tigertail in new york

There are some things that are just standard in America - things that if you've lived here all your life seem normal and usual, and if you haven't, they take a little getting used to.

Toilets are designed in a way that makes them susceptible to easy clogging. This means that every toilet has a plunger next to it to be used in such circumstances. Now, given that back home a plunger is something you make coffee with (that's a french press to Americans) this is already strange enough, but it begs the question - why not just design them better so they don't clog as much?

When you buy a sandwich in a deli, it almost always comes with mayo, chips and a pickle on the side. This is fine with me - I like the chips and the pickle, and mayo's not so bad either. But back home we use butter, and I never had it on my sandwiches, so now I feel I'm getting just a little bit extra fat I don't need with every sandwich. But the question is: Who decided that chips and a pickle were the way to go?

"Regular Coffee" if ordered in a diner usually means with milk and sugar, and it's always drip filter coffee, which really does nothing for me. If you want to order any kind of espresso, you need to have a special long code at the Starbucks, or find a cafe where they serve proper espresso. My current order at Starbucks (embarrassingly enough) is either a double tall skim cinnamon dolce latte no whip or a double tall skim latte. I've heard orders that take longer to say than the coffee does to drink.

If you work in an office - regular or production, instead of going out to get lunch, a lot of people will order in. This means you have menus from local restaurants, and once you phone in your order, a delivery person will rock up with the food about half an hour later, for which he or she gets a tip. So when you are walking around the city at lunchtimes, you'll see all these people on bikes delivering food to offices. No harm, no foul (as people like to say here) but are you really that busy that you don't want to walk away from your desk and get some fresh air, even for 10 or 15 minutes while you buy lunch?



Picture Credit: Mark Kostabi, American Standards, 1988

Posted by Ness on Monday, May 21, 2007 at 11:49 AM | Permalink