Americans Break Down The Things They Appreciate Most About The U.S.

Americans Break Down The Things They Appreciate Most About The U.S.
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

Let's put this up front: the United States of America is not the greatest country in the world.

It's just a fact. We're not tops in the world in education, our maternity leave for new mothers pales in comparison to most European countries, which is to say nothing of our healthcare as a whole, and our average income per household?

8th. Last we checked, that's not 1st.

It's not all doom and gloom though. There are still a lot of things to love about the good ol' U. S. of A. And if you love something, you fight for it, to make it better, and truly try to achieve the ranking of "best."


Reddit user, kake92, wanted to know what the U.S.A. actually gets right when they asked:

"Americans, what thing do you appreciate the most about America (USA)?"

Not everything that makes the U.S.A. great is honorable or noble.

Sometimes, it's just funny.

Too Much, Then Dial It Back

"Drink refills at restaurants."

MisterMorgan1206

"You get ice! And you get ice! And you get ice!"

PrisonerV

"yes, and most of the time way too much! Europeans complain that we are obsessed with ice. This might appear to be true, but im more comfortable asking for less ice in the US than for ice at all in Europe."

MisterMorgan1206

I May Not Agree With What You're Doing, But...

"we can have all sorts of outlets that mock people in positions of authority and dont get sent to labor camps or prison"

"hell we can burn our own flag"

"pretty gud I think"

King-Grey

"I think people who burn our flag are sh-theads, but I'll defend their right to do so to the death, and that's a fact. I don't always love what I hear from "free speech" but I love that it's free. For now, anyhow.."

LittleArkansas

You know what we have a lot here? Land!

There's a lot of land and a lot of land to see, so why not take a trip this summer and get lost in the wilderness of your imagination.

This is starting to sound like a travel ad.

The Most Gorgeous Vacation You Haven't Taken

"National Parks"

Ezzy17

"Sounds braggy, but I work for the National Park Service and it's the best job I've ever had in my career. I don't think I ever want to leave. Plus, paid trips to all the parks and getting to see things "off the beaten path" that normal visitors just can't get to. I love it and I love our parks."

clyde2003

Not As Crowded As You Might Think

"Wide open spaces can still be found here. I don't like most people, and I frequently need to get away from them."

salthecrawfish

"I grew up in rural Idaho and the wide open spaces are truly amazing. I live in the city now, but still look for any opportunity to get away. My wife is from back east and she thought she knew what the "middle of nowhere" was like until I took her to my grandparent's ranch. The nearest neighbor is five miles away. The nearest "town" is 30 miles away. She didn't realize how much nothing there was in the Western-half of the US."

clyde2003

And We've Got The Disaster Movies To Prove It!

"We've got all the weather. You want hot and humid? We have it! You want frigid? We have it! You want all the weather within 24 hours? We definitely have it!"

"Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes (not weather, I know), lightning? We've got it all!"

CitizenCobalt

Location, Location, Location

"This is going to sound really dark but with all the talk of war recently…especially with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I appreciate how far we are from all the other major powers."

"Yes, they can always send missiles but any land invasion is very difficult to achieve. China and Russia would have to put in major effort if they were going to try to invade America….."

OSUfirebird18

Maybe we're not the "greatest country in the world," but we should all be doing everything we can, every day, to make that come true.

Go Do What You Want

"Answering this as a serial expat that has spent at this point 25% of my life overseas and has lived in multiple countries."

"Few places on Earth embrace the "go do what you want" mentality like America. You want to be a wiccan priestess that lives in a yurt in the Cascade mountains? You want to be a rancher in Utah?"

"You want to live your dream of opening a cupcake store for pets? No matter what you do there is a community of people cheering you on in America and that is a very rare and very cool thing."

RootlessNumbers

Mostly, We're Alright

"I have lived in lots of other countries, but I am from the US. I have a few things to point out."

