My travel agent once gave me a guide for visiting the US. I wish I had saved it. It was a combination of decent advice, keen cultural insight, and utterly whacked-out ravings. (Relatedly, this is broadly true of much writing about Japan in the US.)
The thing which sticks with me most is, in a note about US tipping culture (an utterly foreign concept in Japan), the line "Many Americans may require a calculator to determine what 20% of $18 is. It is unwise to offer to assist."
It is so very true, though. Over the years I've had to teach my "trick" for figuring out tips without a calculator to pretty much all of my friends (the spiel: 'move the decimal one place to the left; double that number'). I was always surprised by how magical it appeared to them :|
I watched an American gentleman helpfully suggest that to a Distinguished Professor of Statistics from a top 10 university in Japan. It took me 10 minutes in the car ride home to assure him that it was not an insult to his intelligence.
It's painful to watch an otherwise successful person whip out a calculator to make sure they don't accidentally give their server an extra 30 cents on an ~$18 lunch bill. Just round up and move on with your life. Everybody wins.
Tip calculators all go the wrong way (well, all the ones I've seen do). Suppose I order a pizza and it comes to 16.12. A typical tip calculator will tell me that with a 15% tip, this would be 18.54, and with a 20% tip it would be 19.34.
I don't want to screw around with that .54 or .34. I want to give the delivery person an integral number of dollars. Probably hand him a $20, and tell him how many dollar bills to give me back.
I made a tip calculator Dashboard widget to calculate tips from that perspective. With this widget, I enter 16.12, and it gives me a little table that looks like this:
I can glance at that, and see that $19 or $20 for combined $16.12 pizza plus tip are reasonable options. If it were summer, I'd probably go for $19, especially if I could do that without breaking a $20. If it were winter, I'd probably just go with a $20 bill and no change, to get the transaction over with as quickly as possible so I could close the door and stop losing my precious heat.
Even easier (and better for your karma and the server's budget): round the bill up to the next 10 dollar increment, then do this trick (and add a buck).
You're supposed to use the pre-tax amount, and doing what is normal, paying 15% of the pre-tax amount, doesn't make you a cheapskate, it makes you normal. You don't get bonus points for paying extra money to someone you'll likely never see again.
Well, it may depend on where you're eating, but at many restaurants, the wait staff is paid well below the normal minimum wage, and your 15% tip on the pre-tax bill is supposed to make up the difference. And it often does.
However, personally, I believe that the minimum wage is far too low, and that wait staff in particular should be paid more than my notional "correct" minimum wage as a base rate. So the way I look at it is that if I had my way and the staff were paid appropriately, the cost of eating at the restaurant would necessarily go up. If I truly believe what I say I believe, then I should be willing to pay more for the same product. And I am. So I do.
This is one of just a few areas of American's lives where we have some power over how well the service workers we rely on are paid. And so I tip according to how I believe they should be compensated.
The difference between 15% and 20% on a $15 bill is 75 cents. The difference between pre- and post-tax is even smaller. You might not get bonus points for ignoring that, but you'll definitely lose points (in my eyes, at least) for fretting about such a small amount of money.
Anyone loses points (in my eyes) for tipping an exact amount regardless of the quality of service. It's a tip, it's supposed to reflect how well you were treated. If you do 18 or 20% no matter what, you're missing the point of tipping. If I'm eating spicy food and my glass is empty for the entire duration of my meal because the server is not paying attention, you're lucky to get a tip at all. I've left 50% tips, I've left no tip, and I've rounded $9.99 to $10 and called that a tip.
Anyone working in a restaurant expecting a tip for bare minimum service has my pity, but not my money. You get my money by doing a good job.
It's a tip, it's supposed to reflect how well you were treated.
That may be how the practice started, but that's no longer how it works. I mean, you can clearly tip however little or much you'd like, but, culturally, the tip is nothing more than a formality. And like any formality, you're free to ignore it, but you should be aware that that's what you're doing.
The idea of a tip is to compensate service based on quality. If that's not the goal, then the cost should just be integrated into the price of the meal. Since it's not, that means tipping should be reserved for compensating service based on quality. Restaurants are free to set service fees (and many do, "A fee of 18% will be imposed upon parties of 10 or more"), but a tip is still a tip.
You give me poor service, you get a poor or nonexistent tip. If the server doesn't like that, then they should provide better service. If the restaurant doesn't like paying their staff to make up the difference between what their wages and minimum wage, they're free to take action against that server (from more training to just firing them). That's the behavior that tips are meant to encourage. Either you're a good server and you make more than minimum wage, or you're a poor server and you don't have a job anymore. That's how the entire economy works.
