16 Visitors Share the Small American Habits That Surprised Them Most: Free Refills and a Manager Named Sheila

When we first arrived, and I walked up to a soda machine. We never had those, and I think I drank 10-15 refills of Coke before my parents started yelling at me. UNLIMITED SODA ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

People have easiness on starting to talk with me, a complete stranger, in the middle of the supermarket. And it’s just a casual friendly talk.

People kept asking, “How are you?” and seemed utterly perplexed when I actually answered literally.

EDIT: This was 23 years ago when I went to the US to study. I have since learned it’s a really unintuitive way of saying “hello” and I know how to answer it now.

It had been 20 minutes since we got our appetizer (which we were having trouble finishing cos the portion was so huge), when a woman came up to our table and said, “Hello I’m Sheila, the manager,” and we were like have we done something wrong, but no she was there to apologize profusely for our main course being SO late.

We figured it would be another 15 min or so, which would be okay since we were struggling with the appetizers, but now as she was leaving our food arrived.

If that was back home, not only would the food be later than 20 minutes, there would be no Sheila to beg for our forgiveness. And definitely not if it was literally 10 seconds away.

I was walking down the street and there were some road workers doing something a bit ahead. When I got near them, one of them approached me and super kindly asked me to cross to the other side, halted the traffic so I could cross and wished me a nice day as I went along.

In my country they would’ve probably heckled at me for not crossing.

A British traveler in Houston asked for some roast beef and was sure the server was joking when she kept slicing. She wasn’t. It was a normal portion, about 18 to 20 ounces, and he was told it was Texas style. He carried it to the table and called it a light lunch.

“Brits STUNNED at Texas Portion Sizes”

The nature. I moved from Europe to Tennessee and the amount of animals and insects I’ve seen here that just don’t even exist back home amazes me. Fireflies and armadillos are my favorite.

Handing over your credit card to pay for things, that’s an insane amount of trust you have in people. If we pay for a meal at a restaurant, the server will either bring a payment terminal to the table or they will take you to where the terminal is. Also, credit card use in general. I only use my credit card when I’m abroad, I don’t even have it on me most of the time when I’m shopping in my own country.

After three years in America, one British family noticed their goodbyes had changed. “See you later,” “cheers” and “bye” quietly disappeared. Leaving a shop, leaving soccer practice, saying bye to a friend is now “have a good one,” and they honestly prefer it.

“One of the little things that’s surprised us about living in America”

I went into a video store in San Francisco about 6 years ago and asked for the Australian film section; which of course didn’t exist. But the dude working there was super friendly and let me talk to him about Aussie films for 10’s of minutes. I guess I was homesick... he really made me feel welcome. I walked out at least an inch taller.

In a restaurant, the menu had entrees and desserts, and I thought, “These starters are huge, and where are the mains?” Took me a minute and then I realized you guys use that word for the main meal.

As an Englishman:

(I think this one might just be me but) that the yellow school buses are real (I thought they were just in movies)

(also not really interesting but) in the UK, bottle lids are attached to the necks of the bottle, which is quite annoying, but in America I kept dropping lids, because they aren’t attached;

and how friendly people were, making eye contact walking down the road, and people talking to me in the supermarket.

Not really a shock but one thing that really surprised me was the sheer amount of flags.

It was like almost every building had an American flag. Here in Belgium, if I see a house with a national flag I assume there’s some kind of sport event going on that I didn’t know about.

Steam coming out of manholes in the streets! I was fully convinced that was something they did in movies to make it look eerie. Then I went to Buffalo, NY for a work thing and saw it for myself.

So weird!!

How friendly they are! I’m an Aussie who lived in Atlanta for 2 years and I was blown away by how friendly Americans were. They were constantly striking up conversations in public and it forced me to come out of my shell. I credit my confidence and being able to talk to anyone about anything down to my time in America.

Several years ago one of my friends reached out because there was a new international student joining a local college and their parents were hoping to find somebody in the US to help them out.

We went to a local BBQ restaurant that serves a huge family style meal on a giant shovel. The dad was absolutely blown away and took like 30 photos before we could eat. We then went downtown but didn’t realize that there was both a classic car show downtown and an Elvis impersonator competition going on.

This family that had never been outside of Japan ate brisket out of a shovel then immediately walked around looking at classic muscle cars while dozens of dudes dressed like Elvis walked around.

The last time I talked to the student, she said her dad still talks about the BBQ shovel, car, Elvis day all the time.