"The roads are generally nice. Smooth, without huge potholes. I am generally talking about the highways."

"Cleanliness. I have been to places with mountains of trash 6 feet high. Another related thing is that the US has very few stray dogs, and that keeps things overall cleaner."

"The last thing is kind of hard to explain, but I would say the sense of order. Everything is structured, and I kinda like it. The places I have lived, people are just not raised with the mindset that everything should be standardized."

"It really grinds my gears when people talk about how bad the U.S. is. It does have its problems. So does every country. When people go on and on about how bad the US is, I try to put it in to perspective how much worse it can be. My house almost got burned down because the government removed the gas subsidies (which after having them for 2 decades, were bankrupting the government) and people were afraid that the transportation system would shut down. I doubt many people who complain about the US have experienced that."

Mawd14

We're Trying To Get Better, A Little, Every Day

"Having lived outside of the US, I have some perspectives that differ from the norm."

"I’m gonna say some stuff that is gonna make Americans and foreigners alike scratch their heads but I’m hoping some people will know what I’m talking about."

"I truly and wholeheartedly believe that America is the least xenophobic place on the planet."

"I think that xenophobia is so deeply ingrained and normalized the world over that people genuinely do not recognize it in themselves. People will engage in the most hateful xenophobic behavior that I’ve ever seen and then say with a straight face that they are afraid of moving to America because of xenophobia."

"I think that people think America is xenophobic because America’s xenophobia is highlighted, fought, and condemned in ways that no other nation’s is."

"This is because of the second thing that I love about America."

"America is the most diverse nation in the world."

"More than half of our population is people of color, and those people of color are made up of American Black people, North Africans, Sub-Saharan Africans, Native tribes, East Asians, south Asians, central Asians, Latin Americans, Pacific Islanders, Indians, Arabs, and more."

"Every single world diaspora has a politically significant population in America, most of whom are also American citizens who participate in our democracy and our national conversation."

"No other nation in the world comes even close. France and England also have diaspora but not like America does."

"This diversity has created an environment in which that xenophobia which does exist is magnified in its relevance because it actively effects people; a xenophobic American has much more opportunity to cause harm because of their xenophobia than a xenophobic Chinese person."

"But also, this means that America is the epicenter of the movements against xenophobia, and we are the only nation in the world who is engaged in a national conversation about it."

"I’d argue that America is not more xenophobic and thus more backwards than the rest of the world, I’d argue that America has advanced to the stage in attacking our xenophobia that the rest of the world isn’t even close to doing yet."

Brandywine5

We many not get everything right, but it doesn't mean it's not worth living here, fighting for here, and always doing our best to make sure the mistakes get corrected.

What's something you like about living in the United States? Tell us about it in the comments!

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Some companies seem to revel in creating discontent.

That's why these types of jobs have such high turnover.

Redditor Psychological-Name15 wanted the customer service reps out there to give us some truths, so they asked:

"Customer service workers of Reddit, what secret can you reveal from your former company?"

I want to know about the inner workings of Comcast!!

I loathe them!

Oh Dear

Jennifer Lopez Smh GIF by American IdolGiphy

I used to work in tech support for Citi Bank. The people working there are not intelligent. My favorite interaction went like this..."

"Banker - How do I type the upside down I?"

"Me - Ma'am, that's an exclamation point."

slappy_mcslapenstein

The Crappy People

"In every CS job I’ve ever had: we will bend over backward to help a nice person. We will expedite any complaint, give maximum compensation, and harass other areas of the business for you."

"We will do the absolute bare minimum to help a shi**y person and if you’re really bad, we will do everything in our power to make sure you get nothing but what you’re legally entitled to and it will be a process to get that."

11catsinahumansuit

"I don’t work in CS but 100% the same for us in IT a nice person will get new stuff while a shi**y person will get questionable secondhand crap that will take 12 months to fix! I will make sure that you wait as long as humanely possible to have anything fixed!"

