Observations on travelling in the USA:

New Mexico - another seemingly endless straight road

I don’t think you would describe this as a travel blog, but the reader can be the judge of that.

I get bombarded with articles on Medium, most by Americans. Nothing wrong with that of course, but many of them are critical of other places. I have to say at the outset that these writers are not stating that the US is perfect although there is an inference that perhaps things are better there, and maybe they are.

I have travelled throughout the USA, usually by road but also by air and these are some of my observations. This is not intended as a critique although I will venture opinions. I am not going to try to balance negative comments with positive ones; they’re all in here so take your pick. I guess one could do this type of an article on any country and everyone is free to do so, on this platform. I may even do so myself later. But for now, here are some of the more unusual, if not downright bizarre experiences that I have encountered in the US. They are not P.C. so read at your own risk ☺

During an overnight airport stopover in Charlotte, N.C., I ventured out for dinner and felt I must be in the world’s most obese diner. The two waitresses were morbidly obese, and had extreme difficulty moving. There was a guy asleep at the bar with his head down who never moved while I was there. I was initially the only customer but then, one white guy, one black guy and two black women came in - all were morbidly obese. I’m talking seriously heavy here. Maybe 180 kilos or in American terms, 400 pounds plus. I reckoned I was in the fat capital of the east coast. There was a black guy cooking and a white guy washing dishes and they were the only two people in the place who were slim. After a while, the second waitress joined the guy who was asleep at the bar and promptly started to snooze herself. Maybe she was with him and they were hung over? We have an eminent specialist on obesity in Ireland called Dr. Donal O’Shea, who says we are close to an epidemic of diabetes as a result of obesity. If that’s the case, the US is close to a tsunami of it. Because wherever I went in this country, I encountered people who have let themselves go completely weight wise. I have not seen this in any other country on earth. You would wonder is the issue being addressed at a strategic level or is the corporate greed of the fast food giants holding sway? One of the more ridiculous customs I encountered in some fast food outlets here is that it is cheaper to ‘go large,’ in other words, have huge portions of French fries and fizzy drinks than it is to purchase regular portions. It is sheer madness from a health viewpoint not to speak of the economics. In addition, the whole country seems to exist on sandwiches. Everywhere you go, they’re the most common form of food. I guess the emphasis on hard work, short breaks and heavy schedules powers the economy but it leads to unhealthy eating habits. Everywhere, I saw massive piles of fries, waffles, grits, gravy, syrup, sauces, etc - heart attack street.

OK, let’s counter that criticism for a minute, even though I said I wouldn’t. Everywhere I went in the US, I found people open, welcoming and friendly. There were a few exceptions but in some instances, people went out of their way to be helpful.

The lack of investment in public infrastructure is sometimes shocking. Take the New York City subway. It is arguably an efficient system as it moves millions of people every day. But the rolling stock is mostly old, if not ancient; the stations are dirty, old and in dire need of refurbishment; worst of all, the signaling system is shockingly old – my son showed me a typical control room, which can be viewed from some stations. It was like watching a 19th Century English railway signal control system. How there aren’t accidents is surely miraculous. As regards lifts and escalators, they don’t exist at many stations. Disabled access? Are you kidding? There are New York City taxes and state taxes and federal taxes but why some money isn’t invested in infrastructure is worrying. To me, it smacks of the US attitude that everyone has to look after themselves and the State doesn’t provide for anyone. If you suggest a little more care to some people, they recoil and scream, ‘oh no, that’s socialism, we can’t do that.’ I met someone who was a perfectly reasonable and intelligent guy but at the mention of any form of state care, he bristled. Chief among his hates was Obamacare, not that he was in any way racist. He just had this view that people should fund their own medical needs. It was impossible to convince him that not everyone is lucky enough to be able to and hasn’t had the employment opportunities that would allow them to. He would not accept this and insisted that the USA allows everyone the chance to better themselves if they want to. But to come back to infrastructure, on the other hand, the interstate highway system is in excellent condition and generally a joy to drive on. But of course everything in the USA is geared for the car and the truck.

Corporate greed is everywhere. The US retail business is almost entirely composed of large chain stores. The small corner ‘Mom and Pop’ store has almost disappeared entirely. Now, this is not entirely negative in that the big chains do offer almost infinite choice and the widest range of products imaginable at reasonable prices. The greed aspect is that they pay their staff very poorly and many are paid on a commission basis only. As a result, a lot of staff are disinterested and offer poor or even no service. Many of the employees are either recently arrived immigrants or older, ‘retired’ people whose pensions are inadequate to make ends meet. It is a sad commentary on the land of the free and the home of the brave.

