Non-Americans who have been to the US.. What is the weirdest thing about America that Americans don't realize is weird?

I never understood the need to display multiple US flags in your yard. We get it, you live in america. You love America. We get that too. Are you afraid someone will think you no longer wish to be American if you took your flags down?

Shoes in the house

American flags everywhere. Like EVERYWHERE. I get a bit of national pride but holy crap, every other house in the street is flying a flag, clothing has flag patterns, bumper sticker American flag, it's everywhere. And no, it wasn't even close to July 4.

It's like Americans are afraid they might forget what country they're in if they aren't in sight of a flag at all times.

I'll try to avoid stuff you know is weird.

1. Adjectives. You can't just have a thing. It has to have an adjective. For example: Milk. I wanted to buy milk. I get to the milk section, and there's no such thing. There's x milk and y milk and about a dozen other variants. Where is the basic milk (it turns out, I wanted "4% milk") in this damned place?
2. Fresh produce. In fairness you've gotten loads better on this one after subsequent visits, but beyond some basic staples like potatoes, carrots, corn etc it was really limiting what fruit and vegetables you could get in the supermarket. Also: baby carrots are weird.
3. Your cheese is radioactive yellow. Cheese is not supposed to be that colour - but you seem expect it to be for some reason, so your producers add yellow colouring to their cheese.
4. Your eggs are weird. I'm not sure what yous guys do to to them, but it's like you blast away half the shell and are left with a porous super-white textured inner shell. They need to be refrigerated and last a fraction of the time they'd last if you just left them alone and sold them as they are laid.
5. Your bread tastes weird. Maybe it's sugar or preservatives in it, I don't know. Bread is meant to have a really short ingredients list like flour, water, salt yeast and maybe a touch of oil and sugar. Take a look at the ingredients on your bread and it's 5 lines long.
6. Portions! Your food portions are ludicrous. I'd much rather pay half the price for half as much food as they offer on the menu.
7. Money. You have this weird unconscious pecking order thing in your culture where you value people more based on their bank balance. You show a weird unconscious level of respect to someone who is rich. And similarly, unconsciously look down on someone poorer than you. Not in a mean way - just as a "I'm better than this person" way that is hard to quantify. You are aware at some level roughly how rich everyone you deal with is. I see this trait far less in people under 20. I hope there's a cultural shift on this one, because money on its own is a weird way to measure someone's worth.
8. Your police are run by the local counties. I think your schools also? I know you have state and federal police also, but most places only have police and schools at those levels.
9. I'll mostly stay clear of health, because you know your health system is weird. But I will say that it's weird that very few of your hospitals are run by government. They're mostly run for profit. Health is meant to be a government service.
10. Outside a few cities, you barely have public transport of any sort. LA is a mega metropolis, and it's train network is a joke for that level of population - something like 100 stations for 18 million people?
11. You have no idea what's going on. Most of you couldn't name the UK Prime Minister (this one has been hard to keep track of, in fairness), the German Chancellor or any of the G20 leaders aside from USA and maybe Canada/China. You don't know about geopolitics beyond whatever you guys are doing. Your world news is literally stuff USA is involved in.
12. I'll finish on a weird one: you guys are lovely. This may because I'm white and have an exotic accent to you guys, but almost everyone I've ever encountered from the USA in or out of the country has been wonderful. You don't seem to think of your fellow countrymen you meet as 'good' by default. There's a lot less connection and respect to each other than other nations I've been to.

Family eating at shooters (and the whole hooters/twin peaks concept)

Need to take the car for a 500m trip because there is no sidewalk and a highway to cross

Being overly fake nice because you want a tip. Tbh I'd be more inclined to tip you if you left me alone and stopped talking to me.

The whole tipping thing in USA is weird. Everyone wants a tip, it's entirely random (as a non-American) how much tip to give. Just pay your staff a wage they can actually live on ffs.

It's not the healthcare that bothered me most, although it did.

It's the cognitive dissonance around the unavailability of healthcare in order to avoid anxiety over the fact that a traffic accident can bankrupt you with no relief. Ignoring the risk takes some serious mental gymnastics and basic math failure to get there, but when brought up in this environment - where a TV show about a teacher who has to cook and sell meth to get hospital money is actually a plausible plot where no one actually examines the mercenary care at all and the main character just pays it - it's just a part of their existence.

