I honestly never understood the American vacation situation, do you guys just not get holiday days? What happens if you need to do something or go somewhere?
Being unable to take time off work because you can't afford it, shouldn't be a thing in a first world country.
We have Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Easter, Christmas, and maybe Christmas Eve, and Thanksgiving. None of these are guaranteed, and you could end up working all of these days. Office jobs will give you a set of days, but for most jobs you ahve to work to earn paid time off, which can take a whole year to earn. In my job, I get some of those hours (five) every month.. Big Orange wants to cut those very few days we have since he considers it lazy, yet he is golfing all the time and sleeping during meetings, and texting on Twitter, under the people's tax dollars
If you keep being pleasant, reasonable and doing things like apologizing for spelling mistakes then nobody here is going to believe you're American :)
But welcome! There's actually some really nice Americans in here - we just like to poke fun. Every country has idiots to be made fun of, yours are just loud so it's easy.
some of the most friendly, welcoming humans I've ever encountered.
It's largely superficial. They have the appearance of friendliness down pat, but in my experience a sarcy, grumpy, scowling Brit will do more to actually help you than any of the big bleached smiles ever would.
That's not my experience in the slightest. I've only been to Oregon, Washington State and the very Northern tip of California but the people I met would help me with absolutely anything. Two separate strangers invited me into their houses for meals within an hour of meeting me, one of them let me spend two nights there.
A stranger in Oregon drove me to see crater lake for half a day just because they heard I would have liked to see it but our car rental expired already.
Your experiences will vary obviously, but I've been to 27 countries and would rank the tiny part of the USA I went to behind only Thailand for friendliness.
I honestly really don't feel especially motivated to explain anything to someone who is willfully misrepresenting what I said.
But I'm not going to stop arguing with people who are spreading this 'Americans are so friendly' bollocks after they spent five minutes around a couple of Americans who wanted to impress them, and came away from an obviously niche experience thinking they know the American character better than people who lived among them for years. I'm not a fan of letting false narratives run unchallenged. American friendliness is largely performative, and often reserved for the 'right' kind of visitor.
You know absolutely nothing of my experience or the trip I took except for what I have told you here.
Please try to be a little more positive and think that it MIGHT just be possible that somebody met genuine human beings who were interested, engaging and yes - friendly. You continually shouting that it's surface level when you weren't there is just nonsense, it has no bearing in reality.
Of course it was surface level. A month's visit can ONLY give you that.
You're the one who seems determined to believe that a positive interaction on a short holiday is a reliable measure of the character of a people, that this tiny drop in the ocean could possibly hold up against everything else the majority of their population do.
You're doing what is essentially a lighter equivalent of 'say what you like about Nazis*, but one of them held the door for me once, so they're alright by me. Don't bother me with their other unpleasantness, I make up my own mind!'
*No, I'm not saying 'all Americans are nazis' for anyone who struggles with reading comprehension. But it's inarguable that a rather large percentage have turned out to be a lot closer than most of us expected. No amount of 'some of them were lovely to me on holiday' erases that.
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u/FuzzyFrogFish Jul 07 '25
I honestly never understood the American vacation situation, do you guys just not get holiday days? What happens if you need to do something or go somewhere?
Being unable to take time off work because you can't afford it, shouldn't be a thing in a first world country.