It gets even worse when you move into catering. Restaurants and bars are generally speaking not cheap and you have to be aware that the price on the menu is not the price you will ultimately pay. Many restaurants routinely add the ‘tip’ to the final bill and this is usually done at the rate of between eighteen and twenty five per cent. Seriously, the days of ten per cent or even the discretionary tip are long gone. The kernel of the problem is that the staff are disastrously under paid and rely almost entirely on tips to make a living. I spoke to many workers and they all told me that the idea of minimum wage is a joke. Companies just don’t pay it and no one cares; no one checks and it’s a law that’s not enforced. I met people who were paid $4 an hour or $30 for an eight hour shift. It all goes back to the attitude of ‘everyone has to fend for themselves’ and a complete absence of communal responsibility. Some Americans will tell you that this ensures you get good service and it does in some cases but not in all. I’ve had deploring service in places who then added twenty per cent service automatically. When I asked them to remove it on the basis that the service was either poor or non-existent, I was greeted with either shock, anger or abuse. I was told that I was denying the staff their living. The thing that they cannot see is that it is the greed of the restaurant owner that is short changing them. I don’t wish to harp on about it indefinitely but for me, it typifies an attitude which I think cannot last and will eventually lead to a completely divided society and possibly civil strife. Other manifestations include lack of toilets in places or in some cases no toilets at all; toilets out of order; Wi-Fi not working; lack of credit card facilities or inability to pay by card; places that took cash only because the card terminal was broken; maitre’ds trying to ‘pack’ restaurants to earn extra cash – we were offered a table at 21.10 but were then told we must vacate it by 22.00 . I could go on but you get the picture – all born out of greed.

While I am at it in relation to retail prices, I must talk about my pet hate. Not just in restaurants but in absolutely every retail outlet in the USA, the price quoted is never the price you pay. Tax is always added at the cash register. It is infuriating. I guess locals get used to it and factor in the tax but why should you have to? The price quoted should be the price you pay. To the best of my knowledge, the USA and some parts of Canada are the only countries in the world to use this practice.

Work, work, work – employers in the US don’t like to give their staff holidays. Typically, the standard is ten days and it’s not even that simple. In your first year, you may not get any; in your second you may get five. It’ll increase to ten but rarely any further. I know people who get no annual leave at all. And don’t get me started about public holidays – people tell me that apart from Christmas, Thanksgiving and Fourth of July, the only people who get public holidays are state and municipal workers. To be fair, every person I discussed this with in the US agreed that it was crazy and would lead to a burned-out workforce eventually but no one has the courage to change it.

Everything is disposable. There is almost an insistence on serving food and drink in plastic and paper cartons and no one recycles. The amount of material that is dumped is shocking. Europe is miles ahead in terms of recycling. In the US, you just put whatever you want in the rubbish and the garbage guys will take it away. The damage to the environment must be chronic. If 350 million people are all using disposable items, all going to land fill, that is catastrophic.

I mentioned earlier that Americans are generally friendly and welcoming and they are. I know it is a big country but a worry must be the lack of knowledge about the rest of the world among large sections of the population. I wouldn’t expect the same level as you get in say Ireland, because we are a small nation and have no option but to look outward but you will meet people in America who know nothing about anything outside their own area, not to speak of their own State. Is this Trump’s America? I don’t wish to get political and this wasn’t universal but I would have to say that most of the people I met who were openly supportive of The Donald were uneducated, working for minimum wage in big conglomerates like Walmart, JC Penney, Sears, Target, Dollar Store, McDonalds and the other fast food outlets. There seems to be a huge disconnect between them and the rest of the USA and it is easy to see how a slogan like ‘make America great again’ would gain traction. But it isn’t just Trump’s America. It is Obama’s and Bush’s and Clinton’s also. It seems to me that politics at every level is wedded to big business. Perhaps that’s why the little people feel left behind and turn to Trump? It looks like mainstream politicians have worked on the principle that, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ In my view, the problem is it’s been broken for a long time and it badly needs fixing.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that as empires go, America is looking a little shaky. The Roman Empire lasted around a millennium; the Ottoman lasted for six hundred years; the British for three hundred; the Soviet for eighty. America as a superpower has lasted for about a century but it is already weakening and being overtaken by China. The irony for me is that with a few careful and prudent changes, it could regain its primacy and go on for a long time. The sad thing is that no one in authority seems to be willing to try.