Thank you for the detailed response, it was an interesting read! I’ll pick out a couple of things directly, but it definitely helped me understand some things.
I really don’t think it was intended to be dismissive of the worker.
I may have misspoken but it’s not to be dismissive of the worker, but to be dismissive of the job itself. I have a bachelor’s but I’d do the job if I needed to, I just prefer to work in my field because I like the activity. No (ordinary) job is beneath me, though naturally I have my preferences.
Honestly automats are not really a thing in the USA
Nope, they were a thing in the USA like 100 years ago. It was just the earliest example I had off the top of my head of self service in the US.
more common thing in Europe to just do a day or two of shopping. So you have a small number of items that could fit in one or maybe two bags.
more common for Europeans to have local small markets within easy walking distance. Feel free to correct me on these points if I have it wrong for your area.
Americans are much more likely to do shopping for a week or two sometimes longer
All this all this makes it much more likely to shop more infrequently.
This was the big a-ha moment for me. I have 5 small supermarkets, 3 kiosks, and a bunch of other bakeries and cafes near me. I do buy for one week at a time but I often pop in to get something I’m craving or something I forgot. I’m one person so 1 week of shopping is like 2 bags and a backpack. People here do shop for short-term groceries. If you’re making a big trip once a week, it’s probably much more of a planned “event”. I’m not saying it’s in the same category as going out, but I imagine it can be a bit of a family trip. Everyone goes out, walks around a large store for probably an hour or more together, and grabs a whole load of stuff. I can imagine you might want to feel welcomed. We do have huge shops like that in Europe as well, though I guess the relationship between the people and the “hypermarket” is different. In Romania some people will just… raise chickens. Grow vegetables. I have a feeling that isn’t really a thing in US suburbs. Suburbs in general are much less of a thing, and are sometimes in the extremes of just being a city with houses and shops, or effectively a fancy village.
My understanding is that both under communism and then in the turmoil afterwards that corruption has always been endemic.
Correct.
We’ve never had situations where you have to pay off police officers or getting arrested on purely false charges.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe situations like these are reported on your news, though like you said it does appear to usually be racially motivated.
Unfortunately I have yet to travel to Eastern Europe, it is on the list.
I encourage you to try as many different and strange foods as you can, and see as much nature and history as you can. I don’t like eastern European cities - once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen most of them. An old center that looks neat (and shows up in every tourism marketing image) which still has visible damage from WW2, commie blocks everywhere else, and lots of gray speckled with banner ads.
And on that note due to the size of America there is a good bit of variation on how we interpret our culture.
Of course, I assumed as much. Probably the neighbor across the street could have a different view.
I get a vibe from how you and other americans talk about authority, that there is an idea of otherness - that they are not you, or not like you. In my mind, it is people who are shit, and that is the reason things are bad. The government, the police, the corporations, hospitals, schools, mechanics, drivers, street sweepers and garbage disposal staff, it’s people all the way up and down. It might not be one person, maybe not you or me, but it’s like… if you have an entity that is corrupt and you take the people out of it and you replace them with a random set of other people, the corruption doesn’t go away. Or maybe it goes away for some time, and slowly creeps in.
And corruption is insidious in many ways. You get a government job, and you happen to know a friend who can fill another position and you recommend them and they get hired. One of you is promoted, and you’re friends, so there’s going to be some preferential treatment. Boom, simple corruption in a few steps. Child’s play. But when people are involved with a thriving organization for decades, and they accumulate 20, 30 years of things like this, it becomes hard to break them apart. They’ll make choices and do things that are good for them, of course. And all this from just basic human friendship and reciprocity. A hundred thousand small choices that individually seem innocuous, accumulate into a monster over time.
To me, a supermarket chain company is not an authority. It’s like a starling murmuration, selfishly waning and waxing with the flow, trying to do things that are good for it. Why does the employee have to check receipts? Probably because people are stealing. Authority to me is something that can affect me without recourse. A cop can order me to identify myself - the police have authority. A supermarket can’t tell me to do anything. I can choose another supermarket. If that’s the only supermarket you have access to, that’s when that supermarket is an authority. That’s the only way you can get what you need, so the supermarket can dictate how you do it. Again, I have 5 supermarkets in a 1km radius, so maybe I’m privileged in this.
