Culture shock: US customs that puzzle new arrivals

[Hot Pepsi]

Democracy :the number of random positions that are elected. From police chief to fence post monitor

That if you haven't been elected to your job there is a fair chance that you have been appointed by someone elected

Bacon and syrup together. In fact most breakfasts. Dr pepper. Root beer. Coffee that tastes of vanilla /cinnamon/whatever

That varies by state, but the reason so many jobs are elected is to cut down on political patronage and cronyism.

Syrup may end up on bacon incidentally because it often comes with pancakes but that's not really what's it's for.

[Hot Pepsi]

Getting funny looks because I can use a knife and fork. At the same time.

Getting funnier looks because I used them to eat a pizza. Yes, yes. I will use my hands when no cutlery available.

We were tought that eating while still holding the knife was déclassé.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/c...switching.html

Using them to eat pizza kind of defeats the purpose of pizza, but sometimes it gets unwieldy and you have to use a fork. Don't see why you'd need a knife.

[Hot Pepsi]

Having to run inside and pre-pay for gas, on the presumption that otherwise I'm going to steal it.

Having to enter my 'zip' code on pay-at-the-pumps on the presumption that I'm using a credit card that's stolen.

Because those presumptions turn out to be valid a lot of the time.

[Hot Pepsi]

I love right on red.

But, on a related note, I am frustrated like crazy at Americans inability to build roundabouts, and on the few that exist their inability to use them correctly.

I agree with everyone on the tax thing, of course.

And, slightly related, I hate that I am expected to tip everywhere, and never know the right amount for the circumstance. I am also confused as hell that the US has a minimum wage for everyone except for serving staff, and that a customer in a restaurant has to guess what the right amount is to pay the servers rather than just have their employer paying a fair salary in the first place.

There is a minimum wage for the serving staff. It's just much lower for people getting tips. If their wage plus tips doesn't work out to minimum wage for a pay period, the owner has to top it up. But that hardly ever happens.

There's not a lot of interest among waitstaff to get rid of the tip system.

[Hot Pepsi]

Here's an explanation of "entree."

http://languageoffood.blogspot.com/2...ntree.html?m=1

[Hot Pepsi]

The total lack of recycling.

That's not true. We have lots of recycling.

But depending on the location, it's not cost-effective or energy-efficient to ship the stuff to a recycling center. Of course it depends on market fluctuations.

[Gerontophile]

It would definitely work in Nevada. Unfortunately, the company who continue to get the cleaning contract, have no interest in doing it properly, and there doesn't seem to be any impetus from Clark County council.

And, at the moment, it's not even on the agenda.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Someone told me today that the reason 'Aluminium' is 'Aluminum' in the US and Canada (but nowhere else) is due to a spelling error in the telegram that announced its discovery. I haven't verified this but it sounds likely.

[San Bernardhinault]

College sports

[HORN]

Even now I'm still not sure of the correct protocol when greeted by people in the service industry in the USA. Whatever response I try always leads to dissatisfaction. It seems there's a script that only one of us is privy to.

For example:

US person: "How are you DOIN' today?"

On the face of it this isn't a difficult question, yet I feel myself tensing even as those words are uttered. Because I could try any of the following from my repertoire of inane replies and every damned one of them will elicit a look of puzzlement from the US person:

"Fine thank you. How are you?"
"I'm good"
"Good thank you"
"Very well"

The "conversation" always stalls. The awkwardness is palpable. They look at me uncomfortably, perhaps expectantly (I'm not 100% sure). If I were on stage I'd think "fuck it" and shout "Line".

What am I doing wrong?

[Gerontophile]

With a service person, when they say "how are you today?", you say "Fine thanks" and get straight to business. Failing that, start speaking gibberish and point to your knackers.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Just go for it, see what happens.

"Well, I'm under a lot of stress and pressure at work, and I keep getting these headaches. My haemorrhoids are playing me up something rotten and my knees ache in the humidity. Anyway. How YOU doin'?"

[Toby Gymshorts]

I've never been to the USA, incidentally.

[ursus arctos]

Gero is correct.

It isn't supposed to be a conversation.

It is just a ritualistic exchange of platitudes.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Much as it is in the UK, then, unless you know the person involved. The only possible response is "fine thanks, how are you?"

[Amor de Cosmos]

Or these days "Good. You?"

