The US service industry is the country's biggest scam
Spend $600 a night at a hotel in NYC and they lock the doors at 10pm to keep the homeless out bc it's cold enough outside they wander in and colonize anything open. There's no key card reader at half the hotels for some reason, so you have to pound on the door until some random guy at the front desk hears it (they have no doorman)
The desk guy's listening to rap on his phone so he doesn't hear you until you start outright kicking the door. When he finally wanders over to crack it for you he's irritated and mumbles "just knock next time, man"
From here you can either say "okay" and move on to the next step, or reply "turn your music down so you can actually hear me knocking next time." The second option might feel better in the moment, but tomorrow when you come back and do the whole thing again you'll find he's still playing the music and now he pretends not to notice you for an additional 5 minutes while you kick the door
When you finally get inside and walk to the elevators there's another hotel employee there on his phone who asks to see your keycard to make sure you can't get into the elevators unless you're a hotel guest - even though the elevators have keycard readers already
In a sane country this guy would be acting as the doorman. Maybe management told him he WAS the doorman, and he just got confused about which door he was supposed to be manning. So now instead of preventing guests with luggage from standing outside in the cold for ten minutes he's performing the exact same function as the elevator's card reader - just more slowly/less effectively
It's the same thing at most mid-tier restaurants. Finish your drink and it just sits there, finish the appetizers and wait 20m for them to notice you're ready to order entrees, finish the entrees and you have to get up and hunt someone down for a check. I do this thing where I chug like 4 glasses of water at a time and in europe or asia the server will literally stand there with the pitcher refilling me immediately afterward so I can do the next one
Then all these people come here and post about how you should be tipping at least 50% for the service they provide (that service being: scrolling tiktok and ignoring customers)
This is all stuff you get used to living in the US, but it's by no means normal. Anyone telling you otherwise is performing a world-historic gaslight
I hear people who splurge at luxury hotels in USA are shocked at low quality of service. They hire people with ghetto affect and so on. Is this true? In Asia that’s an outlandish imagining. USA becoming sub-Third World nasty where impossible to enjoy even for rich?