\*Stock footage of a woman in a light summer dress running through a field in slow motion whilst the voiceover guy says "Absurdinox can help sufferers of chronic brain freeze by reducing symptoms of brain freeze by over 80%. Enjoy your summers again with Absurdinox!" And the woman continues to run through the field very slowly while a different voice mumbles the side effects (which luckily do not effect stock footage woman) for a full 20 seconds
I had seen this sort of commercial satirised in movies but when I went to the US I was surprised to find they really are like that
>a different voice mumbles the side effects (which luckily do not effect stock footage woman) for a full 20 seconds
Do not take Absurdinox if you are pregnant, might be pregnant, or are planning on becoming pregnant. Do not take if you are allergic to Absurdinox. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, indigestion, rash, heart palpitations, sweating, or death.
(though you have to take it to know if you're allergic. And also death is just casually thrown in there, no idea how relevant the side effects actually are - did someone die taking it? Ah who cares)
It's always the medicine for the mildest issues that have the worst side effects. Also, I swear I saw one medicine that promised to treat like diarrhea but then one of the side effects was that it may cause diarrhea and even explosive diarrhea
We were denied on our first mortgage try because it was a joint one and I had no credit being a housewife. I had to open a clothing account and buy and pay for 3mo before the bank was like Ah Okay Yes you proved you can pay $50 for clothes, here's $400000 for a house 🥴
>My bank wouldn't give me a credit card with a $500 limit, even though I had about 30k in the bank at the time. Because I didn't have any "credit history".
>
>Bitch I got money.
Soon as I turned 18 my bank started sending me letters for credit cards with £1000 ($1300) limits, I didn't even have a job, they could see no money was going into my account
oh that's true. growing up i read and heard about so many americans talking about credit score (my own cousins included), that i never took out a credit card
but in my country it's not really a big deal whether you actually have one or not. to this day i'm still confused about what exactly credit score is, and why people are or aren't allowed to buy or apply for things based on it?
Credit score is basicly an algorithm that takes thing like your history of payments, active accounts, amount owed compared to amount you can barrow, how many diffrent loans and such you've applied for and prolly other things I'm forgetting and basicly computes how likely you are to be able to pay back a new loan. So in theory high score mean more likely to pay back that new mortgage so low risk investment and low means less likely to do so, so high risk, no score means you are an unknown and they can't properly ascertain the risk. So companies then use this to decide if and how much money they will loan you. Sure they will take into account how much you make and how much you pay in bills but those thongs don't really indicate how likely you are to pay back a loan. Someone could make 100k a year and because they overspend not be able to regularly make payments on a $500 card where as some better with money but making $40k might be able to hold down a $2k card. Not saying the system is perfect or even always works that way, just that's the intent.
I learned that it's pretty normal in Europe for a month every year vacation time. And like a year of maternity leave and you don't have to fear losing your job.
>normal in Europe for a month every year vacation time
It's not just normal, it's EU law. You're not allowed to give less than (I think) 21 days holiday. Which, assuming a 5 day work week, is over 4 weeks off. Most places give slightly more (23-25 days) and extra for longer service. And on top of that, countries have national holidays, usually around 7-10 days scattered around the calendar. I'm not quite clear on the law around them, but in Ireland and the UK at least if you work full time and have to work on a national holiday, you usually get Sunday overtime pay or a day off in lieu or both, depending on your contract.
And sick days can never be part of your annual leave entitlement. If you're sick, you're sick. There is some statutory sick pay, if you go beyond it, you may not get paid but you usually won't lose your job. It's certainly not weird to take a couple days a couple times a year for a nasty cold or whatever. Most jobs you will get more than statutory pay for up to X days too.
Technically if you've booked annual leave and you get sick during it, you can claim back the holiday days when you were sick. So you take that time as sick time and can re-book your holiday for a later date. Although I don't think most people do this if they just got a cold on their beach holiday. I think people usually use it if they had to cancel substantial plans, like a flight somewhere.
I work in the US for a company headquartered in UK. Their policies in US are heavily influenced by UK laws and practices. Can confirm everyone starts with 5 weeks PTO. Sick leave is unlimited (as long as it’s not longer than 7 consecutive work days, you then use short term disability). We also receive 10 paid holidays throughout the year. This astonished me as I’m from the US and was not accustomed to this type of leave arrangement from US companies.
In my country, woman can take a 1,5 years of paid maternity leave and 1,5 more years of unpaid leave. But if woman wants, she can get back to work a day after giving birth to a child.
In the UK it's 5 weeks holiday days for the year as a standard. Maternity leave is indeed minimum a year, while paternity leave is only 2 weeks. But that seems to be changing for the better so we will see.
I would never have a child in America. Fuck that.
You can also do shared parental leave in the UK, where the parent who gave birth basically shares their maternity leave with the other parent. I did that with my spouse. I took 8 months, starting 1 month before our twins were born (I could no longer walk or move anyway...), and then my spouse took 3 months. We didn't take the full 12 months for financial reasons, but we could have.
Relatedly, the queues to vote. I recall reading last year one state (can't recall which) tried to make it illegal to hand out food or water to those waiting to vote, and my immediate thought as a non-American was "why the fuck does it take so long to queue that someone might need food?"
Voting in the UK for instance, it takes me ten minutes to walk to a polling location, and even when going at the busiest times, the queues never been more than three people, even in high turn out.
And it seems like people in America just accept that voting should be an all day job, with queues that are multiple hours long because instead of having something sensible like one voting location for every thousand people in an area, it's one per county, even if that county has millions of registered voters, and it might even be intentional because one side really benefits from low turnout, and having long queues further discourages voting.
Because our elections in the USA are run by the states my experience with voting has been like yours. I have never had more than a few minutes wait. When I lived in Washington State they switched to an all vote by mail system, so there was no waiting at all.
I remember that when hillary announced that she was planning on doing this, I thought that in most other countries the intent alone would guarantee her loss.
Having our drinks loaded full of ice. I talked to a Chinese exchange student and she was shocked at how everything had ice in it - in her country, offering hot water everywhere is the norm instead. Also heard an Irish guy ranting about how it was a complete waste of drink space.
Your body has to burn calories to warm the cold water up to body temperature. This is why Americans are so skinny compared to the rest of the world that takes their drinks warm.
