On the topic of large drinks, and remembering what I mentioned about spending, here's another weird observation from the USA and a how it's culturally so different from the UK.
When I first visited the US, the thing that perhaps "wowed" me the most in a "how on earth does this work" kind of way, was free refills. Now, in a restaurant environment, sure. That makes sense. But in McDonalds?
Why do US McDonalds sell different sizes of drinks? Who buys them? Why would anyone get anything other than a small (UK medium), or even CHILDREN'S cup, and just refill it until you've had as much as you wanted?
To confuse matters, McDonalds often do this thing where you can get ANY size drink for $1. That's less than the cost of buying a small drink on it's own, which is like $1.29 I thiiiink.
In that context, WHOS GETTING SMALL?
Maybe you want a large drink to take with you? Well sure, that's cool, except there's a McDonalds every few miles. Just stop and refill? Technically against the rules, but who's seriously going to stop you?
American's are far more honest than Brits. This simply wouldn't work in the UK, because the system would be abused to the point where people would simply walk up and fill up their own bottles at the fountains. The cost of implementing a system with enough staff to keep an eye on that would be stupid. More to the point, soda is such a gigantic profit margin, why wouldn't you abuse the customer the way they do in the UK? I just... Don't get it?
On top of all this, so much soda gets wasted in the US because people will simply throw it away and refill if say it's too watery or they just wanted to try combining strawberry fanta and coke because why the hell wouldn't you?
Don't get ittttttt. And this is why free refills will never become widespread in the UK, because as a business you'd have to be stupid to give the British public any opportunity to abuse the system.
There's more of this in the US, too, though.
Say in the UK, at a supermarket, chocolate bars are 2 for £1. In the US, it'll SAY 2 for $1, but actually you can buy 1 and it's only 50c... Erm, the point of the deal is to trap people into spending more money, Kroger... You're doing it wrong? Is it simply that American's cannot resist spending a whole $1 to get two? I think it might be.
American's throw away money something awful. Change is practically useless, due to the stupid tax added on after system. And American's have a very laid back, cannot be bothered attitude to anything that under performs. If it's even slightly broken, get rid of it. And it's not worth reselling goods on ebay, throw them out - not worth the effort. Not EVERYONE is like this, but a lot of people do seem to be, where as the UK is kinda reversed. American's buy so much stuff, on a whim. And I think it might be the reason the UK doesn't have the breadth of produce that I moan about. The USA can afford to have 50 different types of coke, because people buy them on a whim. In the UK, everyone would sit around pondering about whether or not to spend the money and discover they hate it. But to an American? No big deal, get it and if I hate it throw it out.
I mean, would you Brits put up with parliament or local counsels making laws that ban you from drinking X amount of Coke a day, for example? Or would you consider that to go against your civil liberties?
Yes, but no where NEAR the uproar it would receive in the USA.
In the UK, we're (for better or worse) fairly quiet as a nation about the goverment imposing on us with issues such as this. Most people simply don't care enough to do more than shrug. The only similar thing I can think of is how you cannot buy more than so many painkillers at once, without prescription. But the US has strange alcohol laws, like you can't buy after certain times in certain places, which are far more imposing than preventing the buying of excessive painkillers in one go. Speaking of which, I only just learned the US has a law about drinking alcohol in public places... I LOVE it, but it's ridiculous from a moral freedom perspective, and I just think it's funny that the US is so.. un... free?
It's like the "free speech" argument, to me it's morally important to be able to say what you like, but it's MORE important to protect people from hatred. It's censorship from the goverment, which is morally awkward, but the alternative to me seems worse?
The US approach, to me and many other Brits, looks like demanding of freedom for the sake of freedom, with no logic attached. The concept of freedom is greater than all. That would be fine, if the US truly looked free to us, but it looks like a country where that freedom causes more trouble than it's worth.