At any rate, a tip is not a formality. If people are treating it as such, I have a problem with that. Either do away with tips and pay the staff what they're worth or make tips based on quality of service.
Of course and I said as much. Whether or not to shake the hand of someone you meet is also up to the hand-shaker, but, again, you should just be aware that declining to do so bucks convention. You're talking about what you think tipping should be; I'm talking about what it is.
Where are you that workers have to pay a sales tax on their tips?
On the question of USA-ian innumeracy, I noticed recently that a
Darden restaurant had provided some pre-calculated tip amounts on
the bill (just displayed, not added to the total). The tip levels
were 15, 18, and 20% - and they were calculated from the pre-tax total.
Convenience, good or bad customer relations, good or bad staff
support, slightly more useful than some toll-free survey number, or
sign of the coming info-pocalypse due to lack of STEM students?
I've taken to tipping 18%, and the process I use to calculate that mentally starts with what you mentioned, but with one more step:
Divide by 10 for 10%; double that number for 20%. Take 10% away from that number to get 18%.
E.g.
100 check
move the decimal => 10
double that => 20
move the decimal => 2
subtract previous value from the one before (thus 90% of 20%, or 18%) => 18
This feels like a good mental math exercise to me on a 4- or 5-digit number since it requires a couple of values to be remembered while you're calculating. Gotta stay sharp!
Do you eat out enough that tipping is a significant expense? I just estimate 20% and round to the next dollar, $0.40 isn't going to bleed me dry and most servers make crap anyway.
Gross generalisation time: I've met very few Americans I disliked as individuals, but an awful lot that in groups become intolerable. A lot of it seems to be that the barrier for nonsensical optimism creeps lower with each extra member added to the group until absolute irrationality reigns supreme. If you try to burst this bubble you are screwed, and the only thing to do is walk away and hope to be far enough away that when it blows up you're not in the blast radius.
The thing is one time out of ten they're right and the cynics among us are wrong, and you have to love them for that. As Churchill is often quoted as saying you can always trust the Americans to do the right thing, once they've tried every other possibility.
Everybody comes to America to make their dreams come true. They cling to that optimism to hold on to their silly dreams when the odds are against them. Naturally, the culture reflects this. We're delusional. I notice a similar optimism on Hacker News. Everyone's going for a piece of the gold rush.
The first link to the source is actually all about tipping, which I'm surprised didn't make it onto the list. While American style tipping is odd to me as a European, it just feels even odder the longer I live in Japan (where there is literally no tipping, I couldn't even tip if I wanted to). Quite hard to explain this whole concept to Japanese (that were never in the US) sometimes.
EDIT: So is the third link. Well not entirely, but the first half.
Honestly even after traveling to America several times I don't understand why this practice is still going on. It's just annoying for everyone (the employee, and the client) and a cause for embarrassment. In Europe we tip people when we get extra good service from them,, so that tipping feels special. That's the way it should be.
As an American, I don't understand why tipping still goes on either. It should be banned -- it's discriminatory[1] and just generally a pain in the butt.
People who work for tips defend the practice, because the people who make it their profession have learned how to work the system. People who aren't good at it have been weeded out. So it's hard to say if it's really good or bad.
I've decided that it's a peculiar form of North American efficiency: part of management and monitoring the service worker has been delegated to the client. If someone's working for tips, less supervision is needed to ensure they are providing great service. As long as everyone obeys the cultural norms, it's a win for the owner, customer, and service worker. For those who don't obey the cultural norms, well, at least the service worker has a base salary.
This explains why it's more normal to tip a waiter, but not so for a fast food restaurant. In fast food, the workers are staying put behind a counter, and the manager is just a few steps away anyway. The more mechanical your job is, the less sense tipping makes. Maybe this is crazy (and if you're a service worker feel free to say I'm stupid), but perhaps we should look at tippable jobs as being good, because it proves that the worker also has some autonomy and has to be acknowledged by the customer as more than a serving unit.
I'm not even sure tipping is good in general. In most cases multiple people add to your experience. The kitchen staff, the waiters, people doing orders in the first place, kitchen porters, maybe someone else taking your registration, etc. But the result of tipping is normally either:
- person taking the tip takes it all
- tip goes to the pool and everyone (including people not involved in your case at all) get the same amount
Neither one is fair for people involved. (And that's assuming staff gets any of the tips at all)
Honestly as someone who lives in USA I hate this practice. Every time I am mad and want to tip low I think hey they have a family maybe or just had a crappy day this time and I don't want to deny them the ability to pay rent. The idea that my skimping on a $3 tip may be the difference between being able to enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee after a crappy day at work or not makes me tip no less than 20%.
