Click-baity title, but prompted insight into cultural differences that are in fresh relief for me as an American in South Korea. My Americanness seems very obvious to me.
And for me everything is less "awesome" than it is "cute".
- It seems that speaking your mind to individuals is a major taboo. You can't tell a friend straight when he has f----- up, nobody will ever tell you that you look like you could stand to lose a few pounds, and there's way too much euphemism to avoid the hard truth.
Pretty hilarious to see a citizen of a notorious tax haven decry corporations while also whinging about "Irish Americans" in a country that grants citizenship to 4th-generation ex-pats.
Most of the rest of it is griping about the social adaptations of a massive, sparsely-populated immigrant culture without a single homogeneous religion or ethnicity.
But yeah. He's for sure not like this in person.
Honeslty, if a server is quality checking you every 3 minutes she probably likes you since that is excessive or you’ve looked angry about receiving service since you walked in the door and since she doesn’t work in the tourism industry she doesn’t understand that’s a UK thing. People from the UK are some of the most annoying people to serve, I’ve had so many people be outright rude to me because I’m doing my job, and now they’re mad they feel like they need to tip. Like, I actually enjoy my job and make a living wage stop being an asshole to me for checking if your food was cooked properly. Its not about tipping, it’s about what we consider service here. The ones who are capable of getting passed the tipping thing and just understanding the service is different relax and enjoy themselves. Naming the point “tipping” instead of something like “dining” makes it pretty obvious he couldn’t get past one cultural different to just enjoy the rest.
I can guarantee you this author would put down American travelers for thinking servers should just check up on them instead of making them get up and serve themselves in their country. I actually like serving Americans and find that they’re some of the best travellers at least to Canada. They’re also the most self conscious and it bothers me so much when I’m almost always happy to see them. The high horse Europeans put themselves on for traveling is ridiculous, the only people I would rather serve less are people from countries that have extremely different cultures that are harder to adjust from.
Americans are fine, this article is just another pretentious European needing to shit on Americans.
- People from the UK
I think your comment is interesting but I'd just like to point out that Ireland is not in the UK. I understand this may seem pedantic but it always irks a little to have your country mistakenly considered part of another one, particularly when they've had a less than friendly historical relationship.
I just read the article and the dude comes off as pretty narky, to be honest.
I mean he never said which part of Ireland he was from, wait, do you always say Ireland for non UK Ireland and Northern Ireland for the UK part ? I don’t find travellers here distinguish but maybe they’ve just given up. Honestly decided to leave it as UK because mostly it’s the English that bug me. The Irish are normally pretty jolly but also never really bother say which part they’re from.
We'd always say Ireland for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland for the UK part, yeah. But actually, it can be kind of confusing, because Ireland can also be used to refer to the island of Ireland (i.e. both countries, only one of which is in the UK), and then of course you have people in the North who identify as Irish and others who identify as British... So I can understand why people wouldn't know the difference, even if it makes me twitch a bit.
Speaking as an American, as someone who's worked in the Front of House for years, and as someone who loves dining out, I am hyper aware of service. I actually need to work on tamping it down because I am often too deferential and worried about the servers rather than enjoying myself with my friends. Like if we haven't ordered yet and the server keeps coming by, I feel obligated to stop our conversations and focus on ordering. If we've finished and paid but are still hanging out, I feel harried and want to leave and free up the table. And I'm a patsy when it comes to tipping: It's always 20% and if it was horrible service, it'll be 15%.
That said, I think he/Every European Visiting America Ever is right that tipping is a weird outgrowth of whatever initial conditions in the States facilitated its development and because the rule is unstated and menu prices don't include taxes, prices don't make sense. It's refreshing being in another country and seeing the end-all-be-all price on a menu.
Because it'll never change, let alone by Internet comments, I don't really give a shit about it.
Since he doesn't really balance the article with lots of positive things about the US, it comes off as a big shit on Americans. But I actually appreciate some of the points, especially regarding sensitivity and political correctness.
Oh ya tipping is wacky and the tax being included would be cool and all it just drives me mental when people can’t accept the different service. I serve people from all over the world, I adjust to different cultures and attempt to communicate in multiple languages every shift. There are a lot of subtle differences like In Canada and America you sit at the table and you are waited on, you don’t get up for anything. In a lot of European countries and Australia the woman sits down and the man goes to the bar to get the drinks. They get up for everything and I explain to every new hire you have to explain to them we have table service or it just starts to mess up the system we have. Another funny one is that some elderly English people don’t like when dishes are cleared as people finish, it has to be all at once when everybody is done. They get offended when servers who don’t know go to clear somebodies plate. I’ve had people act scared and tell me they aren’t ready to order yet when I go over with water and introduce myself. They literally start to panic because they don’t understand that a server is just coming to greet them and give them water.
The part that bothered me is how he conflates that with tipping. Like of course you aren’t going to tip someone in a country were they don’t come to your table, but the service being different is about more than tipping. It’s not that I’m serving somebody a certain way because I want a tip, I’m serving them that way because that’s what the expectation is. That’s what we call service, that’s our culture. Even if we abolished tipping we would still serve that way in every style of restaurant, not just the fancy ones. So it’s like, stop being rude to me for serving in a way that reflects my culture while you’re supposed to be here experiencing said culture. It’s like if you were rude to a server in South Korea because you had to wave them over when in reality they think it’s pushy for them to come to your table without being asked.
Actually I would be interested to hear if most of the restaurants you come across serve sharing style by bringing dishes out whenever they’re ready instead of coursed out, that seems to be something across Asia but all my experience is the people I serve.
- Actually I would be interested to hear if most of the restaurants you come across serve sharing style by bringing dishes out whenever they’re ready instead of coursed out, that seems to be something across Asia but all my experience is the people I serve.
I'm interested in this as well.
Good friend of mine is a big fan of Koreans and Korean culture. He dates them all the time, hangs out with them and goes to Korean restaurants. Korean BBQ weirds me out because there's like three people hovering over your shoulder all the time like throwing things on the fire but if you look at them or acknowledge them they get mad. It's like they're Kuroko and if you notice them you're committing a horrible cultural faux pas.
That's a really good point that they should have separated the issue of mandatory tipping (which I do think is ridiculous) from serving culture being different. It reeks of "this isn't how we do things at home!", which warrants the question - why didn't you stay there?
Eh it didn't feel like a big shit to me. I enjoyed it. Then again I live in a state with no sales tax and knew the difference between Ireland and Northern Ireland already, so I got to feel some probably-unmerited "but not actually ME!"-ness.
my dollar stores actually really ARE dollar stores.
i also think at some point instead of showing an ID i should just be able to show my tattoos but hey. i'm not trying to sell that idea to congress