I was asked to show my ID once when buying nail polish remover (with acetone). I couldn't believe it! The woman looked at me as if she wasn't sure about my age, then asked for an ID. I was 25!!
Sometimes at Walmart the register reads "ask for ID" when buying an R-rated movie, but they never do.

you can still buy the pseudoephedrine kind, but you need to ask for it from the pharmacist. you don't need a prescription though.

Oh really? You mean they have two kinds? How odd. That's good to know, though. Thank you.

No wonder it's doing nothing for us but make us sleepy!!

Saludos,
Caro

I don't know why they bother making a non-pseudoephedrine version of these medicines as the new stuff does absolutely nothing. I've read on some websites that the new ingredient they use hasn't been proved to be more effective than placebos.

Oh man... Right now I have about two 'hits' left of my NyQuil bottle that I brought back from the US a year or so ago - now I am looking at it as if it is a golden elixor! I am also looking at my Sudafed with new-found respect as I hear that it is a pain in the butt to get at home too - what the heck is going on in the US?? Why all these changes?

I am the USC, but have been living in India for the last 3 years - I think the culture shock is going to be harder on me than it will on my husband! I remember when I returned from two years in Kazakstan, I felt completely overwhelmed by grocery shopping - sooooo many choices, soooo many aisles - half the time I would walk out without anything!

Hi!

I am not used to go the grocery (or supermarket) and have somebody put all the stuff in the bags. In Spain you do that yourself and they grump at you if you are not fast enough! :-)

I will add, the thing made me shocked here in the US was when I went to the Pharmacy "CVS" and saw a guy buying a pack of cigarettes... I was what.!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm not sure where you're from (you don't say on your profile), but I'd have to imagine that most countries would allow their citizens to purchase cigarettes so long as they're old enough...

Yeah, but in some countries (like Canada fer instance) cigarettes are not sold in drug stores. Haven't been for quite a few years.

As for the pseudoephedrine being taken out of cold medicines, its because it was being used by illegal meth makers in their labs. So rather than shut down the labs and put all the ilicit drug makers in jail, they took out the "offending" drug from off the shelf cold and allergy medicines. Now if you want the good stuff, you have to go to the pharmacist him/herself and show them ID and sign a form. And you can only get a maximum of 2 packages at a time, and I think that's limited to 2 per month or some short period of time. If you try to get more than that, they'll report you to the locals.

And the meth labs keep on keepin' on somehow

It's a real joke too. Meth makers are simply paying shills to go into the drug stores and buy for them. Quick way for a high school or college student to make $10...5 minutes of their time to walk in, buy a couple packs, and then hand it to the dealer in the parking lot. Meth gets just a wee bit more expensive, everyone else has to suffer (granted, for small values of "suffer"), and the meth problem isn't even dented.

Wow. So where do you buy them then?

I know my wife has said that taxes on cigarettes in Canada are obscenely high, so coupled with limited venues to smoke in, smoking in general has gone way down. My wife and I don't smoke, so neither of us take much notice of these things (which would probably explain why I didn't realize London Drugs didn't sell cigarettes). I just know cigarettes can be bought in places like Walgreen's and CVS because I see them there all the time.

they can be bought in pretty much any other kind of store, convenience stores, grocery stores, Costco, Sam's Club, gas station, yadda yadda yadda...just not in drug stores. Or bars and restaurants. Cuz you can't smoke in bars or restaurants anymore. Not that I care, I quit before I moved down here. Don't like American cigarattes

I teach high school; we've had a problem with our students coming to school drunk off of Nyquil...not since they've been checking ID for it...

Maybe something have changed since I lived in US from 2005- 2007 but besides many things mentioned before I found really akward that
*there are two separate saunas for women and men
*you can't buy a wine in sunday.

You must have been in Colorado if you couldn't buy wine on Sunday. Most other states are a little more enlightened.

Nope, you lucky Californian you
We lived in Georgia, we moved because those unbearable experiences of having sunday dinners without the wine.

Hehe. I'm originally from Colorado, same Sunday law. Yeah, California has spoiled me.

