“Have a good day” would just as equally and politely close the interaction while not implying you were just assisted with a social debt.

I agree and I use that all the time.

Even if “thank you” acknowledges a social debt then you’re not indebting the cashier by thanking them. Being told you’re welcome implies that you owed the cashier when they simply did their job.

Anyway, apparently I’m in the minority on this and that’s fine!

you were polite to them, so let them be polite to you by acknowledging your expression of gratitude

But it’s not an expression of gratitude in this context unless they did something beyond their job duties. Thanking them is just the universal polite way of ending the exchange and most customers do it. This interaction is routine and necessary to complete a purchase, and customers aren’t expressing genuine gratitude just because the cashier did their job.

When you thank a cashier, that’s the standard polite way to close the interaction and both of you understand you’re not actually expressing gratitude to them for simply doing their job.

Responding with “you’re welcome” implies the settlement of a social debt (i.e., yes, I did you a favor and your gratitude is acknowledged) that wasn’t part of that purely transactional exchange. It’s an exaggerated response that comes across as presumptuous. You thanking the cashier doesn’t indebt them, but their “you’re welcome” implies that you owed them.

BUT that’s not their intent, they’re just mindlessly saying it because that’s how their manager or grandma or someone taught them to respond and they never stopped to think about it. So I find it mildly annoying, but I’d never point it out and neither of us wants that discussion.

Similarly, I find it slightly annoying when you thank a cashier and they respond by saying you’re welcome. This exchange was purely transactional (I paid for my items and you did your job), so please don’t imply that you did me some sort of personal favor. But like you, I won’t say anything about it to the cashier because their job is already hard enough.

I do “international date nights” with my girlfriend, where we pick a country and make some food from it and enjoy a bit of its culture.

Tonight is Bulgaria. We’re making tarator (cold cucumber soup) and shopska salad and drinking a Bulgarian mavrud red wine and snacking on kashkaval sheep’s cheese. I’ve gotta introduce my gf to some chalga music while we make dinner, and we’ll watch the Bulgarian movie “In the Heart of the Machine” while we eat – it’s about a group of prisoner factory workers in communist-era Bulgaria who find a pigeon trapped inside of a machine and they work together to rescue it.

My mom lives in a small town in Norrland that has a single grocery store with only one machine. The machine is almost always broken! I haven’t seen the new machines you’re describing, but I hope her town gets one soon.

I live in the US in a state without a deposit system, so I put all my recyclables into one bag and walk it down the hall to my building’s recycling chute. No need for sorting because it all gets sorted at the recycling facility.

I’m still best friends with an ex from 7 years ago, it’s not awkward at all and us being exes rarely comes up. Her new boyfriend is cool, we enjoy chatting and we text occasionally. My girlfriend and my ex are pretty good friends, they hike and do outdoorsy stuff together without us guys.

$3.50 here too at almost every gas station in my area in the mountain states.

Two weeks ago I filled up for $3.00, and a few months ago it was $1.70 (that only lasted for about a week though).

A lot of interesting opinions on avocados here! I had no idea that most people salt them, but I certainly don’t. Someone commented that they’re like carrots, but I don’t find them to be anything remotely like carrots. And some people said they’re not good on their own, but IMO they’re delicious on their own.

I slice them up and eat them with crackers instead of cheese, and with tortilla chips. I love them on top of bagels with cheese. I dice them and mix them into salads for creamy fatty goodness, and sometimes I’ll just cut one in half and eat it with a spoon. If I’m eating curry then I’ll slice one up and put it on the side. I eat at least one avocado every day, but they’re cheap where I live in the US ($3-4 for 6 large ones).

Pro-tip: they do spoil quickly at room temperature, so once they reach peak ripeness you can put them in the fridge and they’ll be good for 5-6 days.

I was hoping for better answers than the ones you got! Here’s my take as a Swedish/American dual citizen.

Swedes and Norwegians are genetically so similar that genetic tests can’t make any meaningful distinction between them. They’ve interbred for thousands of years, since long before Norway and Sweden emerged as distinct kingdoms. Whether your ancestry is more Swedish or Norwegian doesn’t really matter since the two are very closely related genetically, culturally and even linguistically (Swedish and Norwegian languages are highly mutually intelligible). While there’s no way to know for sure without a well researched family tree, you’re almost certainly a mix of the two.

Unless you’ve researched and know this not to be the case, it’s even possible that your ancestors were from a part of Sweden that was historically Norwegian and that’s why Norwegian culture was passed down to you. For example, Jämtland was ceded to Sweden in 1645 and even today Norwegian culture has a strong presence there.

Lucky for you, there’s WAY more Norwegian culture in the US than there is Swedish culture. Unless you’re prepared to do some serious genealogical research to arrive at a conclusive answer, I’d say don’t worry about whether you’re technically more Norwegian or Swedish – just keep enjoying the Norwegian culture you’ve known your whole life.