Could also be that your companies are legally allowed to ‘lobby’ (read: bribe) politicians, giving companies authority by proxy.
Thank you for the detailed response, it was an interesting read! I’ll pick out a couple of things directly, but it definitely helped me understand some things.
I may have misspoken but it’s not to be dismissive of the worker, but to be dismissive of the job itself. I have a bachelor’s but I’d do the job if I needed to, I just prefer to work in my field because I like the activity. No (ordinary) job is beneath me, though naturally I have my preferences.
Nope, they were a thing in the USA like 100 years ago. It was just the earliest example I had off the top of my head of self service in the US.
This was the big a-ha moment for me. I have 5 small supermarkets, 3 kiosks, and a bunch of other bakeries and cafes near me. I do buy for one week at a time but I often pop in to get something I’m craving or something I forgot. I’m one person so 1 week of shopping is like 2 bags and a backpack. People here do shop for short-term groceries. If you’re making a big trip once a week, it’s probably much more of a planned “event”. I’m not saying it’s in the same category as going out, but I imagine it can be a bit of a family trip. Everyone goes out, walks around a large store for probably an hour or more together, and grabs a whole load of stuff. I can imagine you might want to feel welcomed. We do have huge shops like that in Europe as well, though I guess the relationship between the people and the “hypermarket” is different. In Romania some people will just… raise chickens. Grow vegetables. I have a feeling that isn’t really a thing in US suburbs. Suburbs in general are much less of a thing, and are sometimes in the extremes of just being a city with houses and shops, or effectively a fancy village.
Correct.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe situations like these are reported on your news, though like you said it does appear to usually be racially motivated.
I encourage you to try as many different and strange foods as you can, and see as much nature and history as you can. I don’t like eastern European cities - once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen most of them. An old center that looks neat (and shows up in every tourism marketing image) which still has visible damage from WW2, commie blocks everywhere else, and lots of gray speckled with banner ads.
Of course, I assumed as much. Probably the neighbor across the street could have a different view.
I get a vibe from how you and other americans talk about authority, that there is an idea of otherness - that they are not you, or not like you. In my mind, it is people who are shit, and that is the reason things are bad. The government, the police, the corporations, hospitals, schools, mechanics, drivers, street sweepers and garbage disposal staff, it’s people all the way up and down. It might not be one person, maybe not you or me, but it’s like… if you have an entity that is corrupt and you take the people out of it and you replace them with a random set of other people, the corruption doesn’t go away. Or maybe it goes away for some time, and slowly creeps in.
And corruption is insidious in many ways. You get a government job, and you happen to know a friend who can fill another position and you recommend them and they get hired. One of you is promoted, and you’re friends, so there’s going to be some preferential treatment. Boom, simple corruption in a few steps. Child’s play. But when people are involved with a thriving organization for decades, and they accumulate 20, 30 years of things like this, it becomes hard to break them apart. They’ll make choices and do things that are good for them, of course. And all this from just basic human friendship and reciprocity. A hundred thousand small choices that individually seem innocuous, accumulate into a monster over time.
To me, a supermarket chain company is not an authority. It’s like a starling murmuration, selfishly waning and waxing with the flow, trying to do things that are good for it. Why does the employee have to check receipts? Probably because people are stealing. Authority to me is something that can affect me without recourse. A cop can order me to identify myself - the police have authority. A supermarket can’t tell me to do anything. I can choose another supermarket. If that’s the only supermarket you have access to, that’s when that supermarket is an authority. That’s the only way you can get what you need, so the supermarket can dictate how you do it. Again, I have 5 supermarkets in a 1km radius, so maybe I’m privileged in this.
Could also be that your companies are legally allowed to ‘lobby’ (read: bribe) politicians, giving companies authority by proxy.