I could buy beer after midnight in KY - when I went to visit my sister.
In NY liquor stores can't seel beer (only liquor and wine) and you can't buy alcohol before noon at grocery stores (that may just be a county rule from where I was living).

It wasn't of course problem whether on Sunday we could buy alcohol or we couldn't I was stunned that probably religion laws apply to secular society.
I mean in USA country of freedom !
It was my first cultural shock.
Later on with help from my teacher I discovered real Columbus, GA(where we lived) laws removed on 1981!

*Can't cut off a chicken's head on Sunday; It is illegal to carry a chicken by it's feet down Broadway on Sunday.
*It is illegal to sit on one's porch in an indecent position.

OMG I could make the longest list....I'll try to keep it short(ish):

- Let's start with the fahrenheit, gallons, miles, reversed date and AM/PM
- Then the criminally low minimum wages, no paid vacation, short maternity leave, putting race on your application, the background checks and drug tests.
- Actually paying for healthcare!! If you can afford it that is....
- Bag boys.....what's that about?
- Coupons, still feel too weird to use one
- Having to hand the cashier the money - she'll get extremely offended if you put it down on the counter
- "Memberships" to grocery stores - those little cards you show the cashier to get the store discounts
- Tipping people.....I think I already pay enough for whatever I'm buying
- Being able to use someone else's credit card
- Credit scores - the most unfair thing in this world!!!
- 2 year cell phone contracts.....what the phone and my plan isn't outragiously expensive enough as it is???!
- That extremely easy "exam" to get your drivers license
- Car washes where people wash your car
- 24 hr service (McD's, CVS, Walmart....)
- Drive through banks...I laughed myself half of death about that one. How lazy can you be!
- People thinking it's nasty to drink from the same glass or bottle as someone else
- Sales taxes.....lord jesus and then some
- Clothing sizes....I was a Medium back home, now I'm a 3 in juniors. What a diet.
- Round door handles - took me a while to figure them out not that I completely have yet
- Telemarketers
- Boxes for your left over food at restaurants
- Portion sizes
- The half gallon milk shake
- Iced Tea/lemonade
- Southern cooking.....definitely not for me, except for the biscuits, yummy
- The very very limited selection of bread and dairy products
- Chocolate.....it just doesn't taste right. Not like the Rittersport and Marabou I get sent from back home
- The so far out in the future expiration date on milk
- The wonderland that is over the counter drugs


Ok.....stopping now.....

oh forgot...

Refills....co-signing on what's been said already
Pancakes/pancake mix.....where I'm from pancakes are big thin and you cover them with chocolate spread, sugar, ice cream or jam. Certainly not butter and syrup, and what's with throwing fruit in there?? And whatever happened to flower, eggs and milk. Leave it to americans to make pancakes from a box.

yeah, like that will stop people from drinking it whenever they want. That's not any weirder than not having a huge alcohol selection available at every supermarket and having to go grocery shopping in one place and liquor shopping in another


I was like about buying cigarettes in a pharmacy too, but i guess it makes sense. They have available the product that will help make you unhealthy and then have available products to treat you. In Brazil you can buy pretty much everywhere, bars, convenience stores, grocery stores, gas station, etc, but not pharmacies.


ditto. Makes it easier for criminals.


haha, same here. Back in BR you use keys to lock the door from the inside.


I think it's the opposite. I have a hard time with food expiring so fast.

I don't think that is anything unique to the US. In Germany, all of our contracts were 2 year.

Luckily, there are pre-paid services. We both have GoPhones from AT&T. Both our phones we got for free from Freecycle and the service costs between $30-$60 dollars for both phones every 3 months depending on useage. No contracts, no money wasted on service we didn't use, no real problems overall. Love it



Denmark has no VAT?

Yeah, come to think of it I never seen drug store selling cigarettes before. I do not smoke so I do not pay attention. But I think it's kinda odd for me.

In Denmark if you buy a phone with a plan you get it for next to nothing and the plans are ALOT cheaper, so is prepaid. And the contracts are only for 6 months and after that it's month to month.

As for sales tax. Of course Denmark has them and it's not that I mind them at all. What gets me is that they're not included in the price. At home the price displayed is the price you pay.

