Americans do a lot of things that seem completely normal until you leave the country. Suddenly, things like putting ice in every drink, driving everywhere, or keeping eggs in the fridge aren’t so universal. Even some of the most basic parts of everyday life can be surprisingly American. Here are some things we barely think about that can seem pretty weird to the rest of the world.
Giant Yellow School Buses
The giant yellow school bus feels like such a standard part of American childhood that it’s easy to forget it isn’t universal. In many other countries, kids get to school using regular public transportation, walking, biking, or getting dropped off. The bright yellow buses seen in practically every American school movie really are a very American sight.
Huge Gaps in Bathroom Stalls
American public bathroom stalls offer a surprisingly small amount of actual privacy. The doors often have huge gaps underneath them and noticeable spaces along the sides, while stalls in other countries can have doors that extend almost completely from floor to ceiling.
Free Water at Restaurants
Sitting down at an American restaurant usually means getting a glass of water without even asking for it. It’s generally free, often packed with ice, and servers may keep refilling it throughout the meal. In plenty of other countries, restaurant water isn’t automatically free or brought to the table, making the American bottomless-water situation feel luxurious.
Tipping for Everything
Tipping is so built into American dining culture that calculating an extra percentage at the end of a meal feels completely normal. In many other countries, servers aren’t as dependent on tips, and tipping either isn’t expected or is much smaller. Add in the tip screens now appearing at coffee shops, counters, and other businesses, and the whole system can get confusing very quickly.
Putting Ice in Everything
Americans really love their drinks cold, which often means filling half the cup with ice before adding the actual drink. That’s far from standard everywhere, and in many countries you’ll get significantly less ice or none at all unless you ask. A giant fountain soda packed to the top with ice is about as American as it gets.
Prescription Drug Commercials
American TV can casually go from a fast-food commercial to an ad telling you to ask your doctor about a prescription medication. Direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising is prohibited or heavily restricted in most countries, so these commercials stand out outside the U.S. The cheerful footage paired with a rapid-fire list of potentially terrifying side effects doesn’t exactly make them feel less strange.
Sales Tax Appearing at Checkout
A price tag in America doesn’t always tell you how much you’re actually going to pay. Sales tax is commonly added at checkout rather than included in the displayed price, meaning that $4.99 item will cost more once you reach the register. In countries where taxes are already included on the price tag, the American system feels unnecessarily complicated.
Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches
Peanut butter and jelly is one of the most normal childhood lunches imaginable in America. The combination isn’t nearly as common in many other countries, where mixing peanut butter with sweet fruit jam can sound a little questionable. Americans, meanwhile, have been happily putting the two together for generations.
Red Solo Cups
Red Solo cups are so common at American parties that most people probably don’t give them a second thought. Outside the U.S., they’re much less common and are often recognized from American movies and TV shows instead. It’s funny that something as basic as a plastic cup has become such an American stereotype.
Massive Portions
American restaurants aren’t exactly known for sending customers home hungry. Entrées can be big enough to become two or even three meals, and taking the leftovers home is completely normal.
The Imperial System
While most of the world measures things in meters, kilometers, and kilograms, the U.S. is still sticking with feet, miles, and pounds. Americans grow up knowing that 12 inches make a foot and 5,280 feet make a mile without really questioning why.
Grocery Store Baggers
At many American grocery stores, you don’t even have to bag your own groceries. There may be an employee at the end of the checkout whose job is to pack everything up while the cashier scans your items. That’s not the norm everywhere, with shoppers in many other countries expected to bag their purchases themselves.
Drive-Thru Banking
America took the convenience of the drive-thru and applied it to banking. Some banks have lanes where customers can complete transactions from their cars, sometimes using pneumatic tubes to send documents and cash back and forth. It’s basically fast food, except instead of getting fries through the window, you’re depositing a check.
Giant Drinks
Drink sizes in the U.S. can be surprisingly huge compared to what you’d get in other countries. A fountain drink labeled medium can easily look like a large or even extra-large somewhere else. Add in free refills at many restaurants, and one drink can basically last you the entire night.