Not understanding that few other people live like this - cubans don't live like this - is absurd.

Tipping

Signs telling you not to bring guns into shopping centers.

The fear of naked (intact) female bodies, i.e. censoring of even the slightest nudity, when at the same time, it’s totally fine to have minors play computer games where they can dissect other humans in great bloody detail.

Oh, and chocolate that tastes like somebody barfed into it during manufacturing.

I’m from Alberta Canada. I’ve worked up North in camp jobs, and have been working in the trades with the rowdiest people our country has to offer.

Every time I’ve been to the states I’m shocked at how aggressive a large portion of your population is willing to talk to people. Every time I’ve gone there I’ve had at least one negative aggressive interaction with one of your citizens. I’m a large man with a beard and tattooes up to my neck, I’m a pretty intimidating looking dude paired with the Canadian politeness we’re known for. I do not understand how this keeps happening. And I see you guys do it to eachother too! It’s fucking wild.

I only stopped there for transit on a flight to Mexico. Just before boarding my flight I was told that I need a visa for the US, which is extremely weird because normally airports have transit zones where you don't need any visa. But apparently the US is special, so you actually have to enter the country before going right back into the airport. This nonsense made me miss my flight.

Also I remember in the airport there was a security guard doing nothing but shouting nonstop that it's not allowed to carry water. Why not simply put up a sign?

based on knowledge of the US : many things that other places take for granted or fight to preserve, you guys struggle to obtain.

based on my trip : fucking nothing, I visited new york and stayed at a run down, pre paid hotel. I ate food from stores or carry out. I can't exactly critique the healthcare system, tipping culture, driving culture when I had access to a fairly modern public transport system, didn't need medical assistance and didn't need to tip 50 people just to eat one thing.

EDIT: it's like asking tourists in antalya at the beach what they think of turkey, they're fucking tourists, they aren't affected by the dictator and his bullshit

Your urban planning. Your cities are unwalkable, the scenery makes me depressed af, everything is scaled up for cars, even restaurants are for cars, the highways are huge, all I can see is tar. I don't know how you can live like that.

Going out in public in your pajamas.

How difficult it is to find fresh produce in small shops (food deserts)

How much fat is in all the meat.

How old and badly maintained many of the roads and bridges are (I am from Africa, so that says something)

The levels of national arrogance.

Shoes. Indoors, in your own house, on your furniture?!

First thing I (another Canadian) noticed when we switched from the car to a shuttle to the airport (crossed the border by car to take a flight to Florida) was that there were multiple people on that shuttle that were at least as big as the most obese person I'd ever seen in person up to that point.

Even though our cultures overlap quite a bit, there's something different in that aspect.

Your public toilets are not private. There should never be a gap around the door. The height should be above what any reasonable person would grow to, and the lower height of the door should hide the person's feet on the toilet unless you crouch down. It's weird and very off putting to use one

Sweet bread.

OMG. It's bread. Why is it sweet?

The amount of sugar in any food of yours! It's incredibly sickening and I'm not sure how you deal with that.

Canadian here, British Columbia.

Going to a Wal-Mart in a small-ish town and counting 38 CCTV cameras across the outside front of the building. Ours, in a city with 28× the population, has only 6.

Inside that same Wal-Mart, going into a checkout line without first checking out the customers, and the very next guy ahead of us was an open carry: a semi-auto (AR-15 like looking weapon) slung over his shoulders, a handgun in a holster on his waist, and a lump on his right ankle above his boots. And two knives on his belt. Dude looked like he was ready for some urban warfare.

The sheer amount of infrastructure decay. Sure, even Canadian towns that haven’t seen economic good times look run down and dilapidated, but American towns really kick that up a notch. Most small-town buildings look like they haven’t seen a makeover since the Carter administration.

Unusually authentic Mexican food. Up here 90% of Mexican places are run by white dudes who make semi-authentic “fusion” dishes that are mainly just spicy. Cross the border and less than 15 minutes in, there is one family-run chain (Rancho Chico, Rancho Grande) with super-cheap 100% authentic foods run and staffed solely by Mexicans. And like, holy shit, that’s good food.

