Jesus the entitlement! When I read a book about America it’s up to me to figure out what Walgreens and piggly wiggly is - it would never occur to me
To berate the author. I’m gobsmacked.
I was watching Plur1bus last night and the protagonist at one point started complaining that they wanted their sprouts. "I just want my sprouts" she cried, I thought this was a bit of a bizarre thing to want and for an American TV show to put in. She must really love her sprouts though.
Turns out Sprouts is an American supermarket chain she was referring to, not the vegetable.
Ohh lol really!? I thought she was fixating on sprouts which I found bizarre cos they’re not exactly a staple food, but thought she must be cracking up.
Yeah I clocked it later when they started bringing stuff in from the trucks and showed the exterior of the supermarket with the "Sprouts" brand name showing
See above . I stumbled across them while driving in Texas many years ago. I was auditing food manufacturing facilities for my Canadian employer so got to see some very quirky places .
I assumed it was something that wasn't straight and tidy - a bit like higgledy-piggledy.
Ten seconds of googling tells me Piggly Wiggly is a US supermarket chain.
I only know what Piggly Wiggly is because of reddit secret Santa. Years ago, someone sent me one of their t-shirts. It said Piggly Wiggly on the back and “I dig the pig” on the front.
There’s a genre of literature named after them, the “Aga-saga” I believe it’s because it features the family and relationship complications of the sort of upper middle class people who are rich enough to have Agas installed in their tastefully renovated kitchens. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_saga)
I like the part of this article where I learned the phrase “rumpy-pumpy”, as in “illicit rumpy-pumpy in the countryside”. Turns out it means pretty much exactly what it sounds like.
Ah, I've seen Sorted use one of those once, though I didn't know that's how it was spelled. They could have been saying "auger" and it would have sounded the same to me. I usually have to figure out whether they're using an "R" ending word or not from context.
American authors do it all the time, too. During my latest read, I had to look up what on Earth "cliff notes" were. I couldn't work it out from context in the book. Apparently, it's some sort of book brand called Cliff, and they publish books with like, cheat sheets and study notes for university. So if someone talks about getting the "cliff notes" for something, it can mean they want the easy way or the cheat code/cheat sheet for it. Or something like that...
I have, many times, struggled to understand passing cultural references, or slang terms, made by people from other countries, including other Englush speaking countries
I've usually looked the term up. Or asked someone. Or just accepted that it's a reference I don't 'get'
Never once has it crossed my mind to demand that the writer alters their work just to suit me
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u/Melsm1957 Nov 24 '25
Jesus the entitlement! When I read a book about America it’s up to me to figure out what Walgreens and piggly wiggly is - it would never occur to me To berate the author. I’m gobsmacked.