Sharp-Demand-6614

Go to Holiday Inn

"If you ask for a supervisor calling Marriott you will just get another person who is not a supervisor, but say they are."

cryptnificent

"Yep. I've seen this done numerous times across multiple industries. Usually, it only involves an actual sup if it's a genuine problem or if they want to make a point."

"The last job I had was in towing junk cars. Two of the inside buyers, one male, and one female, would bounce that sup card around constantly. Idk how no one ever put it together. We'd get repeat callers and repeat sellers so I don't know."

ItsBobFromLumbridge

Heartless

"Worked at a contracted call center for Centrelink. The manager told us to deny as many emergency payments as possible and they would back us no matter what. They were actively working towards a culture that despised the callers and churned staff to get heartless right-wingers who hated the poor."

Rizza1122

"I feel ya. My best mate is a quadriplegic. Centrelink denied his disability pension because he wasn’t disabled enough."

Less-Storage

Go to Home Depot

You Are Dumb Patrick Star GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy

"I worked at Lowes. I didn't know anything about anything in the electrical department yet that's where they put me without any training."

Eattherich187

Not training people is not just a Lowes thing.

There are too many unqualified people doing too many things.

Switcharoo

Drag Race What GIF by TAZOGiphy

"Can confirm it's an unwritten policy for deli departments in Coles Supermarkets to change the written expiry dates on their tickets so they can sell out-of-code products at full price."

REDDIT

A Little Sunshine

"I worked at a call center for the billing department of a major internet and cable service provider. We were authorized to give up to $90 credit per customer on their bill but only as a last resort. Always remember to be nice to all customer service workers. You never know just how much they can help with a friendly attitude."

Axel_Dunce

"Former call center employee here. Highly accurate. Use your manners, and well fix your issue. Anything else, just makes us want to take longer, and you won't get a credit. Just because we are authorized, doesn't mean you'll get the credit for being an a**hat. haha. I've been verbally abused a few times for asking them not to swear at me. Lol."

Ok-Ad-7247

LELU

"I worked for a major telco company for many years in something called a ‘LELU’ which stands for Law Enforcement Liaison Unit. This 'unit' is pretty self-explanatory, but it essentially is a team who worked directly with the police/FEDS to monitor people's information for things such as obtaining communications history of call logs, SMS loss, etc."

"However, most importantly, the software we used, we as agents could directly see all your SMS texts, including MMS and their explicit imagery of whatever you were sending. This would include sexting, naked images, family photos, and everything. There were instances where people abused this position by stalking or 'monitoring' their SO’s comings and going’s."

MidniteMischief

Cookies!!

"I worked at a cafe chain called 'The Cookie Man,' 95% of their cookies arrived in cardboard boxes layered with bubble wrap. The last 5% arrived as pre-made dough that we would bake on-site to make the place smell like fresh cookies."

"I also worked at a cupcake shop. It's literally just packet mix that you add eggs and oil to before baking/piping pre-made icing onto. Don't waste your money on these places, 90% of these chain shops are the same and most are severely underpaying their workers (this is for Australia btw). Just purchase some packet mix from the supermarket and call it a day."

Frequent-Selection91

Look in the Back

"I was a Store Manager for a very large grocery chain and I can tell you that 95% of the time when customers complain to the manager, we may be professional and show empathy, and even resolve the problem."

"But then we usually just make fun of or talk crap about the person who complained to the other employees. And when a customer is really rude when we go 'look in the back' for something, we legit just stand around and talk to other employees, and make zero effort to look for the item."

A_Womans_Thoughts

From the Box

Kaitlin Olson Brunch GIF by The MickGiphy

"I once worked at 'the area's premiere day spa'; the mimosas were made with Sunny D and not real orange juice, and the wines came out of a box."

SailorVenus23

Sunny D and champagne?!?!

What in the name of Lucifer?

Who does that?!

Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments below.