The sheer number of people who support and vote for a party who will do absolutely nothing for them, and will enact policies that will drive them even further into poverty and destitution just so their Parasite-Class campaign donors can get even more obscenely wealthy. Conservative voters are just weird, man.

German, only having been there once some years ago, so no idea if it still is that way:

Not knowing what I will have to pay in the grocery store until the cashier tells me what to pay. Here the price on the shelf is THE price. I might have a voucher that reduces the price in the end, but nothing is ever added only subtracted, all prices on the shelf are easily comparable, because no matter the weight of one package there is also given the price of 1kg or 100 g for everything.

No kids on playing grounds without parents standing around. No kids just playing on the side walk (often there is no side walk anyway), no kids walking to school. It made me aware of how much freedom kids have in Germany, how independent even 6 y.o. are in Germany compared to kids in the US. They walk to to school alone or use public transport alone, they buy groceries alone, they visit friends by foot or public transport, three y.o. already having a bike and cycling besides their parents to kindergarden...

On the other hand seeing so many very young people having a job, like a really hard job for many hours besides school. It broke my heart, they should be free to be young and having all the time, working comes fast enough and goes on forever. Also I saw very old people doing jobs that should be able to retire because you could see them being in pain and barely able to function, definitely not a "choice" for them.

The amount of medication, especially pain medication, people take in the US compared to Germany and how much of it is freely available while it is needing a subscription from a doctor here. Every time I was feeling unwell I was offered pills that I found to be numbingly strong and switching my brain off? Hard to explain. I found them scary, but was told that they take them on a daily basis and they are harmless ... nope.

Sorry to be honest, but this is my view...

Voting between two parties, and then getting whatever the "electors" pick. All the while, thinking they live under the biggest democracy of the world.

Having all sorts of inhuman behaviors, like robbing childs from immigrants.

Child marriage.

Having lots of weapons in the country but all wars outside.

Mmm.. What else? Ah, prisoners are slaves.

Juxtaposition of pearl-clutching Puritanism w/ a 21 drinking age against beer available in a 7-11.

Pick a fucking lane

The toilets/restrooms at restaurants (or at least many fastfood restaurants?) are often shared and used by both employees and customers. It grossed me out a bit a bit at first, especially as they are, in my experience, quite often pretty filthy. So all the nastiness customers drag in could potentially be picked up by employees.

I've been to BKs and Wendys' where I left the establishment as soon as I entered, just because the whole place looked and smelled like somewhere you shouldn't eat. I suppose these were more often than not in pretty rural areas..

While on the toilet topic, I've found public restrooms at e.g. gas stations and shopping malls to often be, uh, less than inviting. I think I've seen more overflowing toilets on a 4 week vacation in the US than I've seen in 40 years over here, in northwest Europe.

To be fair, I've driven east/west at least 10 times over the years, so I've been to a lot of public restrooms and the bad experiences tend to stay with you for longer than the good ones.

The firearm culture, and how normalised it is.

I went into a Walgreens in Chicago, and waited in line behind two other people. There was a cashier free but the person in front of the line was waiting to be called. The guy behind the person in front politely said, “ma’am, the cashier is free” ‘I’m waiting to be called” was the response.

So the guy behind her just walked past her, and she pushed him and said, “Careful buddy, you’ll get shot for doing something like that”

I was taken aback at how quickly a simple discourtesy escalated to shooting someone. It just blew my mind that shooting someone over queue jumping was verbalised, and seemingly normal to each other.

As an American, my top realization was... everywhere else in the world yall use electric kettles - Americans frequently only have a stove top kettle like it's the fucking eighteenth century.

Many things. To say some...Billboards with lawyers advertising for things like demands after accidents. Like dozens one after another on the road.

So much sugar in everything. Last time I was there had to throw to the bin a yogurt. Was so sweet It was awful. Prices of "fresh" food.

Tips for everything. Going to a restaurant and have to tip like 20% of the bill, or even more, is crazy.

Wáter consumtion. Like big golf camps completely green in the middle of a desert (Vegas). When asked about It, people there just answered "no problem, we have the Hoover Dam for that".

Lack of public transport outside four or five big cities. And that just walking on the streets in some places is very strange fot the people living there. I was asked ten years ago in Palo Alto if I was Russian because I was not driving, just walking on the street!!

Sugar in everything

Another Canadian.

