Culture Shock?

One of my roommates is a PhD student in Bio-neuro-chemistry (hyphens have been added for emphasis). He came to the United States from India for the first time on Thursday. He had never left India before that. His first meal in the US, at my mother's bidding, was Indian food (she wanted to make him feel at home)... And the first retail store he was exposed to here? Radio Shack.

Yikes.

He has spent a lot of his time in the last few days being visibly uncomfortable. Nevertheless, it's been amazing to watch him experience our culture for the first time, and to help him get along.

Today, I taught him how to shop in an American grocery store (Harris Teeter). Reflecting on this experience, I am amazed by the things I take for granted - bar code scanners, produce codes, automatic digital scales in the checkout lane; the location of tomato sauce in a very large store; how to use a self-checkout.

I am not surprised that he is often confused and flustered by our extravagance. For example, he was amazed at the number and variety of cartons of eggs available in the refrigerated case, and asked me if there's any recognizable difference between them all. I told him that some people have an ethical dilemma with buying eggs from chickens housed in an industrial farm setting. Those people prefer their eggs to be laid by chickens who are allowed to roam free and graze, like chickens on a small farm. "So," I said, "the ones on the upper shelves are 'friendly eggs' and the ones are the bottom are, well regular eggs. And some of them are laid by chickens who have been supplemented with Omega 3 fatty acids. Those eggs are sold under the pretense that they are healthier."

He looked at me and blinked a few times, pointed at a carton on the bottom shelf and said, "Are these white eggs? Because I don't like the brown ones."

This reminds me of some research I read by Barry Schwartz on consumer choice; he gathered a large amount of data suggesting that while too few choices are boring, too many choices can paralyze the consumer.

In America, you can buy friendly eggs from free-range chickens who eat a lot of salmon, or from free-range chickens who don't, or from regular chickens who eat a lot of fish oil, or from regular chickens who don't. Each of these can be purchased in either the white or brown egg variety. AGH