I miss Rittersport too. I saw it somewhere recently though, and I can't think of where.

If you think over the counter is a wonderland here, you should go to Canada. They're right off the shelf there! And even better ones!

Interesting about cell phones in Denmark. At any rate though, there are still plenty of options here that don't involve selling your soul for two years.

I guess that sales taxes can't be included because every state has a different taxation scheme and in some places there are also local sales taxes on top of that. Each state has their own rules on what is subject to what tax if any. If it were all the same nationwide, I assume taxes would be included. Sales tax is annoying. I think I was confused by what you meant by what you said at first, complaining about the amount instead of the inconvenience. Sorry about that.

Denmark is a nice place to visit. I think the only thing I didn't like was that one hot summer day, I got something small to drink. After drinking it, I realized how much I paid for it converting it back to dollars and considered passing out. Gorgeous country though. I particularly liked Roskilde. /rambling

I looooooooove Denmark. It's so clean and cosmopolitan. And the cuisine is to DIE for.

Panhandlers at intersections, who appear to work in teams.... usually with one or two others hidden, or at opposing corners.

-The obscene number of telemarketers! Thank heavens for the No-call list!
-mailboxes on the street instead of the slot through the door - and mail carriers in cars only, not walking (may just be here, don't know)
-no bulk food - anywhere! Have to buy in pre-selected, pre-packaged sizes
-high price for produce and lack of in-season local produce in grocery stores
-notary publics in Customer Service centers at grocery stores and at UPS stores
-bag boys that put only one or two items into a grocery bag so you end up with 20 bags instead of 6!
-number of pharmacies - one or two on virtually every corner it seems like
-number of churches and where they are - in shopping malls, industrial centers, street corners, houses, 4 or 5 churches across the road from each other all of them different and so many of them 'megachurches' . . . almost as many pages of churches listed in the yellow pages as doctors or lawyers - with weird exotic names. "St. Pauls" or "****Methodist Church aren't good enough anymore - it has to be Salvation Cathedral of Praise, God's First Breakthrough Ministry, Shield of Faith Christian Assembly, Bread of Life Church, Light of the World Church, Anointed Wounds of Faith, etc. (all taken from our local phone book . . .)
-'illegal' day workers gathered in parking lots waiting for a day's work from a drive-by employer
-election signs - everywhere, all of the time, obscuring street corners and roadways (there is always an election for something or other going on!- no wonder people get saturated and don't bother to vote anymore)
-higher percentage of overweight and obese people

Right on! Can I get an "Amen"? I'd just like to add the obscene amounts of junk mail and a severe lack of recycling. Unbelievable.

Oh yeah! We have sort of solved both of those problems with the same solution - we purchased a paper shredder and now use the shredded junk mail for mulch in the garden. Looks kind of weird but we put regular mulch over top and unless the birds peck away at it, it doesn't look too bad.

A few years ago when we went looking for a composter for the garden we asked at Lowes and other similar stores if they carried them. We got blank looks - no one knew what a composter was! Finally, about a year after we started looking (we had made our own out of chicken wire in the meantime), we found one at Costco. That still leaves cans, glass (although we have a large collection of glass bottles that we use for storing things like dried beans, etc) and plastic that still needs to be recycled - and isn't. All those plastic bags from groceries - yeesh! At least I can donate them to thrift stores and such and use them as package padding in boxes but what a waste!

You can take your recycle goods to The Dekalb Farmer's Market. They have a large area by the road dedicated to recycling. If your recycling light bulbs or electronics- try Ikea, or Office Depot/Staples.
The farmer's market also has a large amounts of seasonal fruits and veggies inside. Though I still have yet to try a Georgia Peach. If your missing some exotic food there you can try next door at the Asian market. As for bulk items those can only be gotten at Sam's Club or Costco.

By bulk items I don't mean buying pre-packaged items in bulk - I mean having access to bins of unpackaged produce - like flour or oatmeal or cocoa powder that you then scoop yourself into packages of the desired weight. You can buy 1/2 lb of sugar or 8 pounds of flower instead of prepackaged 1 lb, 5 lb, etc..