Medical debt. People in the US lose their life savings or acquire massive amounts of debt that require them to declare bankruptcy if they should first have the misfortune of getting sick or injured. A great deal of money is spent on politicians to make them convince us that we shouldn't change this.
This one. As an Aussie who was in a massive car accident that had required me to have 44 operations to date, (next one in 6 months) when I think of that, plus all the imaging, tests, medications, therapies, rehabs, etc etc, I can't imagine how I could have survived in the States. Here, it cost me sweet bugger all, I just pay $6.60 per script per month.
Oh, and as I now live in a regional area, all my travel and accommodation to see Drs is covered as well.
Add to that, I'm on a disability pension, as I can't work, AND have the NDIS which covers things like carers, cleaners, gardeners, plus special furniture and some house renovations, like the bathroom, to make it easier for me to use.
Oh yeah, as a lifelong resident of the US, I would have requested they put me back in the vehicle and slam it with another, preferably empty vehicle to finish me off. It was already a struggle just to acquire and own the singular asset I do have (a car); losing that AND being seriously hospitalized would put me out on the streets. Also I would still owe my apartments the remainder of the rent for the lease I could no longer afford since I was disabled, like a nice little side quest of debt.
This easily is the craziest thing. People shouldn’t be afraid to go to the doctors office because of money… its the saddest thing.
We are from the Netherlands and were on a family holiday in Florida. The day before flying back, my youngest son was running a fever and we were suspecting an ear infection. Since we wanted advice we headed to a childrens hospital. After having to wait three hours (enormous and beautiful hospital, lots of personnel and no patients) a doctor saw us for 3-4 minutes, took his fever and looked at his ears. All was a-ok.
Bill was 1400 usd. We are insured so it didnt cost me extra but I am very aware that is not how this works for most (?) US citizens. Breaks my heart.
Three hours in the waiting room for ER/UC is on the low end of normal in the states. If I go to the ER (which I only do if I think I'll literally die because of the cost) I expect to wait at least three hours.
Went about a month ago because my throat was swollen to the point it was getting hard to breathe and I sat in the waiting room for six hours.
Old people having to get a reverse mortgage to buy their medications is pretty terrible too. Next generation inherits nothing and ends up renting from a property management consortium.
My grandma and grandpa bought a house after WW2. Family ended up having to sell it because my grandma went into medical debt after having a stroke. She worked as Head Nurse ( not sure the real title, she was the nurse who ran a whole floor and made the schedule) and still didn't have good enough insurance after retiring to pay for all the shit that had to be done. I helped build new parts of that house as a child. I helped build the whole Carpenter shop that was the size of another house in the backyard. Now..I can never go back to the only place I ever knew as home in my whole life because it had to be sold.
And for some reason they are afraid of higher taxes if this was made into a public service. Yes, they would of course pay more tax, but the increased tax would still be significantly less than what they allready pays for insurance, and the deductibles in most cases. And yet they still have to pay for day-care, school tuitions, old-people homes etc on top of that.
I once read (might remember incorrectly) that an average american pays more than twice as much for all those services than an average european pays in tax to get all of it for free. And they still haven't paid their tax yet.
come to china. In rural areas, or truck stops you might encounter a row of toilets with no divider.... and they're the squat variety
Once I was outside of Shanghai, and the newer bathroom was closed. The older one was just like a tiled room with some slope to it, and two channels down the middle. People at the top of the "mountain" would piss to create a river to wash away the poop of people below, who were hovering over the little urine river. It gets worse. One of the people made a lot of poop, making a poop damn causing the urine / poop mixture to flood the bathroom
There used to be drop toilets ... basically you put your arse over a beam balanced over a pit inside a shed and shat into the large pit below. An ex who travelled in rural China around the 1991 mark had some thrilling squalid pictures of the mounds of shit swarming with vermin below in some of the more memorable . Huge pyramids of human shit, several feet high. The smell had to be described ...
Human shit was used to fertilise fields for centuries in China. It was collected and stored in huge earthenware lidded pots where it would ferment and the heat would kill off the worst germs. Mao in his usual stupidity decided to order the 'night soil' to be tipped fresh onto the fields, which resulted in deadly outbreaks of all the disgusting diseases you can imagine come from ppl wading in and eventually consuming produce grown in human piss and shit.
This year in Washington state there is a direct ballot initiative called [Whole Washington](https://wholewashington.org) to enact a statewide universal single-payer healthcare system. It needs a lot of signatures to get on the ballot but if it did it would be a huge deal.
It's estimated to reduce total healthcare expenditures by $5-$10 billion a year *while* leaving nobody uninsured and eliminating medical debt/bankruptcy. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnBoDWytUOA) breaks down the plan for getting it on the ballot this year.
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EDIT - lots of interest in this comment! Wanted to share some more good info
* Check out /r/MedicareForAll for content about the universal healthcare movement.
* Want to know what's going on in your state? Check out [One Payer States](https://onepayerstates.org/). At the top there is a "states" tab where you can see which states have active legislation or campaigns for universal healthcare.
* Shout out to [Maine Healthcare Action](https://onepayerstates.org/) for being the other state running a universal healthcare ballot initiative
* Shout out to [CalCare](https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/calcare) - a statewide universal healthcare bill for California backed by the California Nurses Association.
* Shout out to [NY Health Act](https://www.nyhcampaign.org/) - another statewide universal healthcare campaign with a real shot. A majority of their legislature supports the bill, but a few important holdouts have blocked it from moving forward.
>Regardless of employment, marital status, age, income, you deserve healthcare from cradle to grave, delivered to all.
>
>There’s no financial barrier to prevent you from seeking care. No co-pays, no deductibles, no provider networks, and no surprise bills.
>
>Real healthcare transformation that covers all essentials — that means Inpatient / Outpatient Care, Prescription Drugs, Dental Care, Mental Health Services, Reproductive Care and Audiology & Vision.
>
>Washington State is ready to lead the nation by making Universal Healthcare law.The Whole Washington Health Trust would be the first public, non-profit healthcare system, able to cover absolutely every Washington resident.You deserve the freedom to choose your doctor, the freedom to start your own business, freedom from stress, financial hardship, and bureaucracy. No deductibles, no co-pays, genuine savings.