I'd rather they just be paid a livable wage and tips be optional.
The employer is required to make up the difference if a tipped employee makes less than the minimum wage (7.25 or higher) - though sure, that's maybe not a livable wage.
Honestly, though? I worked at a restaurant ($10 buffet) for six years and most of my friends work in the industry still. Almost all waiters make out much better than the rest of the kitchen staff. Additionally, many establishments (especially mom and pops) encourage waiters to report the minimum amount necessary (whatever works out to minimum wage) for taxes.
I wouldn't feel any worse for your waiter than for the guy who cooks your burger.
Bizarrely, though, waiters are much more vocal than the rest of the staff about their wages.
Oh don't get me wrong: I feel crappy for the kitchen staff too. I actually thought it would be cool to get in to the restaurant biz until I learned about it.
I don't know how kitchen staff don't go insane. Or maybe they do. Which is why I am always super nice to the staff at restaurants.
I live in Mexico and it is somewhat the same. When you get a job as a waitress you are told that your salary is X + tips, so they usually pay less than other kind of jobs, but it is expected to be compensated with the tips. So the only wining person is the employer.
Tipping is a tax dodge for restaurants. It allows the restaurant to pay their employees a miserably low wage, like $2-$3 hour, and only have to pay social security taxes on that amount. If you're a little skeptical, check out who the big lobby groups lobbying against minimum wage hikes - restaurant lobbies.
That's up to the state. In Washington, restaurant workers are required to pay the regular minimum wage (currently $9.32/hour), with none of that comprised of tips.
Because the serving industry is a huge job market in the US. I was at a random restaurant / diner having breakfast, which in the Netherlands would have maybe one or two serving personnel running around - wasn't particularly large, maybe 30-40 seats. They had five or six people running around.
I have to add though, the serving and attention to customers was much better than over here. You're frequently out of drink in restaurants/bars over here, and the serving personnel doesn't seem to have the time or will to take care of that. Which is a missed sale, of course; over the course of an evening out, that adds up to 1-2 lost drink sales.
And also because a lot of people just can't get a job in the area they want. I know of a lot of people online that went for a degree in game design, but the jobs just aren't there. If they do get a job in the game industry, it's often as tester - bottom of the ladder.
>>If they do get a job in the game industry, it's often as tester - bottom of the ladder.
Uh, is it really that bad to start your career at a junior job?
Besides, graphics/game developers in my experience know a lot about math, algorithms and fast implementation. They should be able to get jobs somewhere else?
Those are programmers. People who followed a game design course often have 'good enough' skills in writing simple scripts and 3D modelling (judging by the CVs I've seen, anyway).
Imagine this: you have no car, limiting your ability to travel to a job. You have only a high school degree, limiting your prospects. You have a child, limiting the times you can work. You have very few marketable skills, limiting the specificity of a possible job.
Do you think you'd have a whole lot of ability to be picky?
perfectly explained. By the time most people realize all the happenstances (er... personal requirements) necessary to be picky about the work they will perform, they have already made the decisions that have defined their potential work options.
There are the rare few that select service work over better paying work (CS/Engineering grads choosing to serve, bar-tend, barrista, etc. This is an accepted identity among people in Austin, TX and I'm sure other areas). Some of this may be under-performance, but I think it is more a respect for simplicity and a desire to appreciate life and people: they do it because the want to.
More often than not, service work is filled by people with a need for any job at all.
a) Because there aren't an unlimited number of jobs to choose from.
b) Employers are required to make up the difference if you don't make the real minimum wage (7.25) with your tips.
c) In practice, waiters do much better than the rest of the kitchen. I worked as waiter and kitchen staff for six years at a cheap buffet. Servers pulled $150 for a five hour shift, on average. Everybody in the kitchen made minimum wage.
Because it's hard to find other jobs. The free market doesn't always even things out. Sometimes, you just don't want to feel like you're broke and have no prospects, so you take the first job that you can get. And why shouldn't there be good, fair jobs available for people in that position?
I have a friend with a PhD who has been looking for work for 6 months. She needed to pay the bills and found a waitressing job in less than a week (from when she started looking to first day of work!).
I wouldn't paint all tipped jobs with the same brush. I used to deliver pizza in high school. I got tips. I lived in a rural area and usually a "good" tip was $1.
I had zero choice for jobs. I competed with many other desperate kids for that job. In the end my choice was to leave the area, but I was smart and burdened with a teenage pregnancy or the massive family responsibilities of some of my peers.
As an Engineer-American, I used to gripe about the tipping thing as illogical, etc. But very little about culture or language or manners has any logic to it. Now, I just think of the tip as an unstated part of the price--in fact at most places your tip is actually what brings the server up to a reasonable wage.
