20 of the Weirdest Things About America.. What's the Straight Dope?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Actually, read the posts here. Some of the posts here definitely are criticizing things in the U.S. That’s what’s annoying about threads like this (and we’ve had such threads many times), that people take the point of the thread in different ways. Some people take the statements about the U.S. as just interesting observations, while others insist on taking them as being deep criticisms. Then somebody else says something like, “Why are you being so critical?”. Someone replies, “I’m not being critical. I’m just making some observations.”

Look, it’s fun to visit other countries and note the differences. That’s how you learn new facts, by seeing how other people do things. You should visit other countries. Take a note of the differences. Some of the things will just be different and interesting. Some will strike you as not being as good. Some will strike you as being better. Store the ways that the other country is better in your opinion in the back of your mind as possible suggestions for how you might improve things in your own country.

62

I agree, although I was just responding to one person’s interpretation of the OP, not saying no-one would say anything offensive.

Threads like this always seem to encourage trolling / bigotry. Admittedly, the US gets a lot more stick than other countries here, but that’s in large part because it’s a US site with a big international audience…some people feel this is the place to come with their gripes about america :s

63

Understood Mijin but honestly I think this is a very mild thread in terms of criticism. Nothing nasty, but maybe I ignore those posts. :smiley:

64

Same here in Boston. You can tell who’s a native and who’s not just by watching their behavior at an intersection.

65

Not sure what you mean. I wasn’t taking it as a criticism. I was giving a reason. Things in America are designed around having a car that is not in dispute. I was giving the reason why. It’s a big country. There is public transportation but it’s too big and spread out for everything to be connected. You really have to plan out your entire life around not having a car if you don’t want one. Living near a transportation hub. Only working in places that have easy access to transportation. Only going to stores that are close by. Adding in lots of time for connections. I could probably use public transportation to get to work but instead of a 30 minute drive it would take several hours and involve a few miles of walking at the beginning and end.

66

There were two posts that were very mildly critical. Two.

67

Yeah, and while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. :eek:

And what’s up with all this farting at the beach?

68

On the flip side, I don’t understand why Europeans are concerned about it. In the US, if your card gets physically stolen you may be liable for $50, and even that’s not 100% since often all of the charges end up being disputed away. Other than that, your old card gets canceled and you wait a week or so for a new one to turn up. It’s something that doesn’t happen often and is a really minor inconvenience when it does if your financial planning is not completely horrible. It doesn’t make any sense for a regular person to care much since merchants and credit card companies are the ones who bear the cost of stolen credit cards, and for them it’s just a basic cost/benefit analysis.

Why is it surprising that American consumers don’t care about measures to protect against a rare event that has very minor consequences if it happens?

69

It depends on the neighborhood. I have lived in small towns, small cities, and rural areas and have never had any of my mail or parcels stolen. Occasionally they are delivered to the wrong address but I always get them in the end. On the other hand, my brother used to live in a somewhat downscale neighborhood–not a slum by any means–of a large city and he gave up on having newspapers and parcels delivered because they were stolen about half the time.

70

Nm

71

Nm

72

Portion Sizes: Somewhat true. For restaurants, I think this is a function of the fact that visitors tend to eat in the kinds of restaurants (mid-range casual sit down) that serve the largest portion sizes. We have plenty of restaurants that do serve smaller portions. For snacks, we’ve seen an improvement with 100 calorie packs and the like, but for a while it was hard to buy a single serving, rather than a multi serving “king size” pack of chips or candy.

Flags everywhere. EVERYWHERE: Varies by country, some do more and some do less. I think this varies a lot within the US as well.

Tipping: Some countries tip, but the US definitely has an unusually elaborate tipping culture.

Everything being designed around cars.: I think what is more shocking is the actual lack of public transportation in some places. Even as an American, it shocks me that there are cities where you actually cannot take a bus.

Aerosol cheese. Like seriously I would try it once, but that shit looks like cancer.: This is basically a joke among Americans as well, and is not widely consumed. And every country has wacky snack foods.

visiting friend was very puzzled at the use of the phrase, “Oh really?” in group conversations. Somehow he took that as a person challenging his statements.: This just plain fails. I can think of exact equivalents as commonly used in French and Chinese.

Your toilets are too low and the stalls have massive gaps arond the door that people can see in.: Maybe true, but every country has wacky toilets. A given person would find toilets from China, India, Ghana and Ecuador equally different.

Pickles. Your hidden love for pickles. I have been in the states for like 8 years and you guys give a pickle with everything.: Fail. If you want pickles, go to China. In Sichuan you actually will be served a free plate of pickles with every meal. We are hardly the global pickle kings.