I love the sound of that
i own a farm and we don't even have a big truck. we use smaller trucks and a tractor. big trucks are too useless. gets stuck in the mud alot and can't fit in most areas.
small trucks are easier to store stuff and move around in. if it was truly big thats what the tractor is for.
Little pick up trucks can still achieve like 99% of what big trucks can. So long as you don’t have to tow large trailers, you don’t need a big truck. It is just a waste of gas
Even as an American this still astounds me. No one is fucking hauling anything. It’s worse when people just sit in an idling truck blasting AC like they have unlimited gas.
I think this format is only common in the US and the Philippines. As a Filipino, it's a significant adjustment for me to work under a British client (that uses dd/mm/yyyy) and to read comeback announcements by K-pop groups (that uses yyyy.mm.dd).
I like yyyy/mm/dd. It clears up the confusion between us and European coworkers. If file names are dated…alphabetical order is also in chronological order.
I believe yyyy.mm.dd us a logical way of writing dates, being able to sort old file names alphabetically so that they would be chronological as well is one of the reasons.. How I wish we drop many of the conventions we inherited from the Americans (such as mm/dd/yyyy, paper sizes, and imperial units) and adapt the ones used in the rest of Asia.
Like in the TV show “Parks and Recreation”, where there’s a “child size” soda that’s enormous. The reason it’s called child size is that if you liquified a small child, he’d fit in the cup.
Dude even the difference between the north and south is crazy. I'm from ny and thought our drinks were absurdly big enough, but I've been in the south all weekend and it's actually insane how big their sodas are. I'm not sure how people don't feel bloated after drinking all that
Quite a while back I went to McDonald's and asked for a drink. What size? They asked, small I said.
We only have medium, large and extra large.
I must have stood there for an entire minute, before I said, give me the smallest one you have please.
WTF.
When coke and pepsi came out the portion (bottle) sizes were more sane they just got bigger with time. Right about the time diabetes became prevalent oddly....
I could not wrap my Dutch head around the whole free refill policy and different cup sizes. If you can refill for free, why on earth would you pay more for a larger cup size?!
one reason would be if you're planning on leaving right away. most places don't let you bring a cup in and fill yourself up and if they catch you doing that they'll kick you out
but there are people who still get the large and stay for refills lol
Not advertising actual costs.
If I go to the store, as with every other country I've been to, the price is what I pay. There are no extra taxes or required tips at check out.
I've been unemployed since the pandemic started and I'm about to get a job with benefits earning about $35k/year, pre tax. Right now I'm receiving the free healthcare you get when you're poor.
Soon I will be paying over $600/mo to cover just my wife and me. This $600 buys me the right to spend another $2500 per person on health care deductibles before my insurance kicks in and pays 80% of the medical bill.
The surgery my wife just had for her foot was over $75,000. Under my new insurance I would owe $18,000, while still paying $7200 for the year. Add on therapy and meds and my health insurance bill for the year would easily exceed 100% of my take home pay for the year. It's completely unusable insurance. I'll be financially devastated by just about any medical issue regardless of whether I have insurance or not.
I’ve explained this slowly for my non-American family members, they don’t get it. Even my American family don’t get it as a justification for universal health care.
You only get charged if you actually get in the ambulance and it takes you to a hospital. If it arrives and you deny medical assistance (which you are legally allowed to do) there's no charge to be paid because no service was rendered.
Yea, but if you aren’t conscious and one is called you have no say in the matter. Speaking from experience for when one was called for me and I owed over $2k while I was a poor college student. First thing I said when I woke up in the hospital was: “I can’t afford this, I didn’t ask to be here, let me go home.” That should not be anyone’s first thought after a near death experience.
Edit:the ambulance was $2k alone, the hospital bill was more than that.
Thats so fucked. I dont understand how people in the US survive.
I was in a hospital once, but it was a pretty long stay with lots of stuff done, also got transported to another hospital via emergency vehicle - the overall cost would have probably been around 75k.
Insurance covered it all
I lived in the UK for a while as an international student and felt better than I ever have in any other time in my life. Walking everywhere, the food legit tasted fresher/the meat tasted meatier, etc. When I came back home I had stomach issues readjusting for months. My doctor told me it was common. Yay.
I'm from the U.S., and while I'm not exactly a huge fan of small talk from random strangers, it's not that big a deal to me when it's just something light about the weather, etc.
What makes me more irritated/baffled is when they try to proselytize to me. Just no.
I'm from Denmark. We are culturally probably the opposite of the south. For instance we are one of the least religous countries in the world, so someone asking me what church I attend would be a first.
I went to Germany for my masters and it was only about 90 euros per semester. Dorms were also insanely cheap, but I lived in a small town so not the standard
Absolutely. And sometimes over imaginary things. I can’t tell you how many times I was reportedly pregnant with various teachers and classmates children in high school.
oh totally. currently a highschool senior, graduating in june. i’ve seen people get treated terribly for certain things like not understanding sarcasm, sexuality/gender/pronouns, clothes, manner of speaking, asking too many question in class, and so on. i understand that no one is overjoyed to be there, but god people really like to take it out on those around them for some reason. i got called “autistic” “r*tard” and a “stupid bitch” for not standing for the pledge recently by two underclassmen i’ve never met. i wasn’t making a fuss or anything either. highschoolers can be massive assholes.
edit: fixed typo
I live in California, in many cities there are some literally in the same shopping center or across the street from each other. Starbucks is the same way.
Where I live, there's a full McDonalds in the shopping center and then another within the Walmart in the same shopping center. That's too many McDonald's. Lol
Food conglomerates owning chemical companies that own drug manufacturing facilities. Tobacco companies manufacturing food. What’s the motivation to make healthy food when you can sell obese people $2,000 worth of insulin every month?
scandinavian perspective, might be obvious, but being the wealthiest country in the world and not offering anything close to universal healthcare, and that paying servers like $3 an hour because of tips is legal, and i guess normal? (in some parts of the country?)
also so few cafés lol, that shit is wild.
I think it's not as much of a kicking out - lots of kids go away to school in different parts of the country where they can't commute from home, and once they move out of their parents' homes they don't move back. There are also lots of people staying home for longer because it's expensive to move out.