Instead of thinking of it as an annoyance, think of it as a pleasant opportunity to improve the day of your server by tipping 25% or more. If you're a regular somewhere, being a good tipper is also a great way to become the servers' favorite customer and get outstanding treatment, favors, extras, and more, for what amounts to an extra buck or two per meal.
The idea that I am getting "a nice treatment" because I pay more makes me a little uncomfortable. I'm ok with, let's say, discounts or anything that could be considered "commercial services" (like a gift or an extra), but knowing that someone is nicer to me because I pay extra makes me feel weird...
All the "we're spending an obscene amount of money, so we're going to need a lot more help sucking up to us" kind of thing is something that baffles me, as it obviously fake...
I don't think that its sucking up. If you get good service, the only way you can show your appreciation is by tipping.
I've been to many places where even tipping higher does not give you better service. I think its a case-by-case thing; some waiters/baristas/bartenders accept it and others don't.
On a more personal note, a minor annoyance is on small purchases (like $2.50 coffee), how much can I tip?
Yeah, I don't get it either and I'm American. I've spent some time in Japan and the lack of tipping is among the things I love about it. Not only do I not have to worry about it, but I generally feel more confident that the worker is getting a fair wage.
I worked as a delivery driver in Boulder, Colorado for a year. They paid me $4.00/hr because they expected me to make up the difference in tips. Though I often did, not everyone does and the accepted practice of tipping temps employers into thinking they can get away with paying ridiculous wages.
Employers are always obligated to pay at least minimum wage in the US for tipped employee jobs. The employer can set a baseline like $4.00 per hour plus tips, but if the resulting wage is not at least minimum wage, then the employer must pay minimum wage regardless ("make up the difference").
Formulas for tipping can be used to raise a wage above minimum wage, but not drop it below minimum wage. Employers are consequently not paying unlivable wages (or not below the minimum). They are just advertising formula for how you can get a bonus beyond the minimum wage.
That's because tipping in America makes no sense at all. You're "supposed" to tip 18-20%. So why not just put that into the price of the dish you are eating in the first place? I hate nothing more than seeing something like '19.95' on a menu, but then it ends up costing something like '26.29' with tax and tip. What's the point?
See, I find it odd that people go to a foreign country, and then complain about the stuff that is different. That seems like being a bad traveller. Like going to Spain and then complaining that all the shops are closed in the afternoon and on Sundays. "Can't they just work normal hours???"
Nothing odd with that. Comparing a country you are visiting to your own (or some other country you've been to) seems perfectly reasonable. Of course, if you're only complaining you probably shouldn't travel.
I love a lot of things about the US (I'm european) and I'd love to go back there soon, but the tipping system is annoying none the less.
As an American, I would say most of us have a sympathetic ear, but don't know where best to place our efforts, so it shows up in tipping. However, I'm equally confused as to why there is no tipping in fast-food restaurants. The restaurant will even go as far as providing pants without pockets as to deter workers from receiving tips.
Tipping goes on becuase most of the people working as waiters at restaurants in American are only getting paid the minimum wage, which for wait staff is $2.14. Depending on the year the exchange rate it could be about 1 EURO or so an hour.
Tipping is a quirk of the culture but it doesn't mean that anyone is getting off the hook paying the employees. That money is still going from the consumer to the waiter, just not via the employer. If it was factored into the bill, it would still be moving from the consumer to the employer, just stopping off in the business checking account first.
If you think wait staff are accurately declaring income to the government for tax purposes, you are fooling yourself. There are people 'getting off the hook' for certain.
I'm not objecting to this stuff, but it does happen. Still I'd like the few grand I'd have if I didn't pay taxes either, but I suppose we have QN obligation to subsidise those who can't make it on their own.
As an American, I find it pretty annoying, too -- both in the unadvertised cost of the meal or service, and in the subservient relationship it sets up with the person receiving the tip.
In the part of Europe where I live, in most restaurants you don't even tip individual waiters. At the end of the day all the tips are summed together and each waiter gets an equal part from the total. This is done so waiters don't fight over who gets which table (i.e. the one with the high tippers in good clothes) and everyone gets a fair compensation.
Guidebooks invariably do a terrible job of explaining US tipping. They try to handle every possible nuance, when a tourist can ignore 90% of that. They should just focus on "how do you tip so that people don't yell at you."
And my version of that is:
* Tip 20% at restaurants if you have a waitress.
* Round taxis up to the nearest $5.
* If someone handles your bag or car, give them a $1.
If you don't know the rules of tipping, and when to break them, just pay 15% at a full-service restaurant, and 10% for cabs, deliveries, and buffets. Don't tip for walk-up counter service.