[Toby Gymshorts]

I'm strictly old school in my awkward social interactions.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Me too — at least in my head. When someone says they're "good," I'm tempted to reply: "I try to be good, but I confess it's a struggle. There are so many temptations in my path."

[Hot Pepsi]

Someone told me today that the reason 'Aluminium' is 'Aluminum' in the US and Canada (but nowhere else) is due to a spelling error in the telegram that announced its discovery. I haven't verified this but it sounds likely.

That may be true. I read that their were separate professional societies that came up with the standard names in the 19th century.

[Hot Pepsi]

It would definitely work in Nevada. Unfortunately, the company who continue to get the cleaning contract, have no interest in doing it properly, and there doesn't seem to be any impetus from Clark County council.

And, at the moment, it's not even on the agenda.

You should agitate for it!

[Hot Pepsi]

I was taught that Germans do "Wie gehts? - Ganz gut" in the same ritualistic way. Maybe I was lied to.

[Hot Pepsi]

College sports

The reasons for that are historical and multifactorial, but a few of the reasons include:

The popularity of ideas about "the strenuous life" popularized by Teddy Roosevelt and others, so athletic competition was seen as an important part of a young gentleman's education. European upper classes also had ideas like that but maybe not to that extent. I recommend Kim Townsend's book Young Men at Harvard about this milieu around 1900.

Also, while British aristocratic ideas about amateurism and never taking anything too seriously did prevail among the American upper-class/educated types in the 19th century, they didn't stick. Certainly not much past the first World War. Like with most things in America, if it's possible to make a buck off of something, hustlers will come along to make that happen. Whereas in Europe, the power of the old aristocracy and it's insistence on "amateurism" and maintaining the existing power structure held sway longer. Like in Chariots of Fire.

And really it's college football that has mainly driven college sports to being what it is now. It makes the most money by far and created the expectation in the culture that supporting college teams is a thing people might want to do, which then spilled over into other the sports. But football drives the bus, as they say.

College football, like rugby, evolved out of games played by prep school boys. So it naturally became a thing at universities. But fan and player interest in it grew sodass in the late 19th and early 20th century that by the time university administrators or anyone else really started to worry about it, the genie was already out of the bottle.

Baseball, by contrast, originally emerged as a working class game in cities and then spread to the countryside. There were always school teams, but the professional game established itself as the the preferred version for spectators before 1900. And to this day, college (and high school) baseball have a following, but aren't nearly as popular as professional baseball. In football (and basketball), the college version took root first and the pro game struggled to capture as much interest for a long time.

Because our class structure isn't quite so rigidly enforced, the general public has not had a very hard time feeling emotionally attached to teams from a university they didn't attend - especially the land grant and state institutons, which are seen as representing the whole state. So college sports, especially college football, attracted large crowds since its invention, and a lot of those people - most, probably - had no affiliation with the university. Europeans and Canadians (and even a lot of
Americans) can't fathom that.

The big state universities were built to teach and research practical subjects like agriculture and mining engineering, and attracted students from families who never sent anyone to higher education before, including a lot of guys who could play sports.

That not only improved the quality of the sports, but deprived the fledgling professional ranks of talent. It also gave working class people more reason to pay attention to college teams, since the players were often people from their hometowns from families like theirs.

The big landgrant state universities are not usually in big cities. And until the 50s, there weren't any pro baseball teams in the west or Deep South and pro football didn't really grow until the 60s. So that left a lot of territory for university teams to conquer.


Colleges and universities are so numerous in the US, that they are not a "system" so much as a bunch of competitors in a marketplace for students, donors, state funds, etc. Sports helps build a "brand." Many Europeans refuse to accept that universities are "brands" but in this country they absolutely are. This is a more recent development, however.

There might be other factors I forget.

[ad hoc]

I think the hardest bit of the US phatic communion thing is the use of the word "today".

"how are you?" I can handle, but "how are you today?" from someone who has never before seen me makes my desire to reply with heavy sarcasm go through the roof.

Mind you it has now been superceded in my "annoying things that service people say in other English speaking countries" list by the Australian response to thanks with "too easy!"

[Hot Pepsi]

I don't understand the aversion to friendliness.

Do people in Britain greet everyone with "Oi, whadya you want?"

[Gerontophile]

It's not friendliness. It's corporate authorised friendliness.