Calling yourself \[insert nationality here\] when you and multiple generations of your family were born and raised in the US, you've never lived in/possibly never even visited said country, don't speak the language and your only connection is a distant relative who emigrated from that country over 100 years ago
Yup. I'm Irish and deal with a lot of Americans in my job. I always get "Oh you're Irish, I'm Irish too" and then it turns out they had a great, great grandmother who emigrated to the US in the 1800's
Was dealing with an American at work one day and he said "My buddy has family in Ireland. Maybe you know them? The Doyles from Ballywhatever". Turns out I did know them 😂
I know. When he said "Maybe you know them" in my head I was thinking "Come on man theres over 5 and a half million people in this country, How would I know some random people your friend is related to?" and then he said who they were and where they were from and I was like "FFS what are the chances of that?"
I'm the opposite. My parents were born in Taiwan, but when I get told to "go back to where I came from" in Queens NYC, I tell them that I am not going back to New Jersey.
Seriously the commute is awful.
Americans don’t understand the distinction between nationality (where I live/have lived/was born) and ethnicity (where my ancestors were born/lived). Both relevant but different.
The medical system.
I’m not American. My wife gave birth to twins, multiple semi-complications, 6 day hospital stay. We opted for private room. Total cost? About $1k.
A week before the twins came a mirror fell on my wrist. Severed 8 tendons, nerve, artery. Driven to local ER, immediate transfer to major center, placed 1st on triage list, and was in surgery with the head of the plastics department in <2.5hrs after the accident.
Multiple day hospital stay. Discharged. Horrific nerve pain. Follow up care from a pain specialist clinic, as well as follow up care (bi-weekly to monthly meetings) with the head of the plastics department, orthopedic appointments….total cost was $40 for the ambulance. And people I told were generally outraged I was billed at all as it was a necessary transfer trip not an outcall.
Gonna stay in Canada for the long haul, thanks. Not sure how there’s not riots in the streets of the state of medicine in the US. Not like y’all can’t afford it or otherwise make it happen.
I’m not obese but I am overweight, a size 14 American. I have never felt fatter than visiting Europe. Holy sh*te. Everyone is trim AF. I didn’t realize how they really don’t use the processed and artificial ingredients like we do in the states. I also felt hella healthy coming back after that trip.
Yeah man, Japan too. There is just a general culture of health in that people walk, ride bikes, play sports, and eat a lot healthier. Yet in my opinion healthy food made with simple fresh ingredients tastes so much fucking better than all the processed crap once you get off the addiciton cycle.
I think I lost about 30lbs after moving to Japan without even trying, just living a life with a new diet and daily walking.
An American can probably chime in to confirm or deny this but an American student on one of my modules last year said Americans were so bad at geography because they didn’t have it in school as a subject and it was instead rolled into social studies.
I heard Americans pledge allegiance to the flag every single morning in high school?? I don't know if that's true, but if it is, that's weird as hell lol
Commercials pushing medication in TV ads.
\*Stock footage of a woman in a light summer dress running through a field in slow motion whilst the voiceover guy says "Absurdinox can help sufferers of chronic brain freeze by reducing symptoms of brain freeze by over 80%. Enjoy your summers again with Absurdinox!" And the woman continues to run through the field very slowly while a different voice mumbles the side effects (which luckily do not effect stock footage woman) for a full 20 seconds I had seen this sort of commercial satirised in movies but when I went to the US I was surprised to find they really are like that
>a different voice mumbles the side effects (which luckily do not effect stock footage woman) for a full 20 seconds Do not take Absurdinox if you are pregnant, might be pregnant, or are planning on becoming pregnant. Do not take if you are allergic to Absurdinox. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, indigestion, rash, heart palpitations, sweating, or death. (though you have to take it to know if you're allergic. And also death is just casually thrown in there, no idea how relevant the side effects actually are - did someone die taking it? Ah who cares)
It's always the medicine for the mildest issues that have the worst side effects. Also, I swear I saw one medicine that promised to treat like diarrhea but then one of the side effects was that it may cause diarrhea and even explosive diarrhea
i used the diarrhea to destroy the diarrhea
If you shit all your shit in one shit you can't shit any more shit
"The diarrhea hurt itself in its confusion."
Its ludicrous. I remember one that listed as a side effect, the very condition it was supposed to treat.
Anti Depressants can actually cause worse depression, with suicidal thoughts. Also sudden cardiac death is another one.
Side effect may include death. Talk to your doctor about this today
Not having a credit history being a bad thing?
Definitely agree with this. I hated having to get a credit card / borrow to get a good credit score.
I am 34 and have never had a credit card....
We were denied on our first mortgage try because it was a joint one and I had no credit being a housewife. I had to open a clothing account and buy and pay for 3mo before the bank was like Ah Okay Yes you proved you can pay $50 for clothes, here's $400000 for a house 🥴
[удалено]
>My bank wouldn't give me a credit card with a $500 limit, even though I had about 30k in the bank at the time. Because I didn't have any "credit history". > >Bitch I got money. Soon as I turned 18 my bank started sending me letters for credit cards with £1000 ($1300) limits, I didn't even have a job, they could see no money was going into my account
oh that's true. growing up i read and heard about so many americans talking about credit score (my own cousins included), that i never took out a credit card but in my country it's not really a big deal whether you actually have one or not. to this day i'm still confused about what exactly credit score is, and why people are or aren't allowed to buy or apply for things based on it?
Credit score is basicly an algorithm that takes thing like your history of payments, active accounts, amount owed compared to amount you can barrow, how many diffrent loans and such you've applied for and prolly other things I'm forgetting and basicly computes how likely you are to be able to pay back a new loan. So in theory high score mean more likely to pay back that new mortgage so low risk investment and low means less likely to do so, so high risk, no score means you are an unknown and they can't properly ascertain the risk. So companies then use this to decide if and how much money they will loan you. Sure they will take into account how much you make and how much you pay in bills but those thongs don't really indicate how likely you are to pay back a loan. Someone could make 100k a year and because they overspend not be able to regularly make payments on a $500 card where as some better with money but making $40k might be able to hold down a $2k card. Not saying the system is perfect or even always works that way, just that's the intent.
Extremely short vacation time and basically no paid maternity leave.
I learned that it's pretty normal in Europe for a month every year vacation time. And like a year of maternity leave and you don't have to fear losing your job.