I will keep the Dekalb Farmer's Market in mind - it is about a 50 to 60 minute drive from where we are according to my husband so if we are headed that way we can try and take recyclables to drop off. There is a computer/electronics recycling company in the north end of Atlanta that we have used actually - and a friend of ours in Alabama even brought in some of his old computer stuff here so he could deliver it there.

We do go to the Forest Park Farmers Market as well as the International Market in Morrow for fresh produce and specialty items. I sure wish we had access to a Whole Foods on the south side of Atlanta. We seldom get to the north side of town.

Oh wow, I don't know what I'd do without the healthy alternative stores. I can find a Sevenanda, Trader Joes, and Whole Foods within 5 miles of me. This is a really cute thread, I'm glad I happened across it. I never knew all the things I was missing out on.

Most grocery stores have a bin here you can recycle your plastic and paper grocery bags. Personally, I use reusable canvas bags. And some bag-boys run screaming when they see me coming because they "don't know how to pack them" I saw bags for sale in Big Lots the other day for just $1 each.

I saw a composter in a store window in Asheville the other day for $75! The same dang composter is available in most gardening centres in Ontario for about $15!

You might want to reconsider using junk mail as mulch, some inks used could be not healthy for the garden and environment. Get on the "do not mail list" instead.

And I'm sure there are recycling centres somewhere near you where you could drop off yoru recyclables. I take ours to a recyce centre here in town (and the town council here doesn't "believe" in recycling). I'd much rather have curbside of course, but the town doesn't feel its cost effective. All their money is spent on having entire teams of trash collectors in each neighbourhood instead. I think there's like 5 guys, 2 in the big truck, and 3 on gas powered golf carts! crazy.

Oh yeah - the garbage picking up golf carts! I forgot about those - kind of a neat idea though, especially in our community that has a lot of little short streets. The garbage truck would be eternally having to back up or turn around, so these little golf carts come in, pick up the garbage and carry it back to the truck - kind of like ants hurrying and scurrying to and from the anthill.

oh, another thing that is different - but this is partly because of the location - fire ants! You definitely don't want to get bitten by one of these suckers!

I don't know if anyone else moving south has noticed but when I first moved here especially it seemed to me that at dusk the sky stays a much more intense blue and the 'light' has a totally different quality to it than twilight back in Canada. The Moon also waxes and wanes from the bottom and top more than from side to side as it does in Canada.

How about the those blame snakes, tornadoes and hurricanes?

Uh and I hate being interrupted by commercials every 10 seconds when watching tv. The first week or so I got so frustrated I couldn't watch more than 10 mins of TV before turning it off.

As for recycling....we live in NC and in our county they come every 2 weeks by your house to pick up glass, plastic bottles and whatever recycleble "junk" you want to get rid off.

And all those annoying plastic bags from the grocery store. We use them as garbage bags. Yesterday I actually saw that Target sells 'Green bags'. Which are canvas looking bags.

But yeah...America step up on being green!

I just remembered another one . . . sound effects in grocery stores! Thunder when the mist falls on the fresh vegetables and cows mooing in the dairy section, hehehe.

I can honestly say I have never been to a grocery store with sound effects

they use the thunder sound fx for when the sprinklers are going to turn on so you don't get soaked and you don't sue the grocery chain for pain and humiliation and a new blouse.

The grocery store by my house not only plays the thunder sounds but it also plays "Singing in the Rain" before the spriklers go off.

Diana

I feel cheated.

haha yeah, way different than Brazil.


Maybe where you live. I could find a pharmay in any corner in Brazil, here I have to drive forever.

it's just ironic that you would find something like cigarettes in a store where people go to buy something to restore their health...lol...i never realized that cigarettes were sold in pharmacies--but now that i think of it...it is pretty strange..haha...

HAHAHA !!! Excellent !!!!
never seen/heard that either !!

i like this thraed and i'm bored so...BUMP

Good call - I didn't even get to read about the singing shops!!

you must live in the south

up north, they generally serve the really sweet, fake stuff (ie: nestea, snapple, arizona), which is what i think you are referring to (it tastes nothing like real tea), but down south it is straight up brewed tea with sugar....mmm delish