electric kettles (as some people I know do) but most don’t eat ramen often enough and tea just isn’t as big here.
But my electric kettle only cost me $10
I thought this one was also to do with their power being on a lower voltage so Kettles take longer?
But it’s still super weird. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s not. Boiling water with 110V power works just fine.
Electric kettles are are slower on 110 but way faster than electric(non induction) stove
We have keurigs now 🤡
(They can dispense plain hot water)
The toilets/restrooms at restaurants (or at least many fastfood restaurants?) are often shared and used by both employees and customers. It grossed me out a bit a bit at first, especially as they are, in my experience, quite often pretty filthy. So all the nastiness customers drag in could potentially be picked up by employees.
I’ve been to BKs and Wendys’ where I left the establishment as soon as I entered, just because the whole place looked and smelled like somewhere you shouldn’t eat. I suppose these were more often than not in pretty rural areas…
While on the toilet topic, I’ve found public restrooms at e.g. gas stations and shopping malls to often be, uh, less than inviting. I think I’ve seen more overflowing toilets on a 4 week vacation in the US than I’ve seen in 40 years over here, in northwest Europe.
To be fair, I’ve driven east/west at least 10 times over the years, so I’ve been to a lot of public restrooms and the bad experiences tend to stay with you for longer than the good ones.
America uses a sub standard s-bend to keep plumbers in a job.
I never understood the need to display multiple US flags in your yard. We get it, you live in america. You love America. We get that too. Are you afraid someone will think you no longer wish to be American if you took your flags down?
Funnily enough this is exactly how people think including our house.
I took mine down when Roe v Wade was overturned and the Progress Pride flag went up. I had been considering putting the American Flag back up recently if Democrats start winning again.
People from every country like to pretend that patriotism isn’t a natural part of living but will stick their heads so far up their own asses when talking up all their food, culture, teams, or any other number of arbitrary things.
And while there has been some divergence in Patriotism vs Nationalism, they’re essentially the same damn thing but with better connotations for one now lol.
It took me (an American) going to Ireland and Northern Ireland to realize how odd the excessive flag waving is. Still odd, but those two have the US beat.
“Those two” have a few reasons to want to wave their flags.
But the Republic and Northern island need to fly those flags so you know where you are and whether it’s been taken over.
Okay, maybe not, but when I was in America for a few years we decided the ridiculous fixation was so people knew that they hadn’t been taken over … again.