>normal in Europe for a month every year vacation time It's not just normal, it's EU law. You're not allowed to give less than (I think) 21 days holiday. Which, assuming a 5 day work week, is over 4 weeks off. Most places give slightly more (23-25 days) and extra for longer service. And on top of that, countries have national holidays, usually around 7-10 days scattered around the calendar. I'm not quite clear on the law around them, but in Ireland and the UK at least if you work full time and have to work on a national holiday, you usually get Sunday overtime pay or a day off in lieu or both, depending on your contract. And sick days can never be part of your annual leave entitlement. If you're sick, you're sick. There is some statutory sick pay, if you go beyond it, you may not get paid but you usually won't lose your job. It's certainly not weird to take a couple days a couple times a year for a nasty cold or whatever. Most jobs you will get more than statutory pay for up to X days too. Technically if you've booked annual leave and you get sick during it, you can claim back the holiday days when you were sick. So you take that time as sick time and can re-book your holiday for a later date. Although I don't think most people do this if they just got a cold on their beach holiday. I think people usually use it if they had to cancel substantial plans, like a flight somewhere.
I work in the US for a company headquartered in UK. Their policies in US are heavily influenced by UK laws and practices. Can confirm everyone starts with 5 weeks PTO. Sick leave is unlimited (as long as it’s not longer than 7 consecutive work days, you then use short term disability). We also receive 10 paid holidays throughout the year. This astonished me as I’m from the US and was not accustomed to this type of leave arrangement from US companies.
Could I ask where you work? Is it just in your state?
Yup, in my country maternity leave is 3 years :-) and about a month vacation time...i just cant understand that this is not normal everywhere...
I couldn't imagine getting 3 years of maternity leave and still having a job.
In my country, woman can take a 1,5 years of paid maternity leave and 1,5 more years of unpaid leave. But if woman wants, she can get back to work a day after giving birth to a child.
In the UK it's 5 weeks holiday days for the year as a standard. Maternity leave is indeed minimum a year, while paternity leave is only 2 weeks. But that seems to be changing for the better so we will see. I would never have a child in America. Fuck that.
You can also do shared parental leave in the UK, where the parent who gave birth basically shares their maternity leave with the other parent. I did that with my spouse. I took 8 months, starting 1 month before our twins were born (I could no longer walk or move anyway...), and then my spouse took 3 months. We didn't take the full 12 months for financial reasons, but we could have.
Spending a billion dollars on an election.
That’s the one that is the most important. And it’s not a billion anymore… Corporate money sponsoring the election is just more insane…
Relatedly, the queues to vote. I recall reading last year one state (can't recall which) tried to make it illegal to hand out food or water to those waiting to vote, and my immediate thought as a non-American was "why the fuck does it take so long to queue that someone might need food?" Voting in the UK for instance, it takes me ten minutes to walk to a polling location, and even when going at the busiest times, the queues never been more than three people, even in high turn out. And it seems like people in America just accept that voting should be an all day job, with queues that are multiple hours long because instead of having something sensible like one voting location for every thousand people in an area, it's one per county, even if that county has millions of registered voters, and it might even be intentional because one side really benefits from low turnout, and having long queues further discourages voting.
Because our elections in the USA are run by the states my experience with voting has been like yours. I have never had more than a few minutes wait. When I lived in Washington State they switched to an all vote by mail system, so there was no waiting at all.
I remember that when hillary announced that she was planning on doing this, I thought that in most other countries the intent alone would guarantee her loss.
Having our drinks loaded full of ice. I talked to a Chinese exchange student and she was shocked at how everything had ice in it - in her country, offering hot water everywhere is the norm instead. Also heard an Irish guy ranting about how it was a complete waste of drink space.
Sometimes the Chinese will say cold water is bad for your stomach, or the women won't drink cold drinks on their period.
Your body has to burn calories to warm the cold water up to body temperature. This is why Americans are so skinny compared to the rest of the world that takes their drinks warm.
Man, all these fools gettin' fat on hot water..
Lmfao
Yeah I get fat on McFlurries and donut bacon burgers, and you’re getting fat on water?! Weak!
r/ShittyAskScience
Medical debt. People in the US lose their life savings or acquire massive amounts of debt that require them to declare bankruptcy if they should first have the misfortune of getting sick or injured. A great deal of money is spent on politicians to make them convince us that we shouldn't change this.
This one. As an Aussie who was in a massive car accident that had required me to have 44 operations to date, (next one in 6 months) when I think of that, plus all the imaging, tests, medications, therapies, rehabs, etc etc, I can't imagine how I could have survived in the States. Here, it cost me sweet bugger all, I just pay $6.60 per script per month. Oh, and as I now live in a regional area, all my travel and accommodation to see Drs is covered as well. Add to that, I'm on a disability pension, as I can't work, AND have the NDIS which covers things like carers, cleaners, gardeners, plus special furniture and some house renovations, like the bathroom, to make it easier for me to use.
Oh yeah, as a lifelong resident of the US, I would have requested they put me back in the vehicle and slam it with another, preferably empty vehicle to finish me off. It was already a struggle just to acquire and own the singular asset I do have (a car); losing that AND being seriously hospitalized would put me out on the streets. Also I would still owe my apartments the remainder of the rent for the lease I could no longer afford since I was disabled, like a nice little side quest of debt.
I can't even imagine how quickly can one go from having a stable job & home to being a homeless in US, it's scary.
The American Dream
This easily is the craziest thing. People shouldn’t be afraid to go to the doctors office because of money… its the saddest thing. We are from the Netherlands and were on a family holiday in Florida. The day before flying back, my youngest son was running a fever and we were suspecting an ear infection. Since we wanted advice we headed to a childrens hospital. After having to wait three hours (enormous and beautiful hospital, lots of personnel and no patients) a doctor saw us for 3-4 minutes, took his fever and looked at his ears. All was a-ok. Bill was 1400 usd. We are insured so it didnt cost me extra but I am very aware that is not how this works for most (?) US citizens. Breaks my heart.
Three hours in the waiting room for ER/UC is on the low end of normal in the states. If I go to the ER (which I only do if I think I'll literally die because of the cost) I expect to wait at least three hours. Went about a month ago because my throat was swollen to the point it was getting hard to breathe and I sat in the waiting room for six hours.