Tips for other services should be based on what you would be paid at your job for the amount of time they are saving you, with a minimum of $1. If you would prefer not to tip the valet, park your own car.
If your service was more than a standard deviation better than the median, pay more. If it was more than a standard deviation worse, pay less. You shouldn't pay 0% without also considering a complaint to the management.
The whole "tipping 15%" thing has always seemed nonsensical to me. I eat at a Waffle House and the bill is $7, I should tip $1.05. If I eat at Morton's and the bill is $70, I should tip $10.50. Don't the waitresses work the same amount? Shouldn't they be tipped the same? How about a shift to a standard $2/person tip.
To add to that, I worked with a guy who waited at a top-flight steakhouse. They had about 200 seats and would have as many as sixty people in service (in addition to dozens of cooks and dishwashers). He usually had two to four tables and had to split tips with two or more assistant waiters, a busboy, and the bartender.
One of my favorite things about Japan was knowing that staff were getting paid something reasonable-ish without tips. Not tipping streamlines the restaurant experience and eliminates the "well that was a great time, now we have to spend five minutes arguing about how much to tip" thing that happens so often.
Only recently have our American vending machines added some variety. I still miss the extreme selection available in Japan.
Actually that list was somewhat educational- makes me consider how many times I may have baffled somehow due to the manner in which I laughed. I wouldn't have thought to ask anybody about the strangeness of my laughing habits.
In Switzerland, it's okay to not tip. You would usually tip at a restaurant though if the service was good. At a bar, you might opt to tip to round up the price, so say a beer costs X.70 CHF you'd pay X+1 CHF. If service was bad, I wasn't happy with the food, or anything else bothered me, I won't tip.
I wouldn't tip anywhere else other than a bar or a restaurant, except very occasionally a taxi driver if they did an absolutely amazing job (this happened maybe once, twice in my life).
My German text explicitly distinguishes Swiss and German tipping culture. It agrees that rounding up is correct in Switzerland, and says to add 10% (and potentially round up after that) in Germany.
The grocery checkout is a related to car culture. In America you shop for the month since you can fit it all in the trunk. Items are sold in bigger boxes, and you get beer by the 18 pack. When I was in Japan I shopped every day, just getting what I could carry in one hand on the train. One Sapporo and some rice makes for short checkout.
American tastes changed vs Japanese and European tastes after World War II. The veterans coming home had eaten lots of canned food and other non-perishables while the Europeans and Japanese citizens had to eat what they could find locally and seasonally. It's had a lasting impact.
This finally explains the difference between one grandmother's cooking (Depression-era home cooking from scratch) and my other (younger) grandmother's cooking (Post-WW2 TV dinners and frozen vegetables.)
Citation needed! (Actually, this is the first time I'd ever heard of this idea and I would greatly appreciate any additional reading material you could point me to.)
Well, "love" is a strong word, but our society is built in such a way as to provide strong incentives toward doing so, especially for people with low income or little free time or both.
Plus the fact that "fresh foods" have likely traveled farther in their short, vegetable lives than you have. Unless you're willing to go pretty far out of your way, fresh foods in the U.S. are pretty sad.
You don't need to shop everyday in Japan. That's retarded. I live in Japan and only shop once a week (and I don't eat out every single night). It's not that hard to get organized and have a shopping list with you.
But if you pass food stores on your way home anyway, why not shop every day. A weeks worth of groceries is a a bit of a pain to carry no matter how you look at it.
Exactly. When I lived in Tokyo, there were several excellent grocers and produce shops on my walk home. There was no reason to plan ahead. Every incentive—cramped living quarters, convenience of the shops, no car, always having fresh ingredients relevant to the mood of the night—all pointed me toward daily grocery shopping.
> In America you shop for the month since you can fit it all in the trunk.
That is absolutely absurd no one shops at the grocery for a whole months worth of food. Most perishable items like meat and produce will barely survive a whole week. Everyone I know usually goes once or twice a week.
Well, the post was probably a combination of a bit of hyperbole and lack of details. We go on a 'big' shopping trip once a month or so, where you get all the staples. Then, on a more frequent basis you get the perishables. This lets you efficiently go to small markets for produce, use the quick lanes in groceries, and so on.
But, I am not sure I buy that this is the reason. I don't even know if the report is accurate. Are we really (on the whole) slower than the average Japanese market? I know we have a culture of 'friendliness' at the check out - lots of 'hi, how is your day going' nattering, and if you have a club card they peer at it, mangle your name, ask if they got it right, insist on you giving the correction, then say 'good day Mr Xybpppphhht.' All that slows things down a bit. But laser scanners are pretty fast, and a lot of cashiers really rip through very quickly.