All-green money is weird, about as weird for us as ours is for you. Once I knocked over some products in a store and then picked them up. The staff acted like that was saintly, so I guess other people just make a mess and move on? Drive through liquor stores are weird, and seem like an invitation to drink and drive. Paying at a hospital is weird just in concept, although thank god I've never had to deal with it down there.

Uhh, other than that it's been pretty similar in the places I've been. Etiquette around "sorry" is famously different, but aside from giving me away as Canadian it has little impact.

Edit, to add a couple positive things: Amazing Mexican food and barbecue not only exists but are ubiquitous. Coding jobs pay good money.

Everyone has an air conditioner, although Canada might be the weird one there.

The brown paper-bag thing with alcohol in public. I mean, everybody and their dog knows what's in there, right?

And the fact that people ask if you need help if you decide to NOT take the car but instead walk the 5 minutes to somewhere.

A church and a MC Donald every 250 meters The sheer size of everything

Fast food portion sizes. It's out of control. Drinking 1 liter of soda for lunch shouldn't be normalized. BTW most people are super friendly and nice, in Michigan at least.

Oh, and why is all the cheese orange ?

All of the ads for Medication on TV

Your bread is sweet. Like, all of it. And not just like, pleasantly so like a French brioche, but almost candy-like. Wonder Bread is one of the worst offenders, coming in at 5g added sugars per 100g: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Wonder-Bread-Classic-White-Sandwich-Bread-Sliced-White-Bread-20-oz/37858875?classType=REGULAR&athbdg=L1600

Edit: as a commenter pointed out, it's actually closer to 9g/100g, bringing it to soda levels of sugar ಠ_ಠ

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 []

1. The intense income disparity.

2. Healthcare bills.

I suppose these are cliche topics but as a non-american non-tourist the first thing that has stood out to me is that the highs are so incredibly high, and the lows are so incredibly low. Being a Canadian, it's not like we don't also have income disparity...but the gap is not as insane. The rich in the US have yachts that are 100's of millions of dollars, and the poor literally carry their kids on their backs while selling fruit on the side of the highway. You can see both in the same day.

Also I don't think Americans truly understand that you can get weeks of hospital care in Canada and not even receive a bill. Like a month in a private hospital room and i paid for a phone bill, a wifi bill, and some parking fees. In the US if you even so much as flash your eyelashes at a doctor you get a bill for hundreds of dollars.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 flags on the cars.

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.

Donald Trump. I mean seriously WTF?

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

School shootings Kids safety trainings for school shootings Guns everywhere Two party political system Rampant racism Prison slavery Everything about its police force Unaffordable medical system combined with absolute shit medical insurance I can go on for a while

Non-stop televangelism channels are quite something. But probably you know that’s weird.

Extreme focus on sports, wearing sportswear (both men and women do this), always “exercising”, mentioning calories on a menu card (a Caesar salad contains 1200 calories!).

White socks and how Americans eat with their knife and fork.

I've never been there, but apparently you guys don't have blackberries, and have grape jam?

Edit: what you don't have is blackcurrants, not blackberries.

Crocs

A/C particularly, electricity waste. It's damn ridiculous, even for Texas. Are northerners born in fridges?

everything is chlorinated. i get painful rash if i ingest chlorinated water, so basically everything was undrinkable. this was also true for soft drinks the time i visited Vegas, so my options for hydration were extremely limited.

as an american i would like to make the presumptious statement of "it's like, pretty normal actually"

please yell at me in the replies, i thrive on confrontation.

A problem with this question is that the US is such a big and diverse place, that you could have this same question posed to Americans only, asking about their experience visiting other parts of the US.

TSA, but I guess you know that this is not normal?

Also the constant humming of ACs in New York drove me crazy.

From Austria:

The amount of plastic waste you produce.

Every shopping trip you get (single use) plastic bags, every food item is packaged individually. Even your plates are often times made from plastic, as is the cutlery (sometimes).

All those plastic cups in every restaurant - it's disgusting.

It's insanity.

Also: general waste is labeled "landfill" in some places.

In many of the responses I can tell which part of the US they visited by the things they list as weird. It's funny that they think the entire country is like some particular city or area.

That Americans are actually not Americans, but illegal aliens from Europe?..

OK, I haven't been in the US.