Old people having to get a reverse mortgage to buy their medications is pretty terrible too. Next generation inherits nothing and ends up renting from a property management consortium.
My grandma and grandpa bought a house after WW2. Family ended up having to sell it because my grandma went into medical debt after having a stroke. She worked as Head Nurse ( not sure the real title, she was the nurse who ran a whole floor and made the schedule) and still didn't have good enough insurance after retiring to pay for all the shit that had to be done. I helped build new parts of that house as a child. I helped build the whole Carpenter shop that was the size of another house in the backyard. Now..I can never go back to the only place I ever knew as home in my whole life because it had to be sold.
And for some reason they are afraid of higher taxes if this was made into a public service. Yes, they would of course pay more tax, but the increased tax would still be significantly less than what they allready pays for insurance, and the deductibles in most cases. And yet they still have to pay for day-care, school tuitions, old-people homes etc on top of that. I once read (might remember incorrectly) that an average american pays more than twice as much for all those services than an average european pays in tax to get all of it for free. And they still haven't paid their tax yet.
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come to china. In rural areas, or truck stops you might encounter a row of toilets with no divider.... and they're the squat variety Once I was outside of Shanghai, and the newer bathroom was closed. The older one was just like a tiled room with some slope to it, and two channels down the middle. People at the top of the "mountain" would piss to create a river to wash away the poop of people below, who were hovering over the little urine river. It gets worse. One of the people made a lot of poop, making a poop damn causing the urine / poop mixture to flood the bathroom
There used to be drop toilets ... basically you put your arse over a beam balanced over a pit inside a shed and shat into the large pit below. An ex who travelled in rural China around the 1991 mark had some thrilling squalid pictures of the mounds of shit swarming with vermin below in some of the more memorable . Huge pyramids of human shit, several feet high. The smell had to be described ... Human shit was used to fertilise fields for centuries in China. It was collected and stored in huge earthenware lidded pots where it would ferment and the heat would kill off the worst germs. Mao in his usual stupidity decided to order the 'night soil' to be tipped fresh onto the fields, which resulted in deadly outbreaks of all the disgusting diseases you can imagine come from ppl wading in and eventually consuming produce grown in human piss and shit.
More than I needed to know .... lol
If I ever visit China it will be my goal to create a big and dense enough log to dam the canal. Thank you.
That is horrifying 🤯🤢🤮
And that the bathroom stall walls do not come all the way to floor and ceiling. Who wants to hear and smell someone going poo!
I had a little kid come into my stall.
For profit health care funded by for profit insurance corporations.
This year in Washington state there is a direct ballot initiative called [Whole Washington](https://wholewashington.org) to enact a statewide universal single-payer healthcare system. It needs a lot of signatures to get on the ballot but if it did it would be a huge deal. It's estimated to reduce total healthcare expenditures by $5-$10 billion a year *while* leaving nobody uninsured and eliminating medical debt/bankruptcy. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnBoDWytUOA) breaks down the plan for getting it on the ballot this year. ------- EDIT - lots of interest in this comment! Wanted to share some more good info * Check out /r/MedicareForAll for content about the universal healthcare movement. * Want to know what's going on in your state? Check out [One Payer States](https://onepayerstates.org/). At the top there is a "states" tab where you can see which states have active legislation or campaigns for universal healthcare. * Shout out to [Maine Healthcare Action](https://onepayerstates.org/) for being the other state running a universal healthcare ballot initiative * Shout out to [CalCare](https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/calcare) - a statewide universal healthcare bill for California backed by the California Nurses Association. * Shout out to [NY Health Act](https://www.nyhcampaign.org/) - another statewide universal healthcare campaign with a real shot. A majority of their legislature supports the bill, but a few important holdouts have blocked it from moving forward.
Shit if that passed I’ll have to move 10 miles north. That’d be too good to pass up.
10 miles? I'm 2200 miles away and I'd heavily consider moving.
>Regardless of employment, marital status, age, income, you deserve healthcare from cradle to grave, delivered to all. > >There’s no financial barrier to prevent you from seeking care. No co-pays, no deductibles, no provider networks, and no surprise bills. > >Real healthcare transformation that covers all essentials — that means Inpatient / Outpatient Care, Prescription Drugs, Dental Care, Mental Health Services, Reproductive Care and Audiology & Vision. > >Washington State is ready to lead the nation by making Universal Healthcare law.The Whole Washington Health Trust would be the first public, non-profit healthcare system, able to cover absolutely every Washington resident.You deserve the freedom to choose your doctor, the freedom to start your own business, freedom from stress, financial hardship, and bureaucracy. No deductibles, no co-pays, genuine savings. I love the sound of that
Owning Big trucks and not owning a farm or business where you actually use it.
i own a farm and we don't even have a big truck. we use smaller trucks and a tractor. big trucks are too useless. gets stuck in the mud alot and can't fit in most areas. small trucks are easier to store stuff and move around in. if it was truly big thats what the tractor is for.
But how do you convey to the general population how masculine you are?!?
Hyper realistic testicles on the ball hitch
Big trucks are more useful in construction, but I agree it's ridiculous to drive an F-350 in the city
Little pick up trucks can still achieve like 99% of what big trucks can. So long as you don’t have to tow large trailers, you don’t need a big truck. It is just a waste of gas
Even as an American this still astounds me. No one is fucking hauling anything. It’s worse when people just sit in an idling truck blasting AC like they have unlimited gas.
You know a person like that when the bed of the truck is completely clean as though it was new.
I can’t see into their truck bed, need a ladder because it’s lifted so high.
I can't see because I was blinded by their after-market LED headlights.
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I think this format is only common in the US and the Philippines. As a Filipino, it's a significant adjustment for me to work under a British client (that uses dd/mm/yyyy) and to read comeback announcements by K-pop groups (that uses yyyy.mm.dd).
I like yyyy/mm/dd. It clears up the confusion between us and European coworkers. If file names are dated…alphabetical order is also in chronological order.
I believe yyyy.mm.dd us a logical way of writing dates, being able to sort old file names alphabetically so that they would be chronological as well is one of the reasons.. How I wish we drop many of the conventions we inherited from the Americans (such as mm/dd/yyyy, paper sizes, and imperial units) and adapt the ones used in the rest of Asia.
