Well I've just read every comment on this thread and I'm relieved to realize that our recitation of our National Pledge of Allegience at every opportunity is in-fact seen as totally normal.
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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Asklemmy
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Sizes for clothes, drinks and fries are all bigger than in Brazil. A medium size shirt in the US is easily as big as a large in Brazil. For drinks I would usually groan every time I forgot to buy a small drink since I literally can't drink a medium soda in the US in less than an hour and I hate wasting food.
Seems to have deliberately taken the opposite path of anything British:
- Drive on the wrong side of the road
- The light and power switches are upside down
- Weights & measures. Imperial? Ha!
- Screw your English dictionary. Ima put z's everywhere, drop the letter u and randomly pronounce words like buoy so you think there's an animal in the water over there
It kinda makes me laugh to think about it as just anti-British π€£
- we invented the modern car, yβall are driving on the wrong side of the road
- a switch is a switch, if you donβt like the direction it goes, just flip it over and put the cover back on, half the switches in my house go one way, and the other go the opposite way, some of them are even sideways.
- yβall sank the ship that had the US copy of the metric standard on it, and also invented the imperial system in the first place.
- if you look at the entomology, the US largely uses the original English pronunciation of things, itβs the British who have slowly changed their pronunciation over the centuries. We did have a guy who intentionally changed a bunch of the spelling, you are right about that.
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Canadian checking in.
Biggest oddity to me is that the default for restaurants is one bill, and waiters get annoyed if you ask them to split it by person.
Like why would I want to either:
- do math correctly splitting the bill while trying to leave; or
- be worried I ordered something more expensive than the average and unfairly make others cover it?
It's complete insanity to me.
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Canadian, so it's not all that different, but why. can. I. buy. liquor. in. a. PHARMACY?
Don't know if this is just a California thing, but it was weird as fuck. What's even weirder, in light of this, is they didn't go whole hog and sell cigarettes too. 'Cause helf.
Side story: Went into a Dollar General and bought a can of Sapporo. Ok, not so weird, it's functionally a super basic grocery store with a bunch of other cheap goods. Guy at the counter said, "Oh yeah, they make this beer in some place very far away". Looked at the can - I'm pretty sure he meant Japan, not Guelph, ON Canada.
He wasn't wrong but I did chuckle.
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Electric kettles (or hot water jugs depending on where you are) are just not a thing there. Apparently it has something to do with your 110v AC system. They don't boil as fast, and so never really took off. Just a little factoid that blew my mind, considering how commonplace they are everywhere else.
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The god damn warning labels on absolutely fucking everything. Bro, I just wanna eat at a restaurant without wondering why the menu has a god damn "at your own risk" label... Also can't go 1 step in a water park without seeing a life guard, they're fucking everywhere. Not to mention on the rare occasion they aren't there, you just can't do shit. Land of the free my ass, feels like the optimal way to do anything is to always have a lawyer by side.
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Sugar in hot drinks by default. Asking for coffee-no-sugar seems to trigger incredulity. At least this was my experience in the South. New York is another country altogether, no eyebrows raised there.
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Drive thru ATMs. Also, people just sitting in their cars without driving.
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I'm Canadian. I went to a concert in Michigan (Third Eye Blind) and half the crowd had some article of clothing with the American flag on it. Not really that weird, but it's more than I'm used to seeing Canadians sporting Canadian flag clothing.
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How annoying waiters are. I don't need small talk and I don't need you asking if everything's okay every five minutes. Just let me eat in peace!
The exact opposite experience if you're non white. I'm light skinned and get normal service. I go out with certain friends and suddenly we're getting ignored and waiting longer than people that came in way after us. We just end up ordering pickup or avoiding certain places all together.
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Guns. Paying for being medically treated / not having a proper healtcare system. Weird relationship to Socialism.
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