The thing about being Aussie is that you can unconsciously think that things are same across the board – ‘how ya goin’ is the universal equivalent of ‘hello’, the independent cafe must serve decent coffee and seeing insects/pests the size of your fist doesn’t warrant a scream that can wake the dead.
The truth is, the moment you get off the plane and find yourself in a brand new country, things can take a real 360. There’s nothing quite like a slice of culture shock to put things into perspective. I just wrapped up a 2 week stay in the US and here are the things that stood out like a sore thumb.
Tippin
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I developed tipping anxiety when I was in the US. With my heart pounding when the bill came, I’d whip out my phone to quickly calculate 15% of my meal and then slink away after leaving the notes on the table in case I got my maths wrong.
For an Australian, tipping is awfully confusing and awkward. We pay our servers a comparatively decent wage and tips are more of an exception, not a norm. Truth be told, the only time you might consider tipping is after receiving exceptional service at a high-end establishment or the change came back in coins you don’t want to carry. Other than that, seeing a suggested gratuity on the bill can be hard to stomach for Aussies.
Sales Tax
Why, oh, why does sales tax need to be applied on top of your purchases?! Why isn’t sales tax just included in the advertised price…like they do in Australia? I mean, surely that’s more convenient for everyone (and when I say ‘everyone’, I really mean the consumer aka me…who can’t maths).
And don’t even get me started on the fact that the tax rate varies from city to city – I had no idea! I learnt the hard way that San Francisco has the highest sales tax and that I should have just bought everything in New York instead. Pro tip guys, do your research beforehand if you’re moving through a few cities and want to go on a shopping spree!
Coffee
Australians are coffee snobs and I’m no exception. What’s this filtered coffee that Americans are drinking in huge ass cups and why does everyone think what Starbuck’s serves is superior?
My friend sent over a list of Aussie cafes in New York and, by the time we had landed in Manhattan, I’d gone 4 days without a cup of coffee. I was antsy and ready to scream. We visited Manhattan’s Little Collins and Bluestone Lane in Brooklyn which served decent flat whites but, mate, it just wasn’t the same. From too much milk to a weak blend, something about the coffees that these ‘Australian-inspired’ cafes poured out didn’t quite hit the mark.
Brb – heading over to the US again to open my own Aussie cafe.
Toilets
As someone who is always looking for a loo, leave it up to me to have a strong opinion on the cleanliness of public bathrooms. In Australia, toilets are never ever the subject of conversation. But man, I can’t stop telling everyone how the bathrooms in the US were, like, really clean.
To my utter surprise, the toilet at In-N-Out was tidier than what you’d find at one of our top shopping centres. Either I lucked out real hard or the US’ measure of bathroom cleanliness is higher than ours. I just remember all the American Airline toilets I went into were cleaner than Qantas’s. I was shell shocked when I saw a 3-person cleaning crew go into the ladies at Uniqlo and incredibly flattered having a cubicle cleaned just for me because there was ‘toilet paper on the floor’ at Whole Foods. Way to make a girl feel special!
Aggressiveness or Assertiveness?
People in the States seem all too happy to share their thoughts about the situation, service and even you.
If you’re blocking the path, it’s not an ‘excuse me’. I watched a New Yorker say to a girl, ‘you’re standing in the middle of the road and you’re stopping everyone from passing’. It was the truth but that cold, confrontational tone was something that was hard to get used to.
For people watchers, it’s awfully fascinating and you may actually find that bluntness rubbing off on you. I’m someone that starts a conversation with genuine ‘hi, how are you’ as a preamble and ‘thanks for the chat’ as a closing, so you can imagine the type of polite and soft communicator I am. Since coming home, I’ve noticed that I am much more succinct and assertive, which has been fantastic for me and varying degrees of shock/horror/fun for those on the receiving end!
Been overseas lately?
Been travelling the world and the seven seas, and noticed that we’re really not all the same? Let me know below!