It also might be regional. Thinking about it I think the grocery clerks where I grew up all went hell-bent, and things seem more laid back here in CA.
It's challenging to make pronouncements about an entire country as large and culturally diverse as the US.
Friendliness is definitely something that people come to expect from retailers. Could that be why Japanese lines are so fast. Maybe since they are only buying a few goods at a time the lines go quicker.
I really don't mean to come off as snobbish, but, what kind of beer is worth drinking that comes in 18 packs? I'm not sure I've ever seen anything but cans of alcoholic water in that configuration.
I'm an avid craft beer drinker that is involved in home brewing as well as trading. I've had word class beers in my fridge sitting next to a 30 pack of Beer 30. Beer is beer is beer. People drink what they like, and not everyone likes Heddy Topper/Westy 12/KBS/etc.
The question wasn't meant for people to justify or apologize for their choice of beer.
Despite its (unavoidable?) snobbishness, it really was the bare question itself, "what kind of beer that comes in 18 packs is worth drinking?" A few responses actually answered that; "beer that I can, or choose to, afford" was the essence of many of those. Or "because I like it" were some others.
Interesting, and probably not surprising, that most responses addressed the snobbishness behind the question, and that was as valuable to me as the responses that addressed the question.
Optimising every aspect of your life like that has rapidly diminishing returns. Before too long you end up like that one guy writing blogs about your bespoke fucking japanese spoons or whatever it was.
Pick a few things and maximise those. Presumably the guy buying the 18 pack of beer chose something else.
You're factually correct that it is like premature optimizing code, but it is a hobby for quite a few people to optimize their lives. Others collect money. Some friends do board games. Or sport. (Personally, I spend a lot of time learning about some odd interests.)
There is no such thing as "right" when it comes to the subjective world of taste (whether food or beer). There are only snobs that claim there is a "right" and everybody else who enjoys what they like regardless of the snobs.
Do you optimize your choice of cups? Of USB cables? Brake fluid in your car? How far do you go to get the perfect sugar?
I get my olive oil from an electrical hardware store around the corner from where I work - http://mroliveoil.com/page19.htm - how far do you go to get yours?
Lots of things are worth doing - often unavoidably so - but that doesn't mean you need to optimize each and every one of them until they're "right".
>Do you optimize your choice of cups? Of USB cables? Brake fluid in your car? How far do you go to get the perfect sugar?
No, I don't "optimize" everything, but I do optimize a lot of stuff. If you like beer enough to consume 16 cans a week, then it sounds like something worth optimizing.
In general most things diet related are quite important to leave to chance. And if fun is involved too, then optimizing them can be fun too. You don't have to be OCD about it, just to try different brands and experiment.
>I get my olive oil from an electrical hardware store around the corner from where I work how far do you go to get yours?
Hmm, that's a bad example, as we value olive oil very much in my country, so I even have my own olive trees and produce my oil in cooperation with the village mill. Well, my parents do at the moment, as I live abroad now.
Cups and USB cables are tools, a means to an end. (I do buy fancy sugar, because I bake as a hobby). Beer is supposedly something you do for fun - it's not like it's nutritious - and if you're just drinking to fit in or using it as a way to get drunk, you might have a problem.
4, 6 and 12-packs are just as inconvenient if you're hopping on the subway to head home. Even if they aren't as bulky, they can still be plenty heavy if you can't grab a seat or if the floor is too nasty to put stuff on.
Plenty of good session beers are coming in 12 packs these days too.
Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, and Blue Moon can come in large packs. I know I've gotten 24 packs of those, along with some much more local brews that aren't nationally distributed.
But if you're talking about American beer overall, Budweiser is much more common and therefore a better indication of mass-market American culture.
I think that was his (snobbish) point - only mass-produced domestic beer like Bud or Miller is in boxes of 18. Everything else seems to be boxes of 6 or 12.
But that's just not true. In the NE, I can get Smuttynose, Harpoon, Long Trail, Sam Adams, etc in 18 and 24 pack boxes. I have difficulty imagining it's that different for the rest of the country. And whatever you think of those beers, they're certainly not of the Bud/Miller variety.
you can pick up high quality microbrews at pretty much any decent grocery store these days so i'm not sure where your sense of superiority is coming from.
The utility of "air quotes" for English-as-a-second-language people is a neat idea, actually. It's often hard to get sarcasm across in a language you're not totally fluent in because either you don't get the tone of voice right or listeners will assume you didn't mean the tone of voice anyway. An out-of-band gesture is a nice unmistakable signal which avoids that issue entirely.
Is that just an American thing, or an English speaking thing in general?
