How much you scrutinize the personal lives of your elected officials: their religion, their place of birth, their tax records, their incomes, their spouses, their children, their business dealings, …
Baffling really.
One thing that surprised me is that some companies seem to routinely subject their employees to drug tests with serious consequences if drugs or alcohol are detected. I could understand it if it was affecting someone’s performance of their job but it seems more that if someone smoked a joint on Sunday and got tested Monday they’re fired immediately.
I don’t know if it ever happens here in the UK but in all my working life I’ve never encountered it.
The way so many Americans go to church as a routine way of life, and how they talk about it in ordinary conversation to other people.
I couple of friends of mine who worked for American companies in the UK had to take drug tests. Upon hearing this, myself and most of my friends were astonished. But a job’s a job. If I was an employee I would be constantly monitoring the jobs market for roles elsewhere on principle alone.
From the SDMB I learned that declawing is legal in the usa and that many people think declawing cats is an ok thing. I was also surprised to read that many people will look down on you if you have a dog not castrated or spayed, or if you let your cat go outside.
I didn’t know that healthcare was so expensive, I see people quoting monthly fees in the order of hundreds or even thousands of dollars and I have no idea how people manage that.
I didn’t know that getting a driver permit was so easy and cheap compared to my country, it seems you can learn to drive on your own and just show up for a driving test on any random car. It blew my mind. I spent about 1000 euros on pretty much mandatory driving lessons that have to be take on a special car of the driving school and they have a fixed total number of people they can present to the hour long driving test at each session.
The meme that highly homophobic conservative men are sooner or later caught having sex with a guy.
Quite a few Americans don’t manage to do that. About 45-50 million of them, in fact.
Honestly, yes. I was raised Catholic. Baptised, Communioned, Confirmed, the works. I also haven’t been to a Sunday service in over 15 years. No one cares. No one even knows unless I bring it up because who talks about religion with strangers? That doesn’t happen.
And I’m not alone. About a quarter of the country is Catholic, but less than 50% of Catholics regularly attend church services.
I have to ask, has something you’ve seen on the SDMB influenced you to NOT visit the States when you otherwise considered it?
We still visit fairly regularly, but we won’t set foot in the US without buying extra health insurance first (which is pretty cheap - we pay about $50 each for about two weeks worth of coverage).
You stole mine 
So instead I’ll have to go with … that some women shave their arms. I don’t think I’d ever considered that as a possibility until someone on here mentioned it in passing.
Oh yeah, you reminded me of another odd one - that US Americans think teeth should be perfect and white, and if they aren’t, they just assume that you will fix them - who would allow their teeth to not be perfect and white?
I’m an American who has lived a great deal of my life overseas, and I agree with almost everything in this thread. Religion, healthcare, the Midwestern food issues, even guns. I still get freaked out by the number of people who have an unhealthy personal attachment to their guns, and I believe that about 99% of the people who own guns for “protection” are delusional if they really think they need that sort of protection.
That said, there is a large chunk of this country where firearm are just a good idea to own. I don’t own any, and my town looks about as threatening as one in a Thomas Kinkaide painting, but we routinely have visits from 300 lb bears, our pets get eaten by mountain lions, and coyotes are getting more and more aggressive.
I’ve lived in Australia, and for gnarly critters that can kill you, you guys hold the edge, but the animals generally aren’t the kind that will kill you and eat you, or vice-versa. It’s true that black bears generally don’t attack humans, but they are large and can be very mean and don’t get scared away by swishing a broom at them. We had a poster earlier this year who lives just west of me who found a deer that had been hit by a car in his yard, dying. The humane thing to do is to shoot the animal, but he didn’t have a gun. Luckily a neighbor did.
Like I said, I don’t own a gun, but if I lived just 10 miles to the west, I’d have a couple.
What do you mean?
Among other things, the role of the defendant in US criminal trials, who, if I understand correctly, (1) usually does not take the stand, (2) if he choses to testify, cannot selectively stay silent, and (3) can be prosecuted for perjury.
I am used (having been a lay associate judge here in Germany) to a defendant (1) usually choosing to testify, (2) having the right to answer some questions and refuse to answer others, and (3) having the right to lie with impunity.
In the same vein, that many, perhaps even most, American males find female underarm hair utterly disgusting and a huge turn-off, and cannot understand how any self respecting woman could leave her pits unshaven.
Not necessarily to not visit, but to avoid flying and the TSA if at all possible. All my recent expeditions over the border have been by car.
(1) usually does not take the stand
I think it’s pretty close to 50-50 myself, though I couldn’t find much in the way of a formal study.
(2) if he choses to testify, cannot selectively stay silent
Untrue, the 5th Amendment allows the defendant to stay silent on anything that would make him/her look guilty.
(3) can be prosecuted for perjury.
Why wouldn’t they be able to be? Once you choose to testify in open court, anything you say is supposed to be “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
I have flow multiple times in the last 10 years. Each time my interaction with the TSA has lasted about 30 seconds. Sometimes the lines sucked but I have never been involved in or seen any problems with the TSA. I’m sure there are some but thousands of people deal with them every hour. There are bound to be incidents of incompetence. It is certainly no reason to not fly. I just leave a little early.
This is probably the one reality that makes living here worth all the political/visual/religious/lifestyle/dietary noise.
I just remembered one!
Toilet. Americans refer to the bathroom because the word toilet freaks them out. They like to pretend people are just going to wash their hands and maybe fix their makeup when they ask to use the bathroom. If their guests ask to use the toilet, they are assailed by mental images of that person actually using the toilet, which they find unbearable.
Maybe there was some hyperbole happening in that thread, but the mental image of Americans running away screaming because someone has used the word “toilet” is one that will always stay with me. 