Yo gringo, have you acquired a gun and/or a concealed carry license yet? Not to turn this into a gun thread. Curious if you’ve gone out and done things you couldn’t in the UK
^ Diabetes? High blood pressure? Do you still have an accent? Can anyone understand your Scottish-ness (I think I remember reading that you’re a Scot).
Been in NYC for just over a year although YTD I’ve been in the UK most of the time for one reason or another.
It’s pretty much as I expected although I’m conscious that NYC isn’t really an accurate reflection of the US, much in the same was that London isn’t for the UK. Main perception is that the country seems pretty fragmented. Consequently people seem quite angry about a lot of things, there’s less of a belief in the good in people and more of a focus on the worst case scenario.
Biggest challenge is trying to balance the work side of things with being in a great city of the world and wanting to be out there making the most of it. People seem to take pride in living to work and nothing else. Where I’m from there’s a much bigger focus on work life balance. I’m no stranger to pulling 60+ hour weeks but back home they felt like they had more purpose, eg when you’re at the start of your career or if there’s a huge spike in deal flow etc. Here is just seems to be what people do and they don’t manage their own workloads. In my view, that’s part of playing the game, much in the same way that playing tennis with the boss is.
It bothers me that taking annual leave that’s in your employment contract is seen as a sign of laziness rather than a way to maintain your health and boost your long term productivity. As a consequence, the workplace seems frantic compared to the places I’ve worked in Scotland, London and Australia. The best analogy I can give is it’s like playground football (ie soccer) where all the players run around chasing the ball rather than keeping their shape and employing tactics and strategy, lots of inefficiences. Of course, that could just be this shop, can’t extrapolate about the whole industry or country. anyway, a lot of people seem overly precious, if they went away for 2 weeks they wouldn’t be as angry or as precious.
On the positive is the humour, it’s much more aligned with British humour than I expected and it’s not true that you don’t do sarcasm but at times it seems people can’t take a joke at their expense. In the UK and particularly Scotland, you simply won’t be allowed to take yourself too seriously or to believe your own hype. The flipside of that is that success isn’t always celebrated which is not an issue in the US.
People in NYC are much friendlier than their reputation would imply and certainly friendlier than in London, people engage with each other more. The US is more of an extrovert culture which I enjoy despite being more of an introvert. I feel less bound by etiquette here although that’s probably because I’m not tuned into it fully and am pissing people off left right and centre. People are polite and respectful but more at ease with the hustle and won’t hestitate to let you know if they’re not happy, in London people will just silently judge you and for some reason that keeps most native Brits in line which seems odd now being removed from it.
Long post so TL;DR pretty much as I expected. If it was based purely on the people and the NYC lifestyle I’d probably stay but due to the fragmented political and social environment and the lack of work life balance I’ll return to the UK at some point.
I shot guns at a range in Hawaii and whilst I think guns can be fun, I don’t think they have any place in a civilised country and I still can’t get my head around why people feel the need to carry 1 around with them at all times.
Other than that, there’s not really anything I can do in the US that I can’t in the UK
In Scotland we eat everything deep fried and are constantly consume alcohol so NYC isnt’ too different to Scotland fatness wise.
On the whole people understand me ok, with the exception of African Americans who don’t seem to understand a word I’m saying. A lot of people struggle to place my accent and most think I’m “British” which I’ve realised now that they think British=English, urgh. Quite a few guess correctly though.
My wife has a very broad Fife accent and people really struggle to understand her which I find absolutely hilarious, especially when she talks in colloquilisms that people clearly won’t be able to follow.
If you’re ever going through a dry spell, get your mates together, don a kilt and go out to a bar with a Scottish accent saying you’ve just been to a Ceilidh. kilts are fanny magnets.
^ The chances of a North American successfully pulling off a Scottish accent for more than a few minutes is near zero. Unless they’ve consumed a few whiskies. But then it probably only sounds Scottish to them. Since we’ve got a true Scot here: Best whisky available in the U.S. sub-$100?
Thanks, that’s actually pretty interesting. It’s a lot of things I might have suspected but aren’t as easy to see when you’re raised here. The live to work attitude is definitely a NYC thing, while alot of the US tends to work harder and not smarter (being at the office even when there’s not a reason for it), in NYC it is MUCH more pronounced and seems absurd to even other Americans.
The vacation thing may just be your shop (although I’ve heard it for other shops in NYC as well), but definitely isn’t common in other cities outside of NYC.
I’ve heard from other Europeans that people in the US are more extroverted and friendly, but that then the friendships often are more superficial and less “deep” than those that would develope in Europe. More of a quantity over quality feel.
Anyhow, the fragmented culture and the idea that there’s less belief in good people stuck out to me the most. From what I can tell it’s gotten much worse in the US over the past decade or so and resulted in a lot of legalistic behavior. Hopefully its just some sort of social cycle because I can’t see how it will resolve itself.
Personally, my favourite is Bowmore 12 but it’s not available everywhere. Close runner up is Balvenie double wood and I also have a lot of time for the Macallan despite it being the go to single malt and a therefore a pretty boring answer.
I suppose the fragmented culture thing has happened over the last 10 years in the UK as well but perhaps its less pronounced because the country is a lot smaller.
I can definitely see the friendship thing but I’d assumed that it was unique to NYC.