I didn't realize how second nature it was until I used it in Japan a few times- and noticed the usual effect was not achieved. I don't think I ever tried explaining it to anyone though.
This guy definitely did not get enough exposure to American food. It's a huge country with a vast variety of regional cuisine as well as international dishes melded by the immigrants to match the American tastes.
I went to grad school in Boston. Many foreign students complained about how homogeneous American culture is, how there are no restaurants besides McDonalds and Burger King, etc. But most of them formed these impressions by driving, or taking a bus, to NYC and back. If you don't get off the freeways, you really don't see what real life is like.
Similarly, I visited a friend in France once. On the way there, I took the TGV from Paris. I don't remember anything special about that leg of the trip, and learned nothing about France. On the way back, we drove, and passed through a bunch of little towns. I have a fond memory of helping a boater open a gate to a canal lock, and I still have a strong impression of how contained French villages are compared to American ones.
"There is almost nothing special to eat based on the different seasons of the year. Basically, they like sweet, high fat, high calories things."
Go to U.S. supermarkets or restaurant chains, you will find this is mostly correct.
Went to Olive Garden a couple of days ago, had some pork that was nicely cooked, but drenched in some kind of sugary syrup. It would have been much improved by eliminating the sauce entirely.
You even have to look closely at the ingredients when buying "Mexican" salsa or hot sauce. I sometimes get these home before discovering sugar on the ingredient list. Adding sugar to something meant to be hot and spicy totally perplexes me.
They might be talking about cooking at a home stay, for example. And you could argue that mashed potatoes, boiled/steamed vegetables, casseroles, etc. are not exactly flavorful. Certainly they don't have the subtlety in flavor like Japanese food does.
I've noticed every country I visit thinks walking down the street in the US is a dangerous activity, getting assaulted is routine, murders are common, etc.
fact is, violent crime is way down since the 1990s. Not saying current levels are acceptable, but it sure isn't as bad as it is perceived.
There are 10 times more murders per capita in the US than my home country.
I live in Oakland, CA. A very dangerous place according to statistics. In reality, much of the crime here is in the "bad" parts of town, which I rarely travel to/through. I said "much". There are occasional murders outside the bad parts. They're rare, though.
Even people that live outside of Oakland but fairly close (Concord, 40 minutes by car) have this idea that gunslingers run amok in Oakland and it's incredibly unsafe. That is, until they actually come here a lot (for work, say).
I walk about 1 hour per day in Oakland (that's my commute from home to work). I've been doing this for 13 years. I've never seen one act of violence.
Even as someone who regularly carries a handgun, I can completely understand that. Coming from a culture where "gun = criminal or solider" to the US must be a huge culture shock.
To put it another way, we're not used to seeing guns around. It would be like if everyone was walking around with axes or swords. Why the hell does a traffic cop have an ax?!
'horse laughing' is an hilarious concept. I had noticed this in the international students at my university, how the japanese would always cover their mouths. Curious habit.
There are a bunch of reasons that inform that. On TV, they used to have censor bars over people's mouths as well as "bleeping" what they said. So putting your hand over your mouth emphasizes the obscenity - plus it's funnier :) Also, from a distance no one can see your lips so it gives some plausible deniabilty. It can also make the outburst quieter, which helps when you're fake-yelling.
This is hilarious - I thought it was a joke article at first like the Daily Mash. I can't imagine what the author would think of the UK or Europe. The Russian article linked at the end of this one is even more ridiculous.
> “When Americans are talking, they might put their foot on a nearby chair, or even a table. They might cross their legs so that one foot rests on the opposite knee. In American culture, it is considered an acceptable norm, but often causes irritation in other countries.”
I'm very curious about this one - I can see putting a foot on a nearby chair/table could come across poorly, but crossing your legs by resting your foot on your knee?
This article was an interesting read. It highlights a lot of the positives of American culture. Sometimes it's good to hear such things. Thank you, I needed that.
Is it really possible that American driving manners are better than Japanese ones? That has to be a mistranslation or embellishment.
I might believe it of other Asian nations, where traffic lanes and rules are more suggestions than anything else, but I cannot believe that Japanese drivers are anything like the aggressive, presumptuous, arrogant, frankly insane drivers we have here. And I count myself in their number!
> Is it really possible that American driving manners are better than Japanese ones?
It's absolutely and utterly untrue.
Japanese drivers are generally very good, and tend to be reasonably polite/easy-going (the notable exception being anybody in a Ferrari or the like, but that's universal I guess), both in the countryside and in big cities. There are some annoying ingrained habits in Japanese driving (e.g. there's always a car or two that drives through when the light turns red, they seem to ignore yellow completely), but by and large they're fairly law-abiding. As a pedestrian, one doesn't feel like a target / second-class citizen (I'm referring to driver attitude here, though of course better urban design also helps).