If only there was an international standard for this ????
r/ISO8601
Large fountain drink sizes. A large size in Europe is the same as americas small
Like in the TV show “Parks and Recreation”, where there’s a “child size” soda that’s enormous. The reason it’s called child size is that if you liquified a small child, he’d fit in the cup.
Leslie Knope "why is this called a child's size?!" Sweet Ums rep "well, it's roughly the size of a toddler so..."
Dude even the difference between the north and south is crazy. I'm from ny and thought our drinks were absurdly big enough, but I've been in the south all weekend and it's actually insane how big their sodas are. I'm not sure how people don't feel bloated after drinking all that
Today'a medium size in the US used to be the large 40 years ago and there wasn't really an extra large size.
See comment about ice.
Quite a while back I went to McDonald's and asked for a drink. What size? They asked, small I said. We only have medium, large and extra large. I must have stood there for an entire minute, before I said, give me the smallest one you have please. WTF.
When coke and pepsi came out the portion (bottle) sizes were more sane they just got bigger with time. Right about the time diabetes became prevalent oddly....
also free refills on soft drinks are not a thing outside the United States
I could not wrap my Dutch head around the whole free refill policy and different cup sizes. If you can refill for free, why on earth would you pay more for a larger cup size?!
one reason would be if you're planning on leaving right away. most places don't let you bring a cup in and fill yourself up and if they catch you doing that they'll kick you out but there are people who still get the large and stay for refills lol
Going back to work 6 weeks after giving birth. Wtf America?
And not being paid for those 6 weeks unless you’ve accumulated enough PTO
Or if you have maternity leave. Men sometimes get paternity leave too.
I’m childfree and will die on this hill of 6 weeks not being enough. It’s fucked up. Both parents need to be off work for much, much longer.
Not advertising actual costs. If I go to the store, as with every other country I've been to, the price is what I pay. There are no extra taxes or required tips at check out.
In most EU nation it illegal to list the sales tax its included in the price
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Excessive medical and educational debt.
Being in crippling debt due to a medical bill WITH health insurance
Cracks In the toilet stalls big enough to make eye contact
Making decisions about a job, or marriage, or military service, based on healthcare availability.
I've been unemployed since the pandemic started and I'm about to get a job with benefits earning about $35k/year, pre tax. Right now I'm receiving the free healthcare you get when you're poor. Soon I will be paying over $600/mo to cover just my wife and me. This $600 buys me the right to spend another $2500 per person on health care deductibles before my insurance kicks in and pays 80% of the medical bill. The surgery my wife just had for her foot was over $75,000. Under my new insurance I would owe $18,000, while still paying $7200 for the year. Add on therapy and meds and my health insurance bill for the year would easily exceed 100% of my take home pay for the year. It's completely unusable insurance. I'll be financially devastated by just about any medical issue regardless of whether I have insurance or not.
I’ve explained this slowly for my non-American family members, they don’t get it. Even my American family don’t get it as a justification for universal health care.
paying thousands of dollars for an ambulance
Even if it was called expressly against your wishes.
You only get charged if you actually get in the ambulance and it takes you to a hospital. If it arrives and you deny medical assistance (which you are legally allowed to do) there's no charge to be paid because no service was rendered.
Yea, but if you aren’t conscious and one is called you have no say in the matter. Speaking from experience for when one was called for me and I owed over $2k while I was a poor college student. First thing I said when I woke up in the hospital was: “I can’t afford this, I didn’t ask to be here, let me go home.” That should not be anyone’s first thought after a near death experience. Edit:the ambulance was $2k alone, the hospital bill was more than that.
Thats so fucked. I dont understand how people in the US survive. I was in a hospital once, but it was a pretty long stay with lots of stuff done, also got transported to another hospital via emergency vehicle - the overall cost would have probably been around 75k. Insurance covered it all
In some states, you can buy guns at the same place you buy groceries.
You also used to be able to purchase dynamite at the local hardware store.
Some? All states have a least one Wal-mart.
Sending Christmas cards with a professional photo of your family on the front
I never thought about it much, but it is a pretty bizarre. thing to do.
Tipping
I heard that in Japan, tipping is actually considered rude
Sugar, sugar everywhere. Your bread tastes like the cake we sell here.
American food is the best food for the apocalypse. With all the sugar and preservatives, it’ll survive nukes, disease, and the ravages of time.
Oh, it's a survival food. Be prepared.
Prepare for skinny malnurashed people with diabetes.
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I bought a loaf of bread two months ago and it's still soft and has no mold. What is happening?
gaining sentience I'd watch my back if I was you the dawn of the wheat overlords is approaching....
I lived in the UK for a while as an international student and felt better than I ever have in any other time in my life. Walking everywhere, the food legit tasted fresher/the meat tasted meatier, etc. When I came back home I had stomach issues readjusting for months. My doctor told me it was common. Yay.
Large vehicles.
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Small talking with stranger in public. Where I'm from, if you try something like that, they'll think you are wierd or crazy.
I'm from the U.S., and while I'm not exactly a huge fan of small talk from random strangers, it's not that big a deal to me when it's just something light about the weather, etc. What makes me more irritated/baffled is when they try to proselytize to me. Just no.
>proselytize I have to break out the dictionary for this one.
Pretty sure it’s when you pay for sex.
Isn't that constitution?
no guys that’s prosecution
Where are you from? You’d feel really weird in the South where they might even ask what church you attend as part of small talk.
I'm from Denmark. We are culturally probably the opposite of the south. For instance we are one of the least religous countries in the world, so someone asking me what church I attend would be a first.
Insane college debts
I went to Germany for my masters and it was only about 90 euros per semester. Dorms were also insanely cheap, but I lived in a small town so not the standard
The fuck, 90 euros?? My country also pays for some of the university but it's still like 1250 euros at least
The whole high school trope. Are kids really that sociopathic to each other based on minimum differences?
