Asklemmy

To name a few:

Calling yourself Americans, after the entire dual continent. There are two continents and many other countries in the Americas, you know... [I know you know. And, what are you supposed to call yourselves, 'USAians'? 'Americans' makes more sense and is easier to roll off the tongue. But it's weird.]

Holding the door open for me. Smiling at me on the street. Those are sure signs of a swindler, but it's the norm in the USA. [I am not suggesting USA folks are swindlers, only that those actions are what swindlers in much of the world use. USA people are generally super nice and a genuine pleasure to be around.]

Turning right on red light. Red means stop. It's weird and confusing.

Edit: I added a third thing.

Edit2 in []

British.

I found a lot of things weird, but I did go to Florida like 8 times so it’s to be expected and maybe some of these are exclusive to that state.

• I found it weird that alcohol seemed to be sold only in liquor stores. But you can buy a machine gun in Walmart.
• The food. Don’t get me wrong it’s nice and all but the quantity. Take sizzlers, you go in order your main meal then get an endless buffet for free. Like I couldn’t eat my steak when it arrived as I was full from the buffet.
• syrup all over breakfast items and people bigger than id ever seen were gorging and then taking a box home too.
• enthusiasm: grown ass adults whooping and hollering as we were queuing for rides. I’m a man child myself but it was startling.
• Jaywalking. Wtf

To throw out some positives. Everyone I met was lovely and nothing like the nut jobs we get to see online. People were polite, friendly and accommodating.

Beautiful nature and national parks.

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.

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.

I noticed too many churches in Texas.

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.

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.

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 🤣

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.

WEARING SHOES INDOORS

Drive thru ATMs. Also, people just sitting in their cars without driving.

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.

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.

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!

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.

The flags on the cars.

Donald Trump. I mean seriously WTF?

Guns. Paying for being medically treated / not having a proper healtcare system. Weird relationship to Socialism.