Pittsburgh drivers are shockingly polite. Moved from here to New Jersey, then back again. Was hard to adjust coming back, with the person across from you at an intersection patiently waiting for you to go first.
"The Pittsburgh Left" is very common practice there, which is to give the right of way to the opposite car in the intersection that is turning left. Definitely a much more relaxed and polite driving environment than anywhere on the east/west coasts.
>4. Nobody is impressed by how much you can drink. In fact, shame on you.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case in UK. People love to talk about how much they can drink, and love to reel off an exact list of everything they drank the previous night like a list of achievements.
(in my experience of my peers throughout my life up to and including the age of 32)
That one was somewhat overstated. It entirely depends on what circles you move in. I know plenty of people that brag on their drinking, and/or like to deride others for being lightweight. Surely there is a large contrast between Japan and the USA on this matter, and the article writer was probably influenced by that. It certainly would be safer to act as the article suggests, because it is true for many situations, and the average tourist (that would need this guide) wouldn't be able to suss out the subtleties.
As you mentioned, in some circles being able to drink a lot on somewhat-rare occasions is something that would win respect. Being able to handle your alcohol is an important aspect in some American circles.
Drinking a lot and drinking often is mostly frowned upon. Being drunk outside of a social engagement designated specifically for getting drunk is almost universally frowned upon.
Tipping puts the burden of service quality feedback on the customer rather than the business manager. It also encourages the server to increase the customer's bill total. Most of the benefits of the practice are exclusive to the business, with no benefit to customer or employee.
Restaurants could pay servers a commission or bonus based on the bill total or for specific items on the customer's bill. Customers could be asked to rate the service they received on a scale from 0 to 10 instead of calculating a percentage of their bill total. But tradition is a tough thing to fight.
You don't have to tip. So you do get a certain minimum service. In Beijing, no tips required or expected. But, unless you're at a Western-style place, or HaiDiLao, no service expected, either. Should service be required (ordering more items, correcting something, requesting something essential that was forgotten, paying the bill, etc.), yelling "fuwuyuan!" ("waiter"!) loudly will often, but not necessarily, procure you service. So that tip does buy you something.
20% extra for standard service, though, is ridiculous, and I hate it. Nor do I do 20%--even fancy places only do 18% gratuity, at least, the last time I was at one.
I expected that this article would just be another way to feed into negative stereotypes about Japanese. While a lot of it is just the typical raving, there are one or two items which I would say are pretty spot on. Their vending machines _do_ put ours to shame. Also, as an American, you don't realize how much we use sarcasm until you travel abroad and realize people aren't getting it. It's nice, actually. Sarcasm gets old :P.
Compared to other countries, Austin is a paradise of calm, reasonable drivers. For example, it's fairly common in Asia (though not in Japan AFAIK) for a traffic light to be viewed as a suggestion rather than an absolute command. I've been in a taxi that was rammed and pushed through an intersection by the truck behind it when our driver didn't react quickly enough to a gap in oncoming traffic. The taxi driver wasn't even particularly mad. It apparently happens all the time.
And the #1 tip for United States-ers visiting Japan? If you're a woman, burn your dirty underwear to keep every male above the horizon from trying to sniff it.
Our medical care is of lower quality than in most OECD countries, inefficiently delivered, and catastrophically expensive. (Rates of medical error are quite high, because younger doctors-- esp. residents-- work extreme hours.) An ER visit can run you $5,000 or more. Appendicitis goes into the $50,000 range.
Then why do people from around the world flock to American hospitals?
As one example, the Texas Medical Center, one of the best in the world, treats 18,000 foreign patients a year who've traveled there specifically for the quality of care.
"If you're going to get sick, make sure it's in a place like Austin, Cleveland, Rochester, Baltimore, or New York that has a great hospital. And make sure that you get taken to the premier hospital in the region (e.g. don't let somebody take you to Kings County instead of New York Presbyterian). Be prepared to pay considerably for care at these facilities. Quality and cost are highly variable overall."
Then why do people from around the world flock to American hospitals?
They don't.
Absolutely no one comes "to the U.S." for medical care expecting superior treatment. Not since the 1980s. Some people, for whom money is no object, come to specific doctors. If that doctor's in Paris, you go to France. If that doctor's in New York, you go to the U.S.
The thing which sticks with me most is, in a note about US tipping culture (an utterly foreign concept in Japan), the line "Many Americans may require a calculator to determine what 20% of $18 is. It is unwise to offer to assist."