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.
It may also be my region. Its always been this way for me for at least the last 15 years or so.
Now, those squarepay terminals that suggest 30% tips or similar can eat rocks.
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?
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.
Family eating at shooters (and the whole hooters/twin peaks concept)
Need to take the car for a 500m trip because there is no sidewalk and a highway to cross
The car thing really blew my mind. My hotel was 400m from the office but 1.6km by car. Colleagues were waiting for a taxi while I walked. I had to cut over a couple of car parks and a bit of grass (zero sidewalks) and was there in a few minutes while they turned up 15min later since they were waiting for a taxi.
The worst part, they all jumped in cars to go 300m down the road for lunch. Yeah, I walked. With looking for a parking space then walking from the space to the restaurant, they got there after me.
I adore Americans; they’ve been nothing except kind and generous to me in every part of the country I’ve visited but damn, the money they’re wasting alone just starting their engines and the wear and tear on the vehicles blows my fucking mind. Build some sidewalks, guys!
Many of us would like this, but it’s dangerous or even illegal to get to some places by walking in large parts of America. And zoning laws make it really difficult to change.
The fear of naked (intact) female bodies, i.e. censoring of even the slightest nudity, when at the same time, it’s totally fine to have minors play computer games where they can dissect other humans in great bloody detail.
Oh, and chocolate that tastes like somebody barfed into it during manufacturing.
Shoes in the house
I grew up in a home where we just never thought about wearing, or not wearing, shoes in the house. Like, we obviously didn’t track mud all over the place if our shoes were that dirty, but if we were wearing our shoes inside, nobody said anything or cared, it was just whatever. Married a Kenyan who put her foot down and was like, “Are you crazy?” It’s apparently a big thing elsewhere in the world. In Kenya alot of roads aren’t paved, things get dusty, and it’s just common sense that you don’t walk all over the house with dirty shoes, so I get it from that perspective.
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.
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)
Yeah but anything that comes out of a keurig always tastes kinda sludgy.
Clean your keurig
Oh I don’t own one… they make crappy coffee anyway.
Ah the company that convinced people that adding DRM to coffee was okay because they made it “easier” to make coffee (meanwhile I’ve faught far more with every kurig I’ve encountered than any $5 drip coffee machine I’ve ever encountered)
We mostly use it like a regular coffee machine though, with the cups you can fill yourself. No DRM used here.
Is there a generic (non-brand) name for these boiling-water faucets? (That’s not a mouthful like “boiling-water faucets”). I think we call them quookers here, which is also a brand name, and I slightly dislike that practice. I mean, “brand name for generic thing” is very common, but the brands and things differ per country, so it’s like a layer of jargon to decipher.
I dont think there is. There are, however, actual instant hot-water dispensers you can install as an extra sink faucet and they are amazing.
WEARING SHOES INDOORS
I will defend this to my death. I don’t want to get my feet out at your house. I find it crazy that people want me to strip off an article of of clothing and I’m the rude one for not doing it. Also carpet is an abomination. Wood or laminate flooring is way better and you can put a rug on it if it’s cold.
Socks is feet out? Wouldn’t that also mean t-shirt is shirtless?
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 live like this - cubans don’t live like this - is absurd.
When I watch “alone”, it’s so depressing at the end when they ask them what they’ll do with the money they won. And they say “pay for my wife’s cancer treatment”. Like omg America
Your public toilets are not private. There should never be a gap around the door. The height should be above what any reasonable person would grow to, and the lower height of the door should hide the person’s feet on the toilet unless you crouch down. It’s weird and very off putting to use one
This is changing! More and more places in the western US are going to euro-style stalls, or fully gender neutral bathrooms that are entirely walled in. Much, much better. I can’t speak for the other parts of the US.
I was fascinated by glass stalls in Greece. I’ve never seen those before (opaque glass, but still, you could make out shapes). Lots of glass in general, such as highway soundproof barriers, balconies, etc. Much more so than I’m used to seeing. We tend to use a lot more metal or sculpted concrete.
My favorite internet video on the subject: https://youtu.be/WlP9aJnzyZw
Right?! A country that’s so prudish and worried about nudity, and yet they observe each other on the toilet? I feel like the whole transgender-bathroom discussion would be mostly gone if they had normal toilets with privacy.
Yeah, I went to Germany … we need to fix this. It could be so much better, we should copy the German’s and use full doors.
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 []
The technical term is 𝕌𝕊𝕠𝕟𝕚𝕒𝕟 just so you know