I find it really weird how college football players are kind of celebrities.: Eh, different people play different sports. I can’t actually name a college football player. But I can’t name a cricketer or rugby or table tennis player either.

Why is bread in the USA so sweet? Sandwich bread, hamburger buns, taste like cake.: Don’t buy the crappy bread, then. There is plenty of non-sweet bread. This complaint actually drives me nuts- every country likes to harangue me about how overly sweet American food is. Yeah right, Brazil. You eat sweetened condensed milk all day. Uh huh, Cameroon. Want to give me another glass of “tea” (hot, slightly tea flavored sugar syrup). I think we are just programmed to perceive our own sweets as normal and unfamiliar desserts as too sweet.

Soft drink is free flowing, everywhere. At McDonald’s you get a gigantic cop for a dollar and it comes with unlimited refills.: Yup. Free refills are very unusual.

You are all so loud! But friendly.: Not even close to the loudest (Hint: China) Our ultra-friendly customer service is unusual. In most places, jobs like “cashier” or “server” are basically functional.

73

The list is certainly meant in fun, but the tone (“lack of quality,” “creepy,” “blasé,” “so much,” “so loud,” “so sweet,” “too low,” “that shit”) is obviously meant to be derogatory.

74

In theory you’re only liable for a small amount, yeah. However, a friend of mine had his card number used to buy over £1000 worth of designer handbags a while back; apparently purchased over the phone from a shop in a city he hadn’t visited in over 6 months, posted to an address that was not his. He’s a single guy in his 50s who has never bought a handbag in his life.

It took over a month to get the bank to agree that the charge was fraudulent, despite him actually picking it up before the charge had even fuilly processed. During that month, they removed the money from his account twice, and bounced the complaint between people who either told him there was nothing they could do and people who basically accused him of being a criminal. While he did eventually get it back, it was far from certain.

It’s really not that surprising people can get a little jumpy about the whole thing when a major bank acts like that when asked to enforce their own anti-fraud guarantee.

75

I just back-projected and figured the guy who wrote the list is “too little,” “too soft,” “too bitter,” “too high,” and too judgemental.

He’s the sort of guy who says, “Americans drive on the wrong side of the road” instead of “Americans drive on the other side of the road.” It really tells us as much about him as it does about America!

76

Hey, we do not!!!
We add more high-fructose corn syrup.

77

This is the point of threads like this, it seems to me: for Americans to explain those features of our culture that seem odd to non-Americans. For better or worse, our popular culture - and the products associated with it - are our most successful export. That’s the sense in which we dominate globalization - there’s no country in the world, I suspect, that wouldn’t recognize a Coke can or the Golden Arches. Or hip-hop.

So “Weird things about America” threads are our opportunities to be “exotic” and “foreign”. We don’t often get those.

At least, that’s my WAG.

78

It’s not that it’s an everyday concern for europeans, just that when we visit the US we’re surprised to see chip+pin as a rare thing (at least it was last time I was in the US). Since the security of signing for something is near non-existent, and swiping not much better, it’s equivalent to finding everyone using portable CD players.

Again, not something to take personally; of course there are lots of ways europe is old-fashioned compared to the US (our KFCs still don’t have the double down for instance).

79

I haven’t heard of anyone in the US having that kind of trouble in the last ten years or so even though big banks tend to be assholes. There are some rather specific federal laws on what the consumer is liable for, and I haven’t heard of banks ignoring this. Also, that sounds like a debit card and not a credit card, since you’re talking about them removing money from his account and trying to get it back. Debit cards are significantly riskier to use than credit cards, but the complaint in the OP is about ‘credit card’ security. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a difference in how fraud is handled, and that leads to the attitudes.

Your analogy doesn’t make any sense. Portable CD players are massively inferior to MP3 players or smart phones for consumers - they are bulkier, skip, require carrying CDs, and so on. Swipe + Sign is about the same work (maybe a little quicker) than chip + pin, so there’s no disadvantage to the consumer for using it.

Finding a comment a bit odd and trying to understand another person’s perspective is not ‘taking the comment personally.’

80

The analogy is apt. Apt!

Because I specifically said inferior in terms of security, which it is.
Signatures are easily copied, since tellers don’t have the time or expertise to evaluate handwriting. And magnetic strips can be trivially duplicated.

With chip+pin, a would-be thief needs to see you enter your pin, and also manage to steal your card.

That part wasn’t addressed to you. I’m just trying to head off any feeling that I’m saying america is inferior or whatever. I’m not. I’m just explaining that that entry in the list is absolutely one that visitors from most countries would notice.