Fixed Showerheads
A lot of American showers have a showerhead that’s permanently attached to the wall. Handheld showerheads are much more standard in many other countries, where being able to move the water around is just considered practical. Once you’ve gotten used to a handheld one, the fixed version can feel weirdly limiting.
Sweet Bread
American bread can be a lot sweeter than the bread you’d find in other countries. Even basic sandwich bread often has added sugar, despite not being considered a sweet food in the U.S. It’s something Americans barely notice but can really stand out if you’re not used to it.
Huge Pickup Trucks
Cars in the U.S. tend to be much bigger than what you’d see in many other countries. Huge pickup trucks and SUVs are completely normal, even for everyday driving around town. In places with narrower streets and smaller parking spaces, some American cars would barely fit.
Billboards Everywhere
Billboards are hard to avoid when driving around the U.S. Highways are lined with huge ads for everything from restaurants and hotels to lawyers and local businesses. In many other countries, seeing this much advertising along the road isn’t nearly as common.
Root Beer
Root beer is a classic American soda, but its flavor can be pretty strange if you didn’t grow up drinking it. In other countries, the flavor is sometimes associated more with medicine than with soda. It’s one of those drinks that tastes completely normal to Americans but can be a shock the first time you try it.
Candied Yams With Marshmallows
Sweet potatoes covered in brown sugar and marshmallows are a staple on many American Thanksgiving tables. The combination is incredibly sweet for something that’s served as a side dish alongside the rest of the meal.
Refrigerating Eggs
In the U.S., eggs are kept cold at the grocery store and usually go straight into the fridge when you get home. In many other countries, eggs are sold unrefrigerated and can sit on a regular supermarket shelf.
Calling Football “Soccer”
Most of the world hears “football” and thinks of the sport Americans call soccer. In the U.S., football means an entirely different sport involving helmets, touchdowns, and very little contact between feet and the ball. That naming difference has been confusing people on both sides for a very long time.
Putting Ranch on Everything
Ranch is one of those condiments Americans will put on just about anything. Beyond salads, it’s commonly used as a dip for pizza, fries, wings, and vegetables.
Wearing Shoes Inside the House
In plenty of American households, people don’t automatically take their shoes off when they come inside. They might walk around the kitchen, living room, or even bedrooms in the same shoes they wore outdoors.
Putting Everything in the Dryer
American homes commonly have clothes dryers, and plenty of people use them for most of their laundry. Hanging clothes outside or on an indoor drying rack is much more routine in many other parts of the world. Americans are much more likely to throw everything in the dryer and hope the tag wasn’t serious.
Air Conditioning Everywhere
Walk into an American store in the middle of summer and there’s a decent chance you’ll go from sweating to freezing within seconds. Air conditioning is common in homes, offices, restaurants, stores, and cars, and Americans aren’t exactly shy about turning it up. Sometimes bringing a sweater in July actually makes sense.
Huge Fridges
American refrigerators can be absolutely massive. Double doors, ice dispensers, water dispensers, giant freezer compartments, and enough room for a week’s worth of groceries are all common features. Put one of them into a tiny European kitchen, and it might take up half the room.
Huge Grocery Stores
A regular American supermarket can feel enormous before you even get to stores like Walmart or Costco. Entire aisles may be dedicated to cereal, soda, chips, frozen dinners, or dozens of versions of essentially the same product. Buying one box of cereal somehow requires choosing between half a wall of options.
College Sports Being a Big Deal
College sports in America can attract tens of thousands of fans to enormous stadiums. Games are televised nationally, people buy team merchandise, and alumni can stay loyal to their school’s teams decades after graduating.
Letter Grades
American students grow up getting A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and F’s instead of purely numerical grades. Somehow E usually gets skipped entirely, leaving F to handle the job of telling you things have gone badly. The system feels obvious if you grew up with it and oddly arbitrary if you didn’t.
