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

Sugar in hot drinks by default. Asking for coffee-no-sugar seems to trigger incredulity. At least this was my experience in the South. New York is another country altogether, no eyebrows raised there.

How annoying waiters are. I don’t need small talk and I don’t need you asking if everything’s okay every five minutes. Just let me eat in peace!

as an american i would like to make the presumptious statement of “it’s like, pretty normal actually”

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

Seems to have deliberately taken the opposite path of anything British:

• Drive on the wrong side of the road
• The light and power switches are upside down
• Weights & measures. Imperial? Ha!
• Screw your English dictionary. Ima put z’s everywhere, drop the letter u and randomly pronounce words like buoy so you think there’s an animal in the water over there

It kinda makes me laugh to think about it as just anti-British 🤣

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

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

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

The flags on the cars.

Another Canadian.

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

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

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

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

Canadian here, British Columbia.

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

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

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

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

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

Canadian checking in.

Biggest oddity to me is that the default for restaurants is one bill, and waiters get annoyed if you ask them to split it by person.

Like why would I want to either:

• do math correctly splitting the bill while trying to leave; or
• be worried I ordered something more expensive than the average and unfairly make others cover it?

It’s complete insanity to me.

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

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

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