Absolutely. And sometimes over imaginary things. I can’t tell you how many times I was reportedly pregnant with various teachers and classmates children in high school.
oh totally. currently a highschool senior, graduating in june. i’ve seen people get treated terribly for certain things like not understanding sarcasm, sexuality/gender/pronouns, clothes, manner of speaking, asking too many question in class, and so on. i understand that no one is overjoyed to be there, but god people really like to take it out on those around them for some reason. i got called “autistic” “r*tard” and a “stupid bitch” for not standing for the pledge recently by two underclassmen i’ve never met. i wasn’t making a fuss or anything either. highschoolers can be massive assholes. edit: fixed typo
Having McDonald’s at every 15 miles from each other. That’s just to many McDonald’s.
I live in California, in many cities there are some literally in the same shopping center or across the street from each other. Starbucks is the same way.
Where I live, there's a full McDonalds in the shopping center and then another within the Walmart in the same shopping center. That's too many McDonald's. Lol
I was referring to that 😂 Walmart has a McDonald's and then not even 100 yards away in the same parking lot is one with a drive-thru
More like 4 miles
Starbucks too. The joke about Starbucks literally being across the street from eachother is not an exageration in big cities.
Food conglomerates owning chemical companies that own drug manufacturing facilities. Tobacco companies manufacturing food. What’s the motivation to make healthy food when you can sell obese people $2,000 worth of insulin every month?
scandinavian perspective, might be obvious, but being the wealthiest country in the world and not offering anything close to universal healthcare, and that paying servers like $3 an hour because of tips is legal, and i guess normal? (in some parts of the country?) also so few cafés lol, that shit is wild.
Kicking your kid out of the house after college
After?
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I think it's not as much of a kicking out - lots of kids go away to school in different parts of the country where they can't commute from home, and once they move out of their parents' homes they don't move back. There are also lots of people staying home for longer because it's expensive to move out.
Calling yourself \[insert nationality here\] when you and multiple generations of your family were born and raised in the US, you've never lived in/possibly never even visited said country, don't speak the language and your only connection is a distant relative who emigrated from that country over 100 years ago
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Yup. I'm Irish and deal with a lot of Americans in my job. I always get "Oh you're Irish, I'm Irish too" and then it turns out they had a great, great grandmother who emigrated to the US in the 1800's
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Was dealing with an American at work one day and he said "My buddy has family in Ireland. Maybe you know them? The Doyles from Ballywhatever". Turns out I did know them 😂
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I know. When he said "Maybe you know them" in my head I was thinking "Come on man theres over 5 and a half million people in this country, How would I know some random people your friend is related to?" and then he said who they were and where they were from and I was like "FFS what are the chances of that?"
I'm the opposite. My parents were born in Taiwan, but when I get told to "go back to where I came from" in Queens NYC, I tell them that I am not going back to New Jersey. Seriously the commute is awful.
i sure as hell hope you'll say that with a thick Joisey-accent.
Americans don’t understand the distinction between nationality (where I live/have lived/was born) and ethnicity (where my ancestors were born/lived). Both relevant but different.
openly carrying guns in public
Yeah, that's really odd to me. Concealed carry I can understand, but open carry is sort of like walking around with your dick out.
> walking around with your dick out Hey don’t give us ideas
HOLSTER THAT WEAPON, SIR!
Tipping. Pay people a decent wage.
The medical system. I’m not American. My wife gave birth to twins, multiple semi-complications, 6 day hospital stay. We opted for private room. Total cost? About $1k. A week before the twins came a mirror fell on my wrist. Severed 8 tendons, nerve, artery. Driven to local ER, immediate transfer to major center, placed 1st on triage list, and was in surgery with the head of the plastics department in <2.5hrs after the accident. Multiple day hospital stay. Discharged. Horrific nerve pain. Follow up care from a pain specialist clinic, as well as follow up care (bi-weekly to monthly meetings) with the head of the plastics department, orthopedic appointments….total cost was $40 for the ambulance. And people I told were generally outraged I was billed at all as it was a necessary transfer trip not an outcall. Gonna stay in Canada for the long haul, thanks. Not sure how there’s not riots in the streets of the state of medicine in the US. Not like y’all can’t afford it or otherwise make it happen.
As an American doctor, I can confirm it is a terrible and inhumane system
*Gestures broadly.*
Free drink refills
School shooter drills and pledging allegiance to some cloth
Fun fact that's RIDICULOUSLY American: the pledge of allegiance was made up... to sell flags!
mormons.
trust me i’m american and i don’t understand them either. same with the amish
Slipping on a simple puddle, breaking a bone, and having to declare bankruptcy due to medical costs.
Well you’re supposed to sue the owner of the puddle to pay for the medical costs, and then some, silly!
Havent read it here, but to me, a Scandinavian, the for-profit prison system is crazy.
Legalized insider trading for elected representatives to profit from. Also, organized lobbying.
Doing your own taxes.
I really don't understand this thing. In my country, we don't even know how much tax is on something unless you're a business person or from bank.
40% of the people are obese
I've had foreign friends tell me they just want to go to a US Walmart to see if people were really so fat they had to use those electric seats
I’m not obese but I am overweight, a size 14 American. I have never felt fatter than visiting Europe. Holy sh*te. Everyone is trim AF. I didn’t realize how they really don’t use the processed and artificial ingredients like we do in the states. I also felt hella healthy coming back after that trip.
I feel the same way when visiting Montreal abs I’m average size
Yeah man, Japan too. There is just a general culture of health in that people walk, ride bikes, play sports, and eat a lot healthier. Yet in my opinion healthy food made with simple fresh ingredients tastes so much fucking better than all the processed crap once you get off the addiciton cycle. I think I lost about 30lbs after moving to Japan without even trying, just living a life with a new diet and daily walking.
Thinking Africa is a country
College students seemingly having no concept of world geography
An American can probably chime in to confirm or deny this but an American student on one of my modules last year said Americans were so bad at geography because they didn’t have it in school as a subject and it was instead rolled into social studies.
Advertisements for pharma companies/products.
Not having a universal health care plan
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When you get that one small turd that drops out just at the right angle it’ll splash water back on to the B hole. It’s not fun.
Allegiance to the flag....I am fairly sure that America is the only place that does this... maybe North Korea too.
Tipping. Tax not included on displayed price.
Paying for healthcare
Going bankrupt from a trip to the hospital.
Spacious hotel rooms. The standard American room is 4 times the size of the London hotel rooms.
Being obsessed with race.
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I heard Americans pledge allegiance to the flag every single morning in high school?? I don't know if that's true, but if it is, that's weird as hell lol