The Five Weirdest Things About Returning to The U.S.
I love my country, and...
I’ve been lucky enough to visit thirty countries in the last decade. Fortunately or unfortunately (still deciding) I always have to come back to The United States to re-up on cash and see family.
I always experience reverse culture shock when returning, and after going through this many times, I believe I’ve distilled the essence of what drives me crazy about my country!
Don’t get me wrong, there are many things that I love. I’m blown away by the raw natural beauty of The U.S., and the fact that we’re a country made up almost entirely of immigrants means you’re never far from some delicious restaurant.
But damn, can we be annoying. Here are the five things that grate on me (and my international friends) about The United States and the people it creates.
Stuff, Stuff, STUFF
We are drowning in things in the U.S. Our uncles have sixteen kayaks in the garage, grandma has an attic full of old wooden dolls, and around the corner is a thrift shop just piled high with clothing that makes you want to scream, “why would someone buy this? Why would someone make this?”
But the thrift shops don’t have even a tiny percentage of the total stuff. We love to put extra stuff in garages owned by other people, pay monthly for the privilege (at the risk of losing it all if we fail to pay), and forget about it.
As a country, we:
Spend more than $38 billion on storage units every year.
Operate 160 storage facilities per million people (Europe averages 9 per million people).
Have a combined storage capacity of 2.3 billion square feet, meaning that if you emptied all the units of stuff, every one of the 336 million people in the U.S. could stand comfortably in them.
If you’re thinking of throwing things you don’t care deeply about in a storage unit, why not just punch your wallet a few times instead?
There are so many people who could use the things you don’t need. Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace are amazing resources for getting rid of stuff, and then getting more stuff when you’re ready.
There is absolutely no reason to buy new stuff (except underwear). We’ve made enough.
Obsession With Personal Identity
One of my French friends told me a great joke a few months ago.
“Want to know how to piss off an American? All you have to do is tell them that they’re just like another American that you met.”
I knew what he meant right away, but you have to travel to understand why it’s funny.
Americans are famous for going to places that they technically have a genetic connection to, then telling the locals that they’re just like them.
For example, on one of my first international trips, I watched a nineteen-year-old American girl tell an Irishman in a pub that she was 50% Irish because her great-parents came through Ellis Island and settled in Chicago. The Irishman looked at her and responded:
“Do ye want a feckin’ cookie or somethin’?”
Don’t broadcast your genetics abroad unless you want an eye-roll or a verbal smackdown.
Thing is, on the international stage, the U.S. is basically a teenager. We are still coming of age, and none of us except the First Nations People come from this land. We also value individuality more than any country in the world.
This means that every American can tell you their identity down to the nth degree. “Yes, I’m a 40% Italian 30% Norwegian bipolar bisexual Democrat Idahoan who at the moment is half-caffeinated.”
All of those may be true, but like it or not, if you grew up here, you’re American. Embrace that in all its contradictions, and I promise you that no locals will publically shame you on your next visit to Dublin.
Liability Culture
A few years ago, I took a four-day motorcycle trip through the North of Vietnam. When I rented my bike, I did not know how to drive a motorcycle.
I walked up to a roadside shack where an elderly man was displaying seven motorcycles and asked for a 150cc Suzuki with cash in hand. That sweet man just… gave me a motorcycle.
I didn’t sign a waiver, sit through an agonizingly boring safety talk, or go through a licensing process that bored me out of my mind.
It took me twenty minutes, under the tutelage of my more experienced friend, to become a competent driver. Then I spent four days riding that motorcycle through the mountains.
Every time I leave the country, this attitude is a breath of fresh air. There’s just more personal responsibility and common sense in other countries.
I’ve never seen a giant billboard advertising an injury lawyer outside of the U.S.
I’ve never gone to a national park outside of my country and seen signs saying things like “please don’t try to touch the bears” or “standing too close to the cliff edge could kill you.”
It’s always a shock to come back and hear who’s suing who for what. It’s absurd.
Obsession With Work
Americans are made fun of a lot in the international community for their opening question.
When an American meets someone new, they won’t ask “what do you do for fun?” or even “what’s a great food where you come from?”
Oh no. The opening question of most Americans is “what do you do for work?” It’s how we’ve learned to relate to other people, through the professional and financial value that they provide to the economy.
I recently met a French/German couple who had rented out their apartment in Berlin for extra cash and were traveling in Southeast Asia with their infant on their year of the wife’s paid maternal leave. Their jobs were secondary to their lives.
The EU mandates 20 days of PTO per year (meaning that the average European takes a month of vacation each year), while in the U.S., PTO is left to the discretion of the employer, and most Americans only take two weeks off. Many don’t vacation at all.
Americans Have No Awareness of The Rest Of The World
One of my German friends put this beautifully a few weeks ago:
“You know what drives me crazy about Americans?” He asked me. “You guys will just talk about your politics to us as if everyone else knows and cares what’s going on. I get it, you guys are important, and you’re huge on the world stage, but come on! I would never just start talking about German politics and assume you knew what was going on!”
We assume that we’re the center of everything. Americans are famously ignorant about the rest of the world.
There are a million late-night shows that have exploited this for comedy. Grab a microphone, hit the streets, ask Americans where Guatemala is, and watch them flounder and fail. Hilarious!
Sometimes we can’t even point out states on a map of our own country.
Only 21% of Americans are bilingual (a number heavily skewed by the fact that most of these people are recent immigrants who speak their native language at home) compared to the 67% of Germans who can speak at least one foreign language.
Yes, there are geographic factors involved. But the fact is that Americans simply do not value cultural exchange the way that most “developed” countries do.
Are you fighting back against the culture of excess? Do you speak a foreign language? Let me know in the comments!
Loved your article. I've never used a storage space in my life. Should I relocate to another country (I often consider it), I will sell/donate my furniture and most of my things. It's too much trouble to haul stuff around. As far as languages, I speak fluent French, good Spanish, and basic Japanese during the year I spent teaching in Tokyo. Most people, imho, don't understand how much fun it is to use another language, especially when traveling. All of us need to get out more!