“America vs. Europe”: 27 Things Common In America That Europeans Find Very Weird

It will help when people want ten years of experience and their 18

We need to raise these newborns properly. Let them know they have to be a member of society RIGHT WHEN THEY POP OUT

"Member of society" ... corporate slaves.

:-( Our modern societies are OVER productive of rubbishy throw away stuff that nobody ever really needs, Stay home and bring your OWN children up. PS my sister took her first born to work with her in the office -- and he dies of SIDS there.

The different colours and sizes are to assist people who are blind or partially-sighted.

We do have wending machines in Europe. They manage with different sized bills.

When Euro bills came, vending machines and like where altered in matter of weeks. Month at most. Didn't seem to be a bother for anyone.

Not an insurmountable problem. All European countries, NZ and Aust vending machines take notes of different sizes and give correct change.

The five dollar bill is kinda pink tinted lol

In Australia we have smart vending machines that can see colour.

You don't mess with the sizes now because there are a lot of existing vending machines already in use that would not work if they had to cope with different sized bank notes, but it still seems a strange decision to have them all the same size in the first place.

The vending machines in countries with different sized notes are able to recognise the shape, colour and give change accordingly.

I will add (someone already made a similar comment) that unlike most other developed countries, the usa doesnt care if someone is disabled. The thinking of most (especially in govt and business) is that if you are disabled you cannot be productive and hence are useless/lazy

I don't bloody USE vending machines, -- unless they take bank cards!

unless the son-in-law of a future president is a vending machines salesman :)

In Canada we have braille on our multi coloured, plastic bank notes which makes them easy for blind people to identify. American currency is so far behind, as they are with chip and pin cards.

As you said, in a developed country.

Over in the UK, my Dad told me if your bill arrives and it says *Service Included* you aren't expected to tip because its been included in the total price. If it doesn't, then you tip 5 to 10% depending on the price and how much you can actually afford.

Agree

But what if they are really good and deserve extra? They aren’t payed much…

This comment is hidden. Click here to view.

You should respect the ways of the country you are visiting in all aspects of the culture, just like visiting someone's home.

Where do you live? That sounds better than hoping no one took your credit card back and copied the info down. Especially with a credit card like an AmEx platinum, where there is often no credit limit. I never use imine even though it offers like 5x dining points bc I don't want to waken to an alert that someone bought $15,000 worth of Nikes on my card while I was sleeping.

It's not that a gratuity is commonly included elsewhere (as a percentage of the total bill), but rather than restaurants pay *all* of their staff, including servers, a full living wage rather than force them to rely on customers' generosity.

time is a good measure, but that is so variable in the UK. For example I live 10 minutes, or 90 minutes outside of the city center depending on when I set off. The traffic flow is so bad that any sort of stress on the system causes it to just fold, add to that the amount of roads closed or removed for cycle lanes and you are better off not going.

Distance doesn't change. Time changes depending on traffic conditions.

But it's very inaccurate to meassure distance in time: I need 22 km and funnily also 22 min to work. But the km won't change while I needed 65 min yesterday cause of traffic jam.

But how long it takes is dependant on how fast you drive, traffic and other things. Distance stays the same. I'm from Europe of course...

These days, with fuel increases week on week, I'm more concerned with the number of miles.

Depends on where you are living. Twenty miles on the highway in Montana is, maybe, 15 minutes. Twenty miles on the highway in LA is two or three hours.

It's because in America "time is valuable", which is f*****g stressful In Europe its like "I'll get there when I get there"

It depends on how fast you drive doesn't it? Distance is more objective than time. You can always work out how long it would take YOU. How many stops would you make on the way?

Yes because distance doesn't mean anything. Road conditions, speed, traffic, weather, etc. all determine the average travel time way more than distance.

Canada. We do time more than distance. When the children were young, they'd say let mom drive...

I want to know time too but I always walk if I can. Specifically live in an area I can walk to the grocery.

While time is variable, generally speaking when people do this where I am in the US, I've noticed there's a basic assumption that 50 miles by road will take about an hour. So it's really an informal estimate.

Time also depends on the mode of transport. If you can choose whether to go with car, taxi, public transport, walking or any combination of these, this can change the time considerably. If you are limited to personal car only, then time might be more fixed. Still, it depends on traffic.

I had a job that was about 10 miles from my house but it took over an hour to get there because of traffic. Then I moved 60 miles away to another city and it still took me the same amount of time to get to a job in the same area as the first job, because I was coming from a less congested direction. THEN I moved back to the city where I worked and was able to live close enough to actually walk if I wanted to, but it took almost 1/2 hour to walk and about 5 minutes to drive. Public transportation is only a competitive option in the largest, densest metro areas.

Times change according to traffic and weather conditions, the distance doesn't.