“Absolutely Disgusting”: 50 Non-Americans List Things That Are Only Normal In The USA

It always fascinates me how cultural norms differ across the globe! I often find it strange to see how large American portion sizes are.

Leave newborn babies in daycare all day and go back to working full time a few weeks after giving birth.

nipplequeefs:

Working in retail a few years ago, I had a coworker who couldn’t afford to wait even a single week after giving birth to go back to work. She had a medical emergency on her first day back, left in an ambulance, and we didn’t see her again :/

Coffee drinks large enough to caffinate a heard of elephants. With enough sugar to trigger a diabetic coma, all on the way to work.

"I'm Irish, and my husband is German!".

Cary14:
Or when they define someone's behavior by their heritage, which is 3/4 times removed. He drinks because he's 'Irish'...or some other stereotypical nonsense.

campmonster:
I'm 'Italian!' That's why I'm such a loud asshole and over-pronounce food names like pomodoro and stromboli, but I don't know any verbs in Italian.

How patriotic you guys are.

When we go watch a football match, the players sign their anthem and that's it.

When I went to this baseball game, they had a special guest to sing the national anthem, flags everywhere, jets, kneeling for the army, etc etc.

Treating politicians like rock stars and campaign rallies like rock concerts.

Yes places really are *that* car dependent. Often even when you’d think something is close enough to walk or bike the walk can be much longer or more dangerous than you’d think. Many places especially in the suburbs don’t have sidewalks and the road speeds are too dangerous to make walking along the shoulder safe . There’s only a handful of cities in the entire country that have either good public transport or good enough bike infrastructure that you can not have a car without it being a giant hassle.

Kids consuming your entire life. I’m southern European but lived in the US for a long time and children in America act like complete demons compared to the kids in my country lol.

I think Europe makes it easier to include children in everyday society and America doesn’t give any support to children or parents so kids end up being socialized kinda isolated from society besides daycare and immediate family and it doesn’t prepare them to be able to function appropriately and raising kids to be highly individualistic and pandered to seems be the norm in the US. My American friends have zero social life outside of their children but my friends in Europe with kids still maintain friendships and hobbies unrelated to parenthood.

Mandatory tipping culture.

edit: expected tipping culture is a more suitable wording.

Gobbledok:

I was berated and nearly slapped by a drunk American tourist in Mykonos who fundamentally maintained that she tips no matter where in the world she travels, and took great exception when I pointed out it is considered rude to tip in some parts of Asia. She wanted to fight me when I went into her post civil war origins of tipping culture. Should have left that one alone. Heheh!

"You have to file your tax. To do that you need* to use a private service that costs a lot of money. Have the IRS make a free, easy to use service available for the general public? What are we, commies!?"

In Denmark, the tax authority calculates most of it, and you only have to go check that everything is correct. I spend maybe two hours in a year on taxes.

Also, the US is - as far as I know - the only country in the world that expects its citizens abroad to file and pay taxes.

*: I know you can file manually. It seems this is not a good idea.

Eat in our cars. Driving or just sitting in the car eating. Several European visitors have commented on this, so it must be very strange to them.

Ridiculously huge elaborate football stadiums for schools and colleges in areas that are otherwise obviously economically depressed.

I once read that 8 of the 10 biggest stadiums in the world are at US colleges / universities.

rarepinkhippo:

I was a theatre student at a university with a big football program; the primary theatre building was the old tennis locker rooms. And the school had a comparatively large theatre program!

Feet, pounds, fahrenheit, etc.

wtf mate?!

WHY do you take my credit card at restaurants 😂 here in Canada the machine gets brought to the table to pay.

sugarface2134:

The US has always been behind on credit card stuff. I don’t know why! I first paid at the table in Paris and first saw a tap to pay in Australia. It took, like, 5–10 years to start seeing those things here. So weird.

Use excessive means to get into debt. Afterpay, Klarna, credit cards for every store/retailer, payment plans etc. In some other countries, if you don’t have the money up front in full then you can’t afford it. I didn’t realize how many people in America have things on monthly payment plans.

I don't hold these things against the yanks, but the big cultural differences I've encountered would be...

Talking openly about money in casual conversation

>"Like, yeah, I pulled a 6 figure bonus this year, so I was able to book that 5 star resort in Jamaica"

Something like would just be seen a wildly arrogant and uncouth in my country.

Also conversation style is so different. Over here, people tend to lead conversations by asking questions. Americans rarely ask questions of their conversation partners, they just lead with whatever they want to talk about.

Americans talk *at* you, rather than talking *to* you.

This may not be that surprising but as an American, when I travel to other countries, I realize people don’t drink coffee on the go the way we do here. It’s very common for Americans in major cities to walk around with a to go coffee in their hands while they commute to work or walk around to do errands. In the suburbs people tend to have coffee in their car.

I’m American and worked closely with folks from England for a while. The biggest difference was they thought Americans way overshare. When we were discussing self-image once, another American mentioned she’d had an ED when she was younger (that was it, no other details). I thought nothing of it. When she wasn’t around, they told me how uncomfortable it made them and they were shocked at how personal that was. I was floored. They should hear my friend groups talk about GYN visits. Lol.

When I had European friends visit for the first time, we took them out to a chain restaurant. They were shocked at the end of the meal when the server brought out to-go boxes. They had finished their entire meal (of huge portions) not realizing we sort of expect to have too much food and take the extra home.

Our multiple-lane interstates were huge and intimating to them and normal to us. The fact that our money is all the same color and has no marks for the blind to read them (one friend is vision impaired.) our grocery stores - just normal Kroger or Walmart - were gigantic to them and they didn't understand why the cashiers had to stand all day when they could just get a chair. They had a blast walking around looking at everything. The sheer size and variety of food, especially like larger sizes of fruits and vegetables.

They thought maple syrup was a fun novelty - IHOP blew their mind - and that marshmallows were weird and kind of off-putting. The fact that we greet and chitchat with strangers, people hold open doors for other people as a matter of course (small town in the South) and all those sort of unspoken acts of politeness we don't think about. Smiling at strangers, waving at neighbors. American flags being everywhere was odd to them too, they kept asking if there was a holiday or something, it was just people's decor. They didn't understand flags in people's yards or houses. How spread out everything is and how long it takes to drive within the same city.

They just pointed out a lot of things we didn't think to prepare them for since that was our normal, and we didn't even notice. Was definitely fascinating.

Answering a city/state/two-letter code as if everyone knows where it is when someone asks 'where are you from' in an international setting.