Shoes on shoes off

A special rule for Americans that almost all Europeans agree on: leave your guns at home!

@ImportViking Personally, I disagree... but that’s because I’d like for them all to sit in European jails for arms smuggling. I’m sure you’d have a problem with us filling up your prisons with our idiots, but we’ll just have to agree to disagree. ^_^

@TuxedoCartman If they try to fly out of a US airport carrying weapons, wouldn't they be detained in the US?

@Kvaseren
I should hope so. Same with anti-vaxxers.
No vaccines? No travel, stay home.

@Kvaseren Probably, but man our airport security is shit. Person couple of years ago made it all the way to Tokyo flying from Atlanta, Georgia, before realizing she’d packed her handgun by mistake.

@TuxedoCartman If it was Florida, I would not have been surprised.

@TuxedoCartman As long as we can agree that you pay for them. Most European jails are like hotel rooms in a way, just without the possibility to leave the premises, so I guess it will be popular.

Prison hosting abroad has been done before there. Norway sent some prisoners to Holland for a while when they were out of capacity and Holland had some to spare. Of course Norway paid for it.

@ImportViking Mmm... nah. Think we’ll just urge them to visit someplace like China or Singapore. It’ll be cheaper to house them, AND the accommodations won’t be as nice. ^_^

Also, I’m trying to imagine Norway having so many prisoners they had to export them. I mean, do they only have one prison with like 20 cells in the entire country or something?

@TuxedoCartman I have a bit bad news. They would just get a fine in Finland. Jail would be only if they come with an arsenal for a small militia.

Basic idea in our legal system is that we give more convictions than US system but we have a lot lighter convictions. I have seen some statistics that about three fourth are fines. Many fines are incomes scaled so rich people pay a lot if getting fines. https://buffalonews.com/2019/07/04/buffalo-sabres-rasmus-ristolainen-speeding-finland/

@ImportViking Well, don't forget it's illegal to own knives if you visit New York: https://knifeup.com/new-york-knife-laws/
So sell your kitchen knives before you visit the US! ("It is illegal to own any knife if you are not a U.S. citizen")

The main reason I wear shoes inside is for their +5 Defense vs Lego.

Wait. Who wears shoes indoors at all? How are you supposed to keep your house clean if people just walk right in with their shoes on? Seriously?

@ryttyr lol You wipe your feet at the rugs that are usually outside and inside. Then, vacuuming/mopping every other week and shampoo/steam carpets once or twice a year. Despite wearing shoes, I rarely see a dirty floor... even more so now that we have robo-vacs.

If your shoes are muddy, you still take them off at the door (I doubt it's polite anywhere to track mud across someone's floor).

@Steeeve We wipe our feet at the door and vacuum and mop our floors weekly too (and we have robot vaxuums too) but we still remove our shoes when entering someone's home.
Maybe our shoes gets dirtier than yours? I mean we do have nothing but rain and snow for half the year here so maybe that's why? We can't bring our shoes in because it'd muddy and/or drip all over the floor? But you guys have wet and snowy winters too... do you change to indoor shoes when you get home during winter? How does that work?

@ryttyr Well, mud isn't too much of an issue except in rural areas. In most places you almost have to go out of your way to find mud as everyone has concrete or grass to their front door and in the driveways. Businesses have paved parking lots with concrete to their doors. The roads of even the smallest towns are paved. So our shoes don't really get dirty. Shoes will have water on them, but it is easily wiped off on a rug at the front door and they won't drip after a good stomp. Most people do check their shoes as they will get yelled at for leaving a trail. Every so often someone with dried mud on their shoes might leave some behind, but that isn't hard to clean. I don't think I've ever seen someone leave dirty footprints on carpet before... probably because of the reaction you'll get if you do. Probably the only down side has been gum which doesn't mix with carpet. Kids don't always think to check under their shoes before walking in.

@Steeeve why leave the shoes on in the first place? Like, why wear shoes indoors at all?

It's safe guess that American homes that have nice floors and carpets will be shoes-off, whereas those with more basic linoleum or something else that's easy to clean, concrete/stone, older wood, etc., will be shoes-on.

But generally speaking, Americans will tell you if their home is shoes-off.

John McClane took off his shoes, and look what happened to his feet.

I think it's regional and cultural in the United States. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, spending much of my time in my Grandmother's house. People came and went in her house constantly, and in general nobody took off their shoes to come inside. That said, my Grandfather who owned a garage and service station, and later worked in heavy equipment parts, always took off his work boots as soon as he came in the house. Everybody, including my Grandfather, came in through the kitchen door. Not the front door. So he'd come in, take off his dirty work boots, and set them by the heat vent.

That said, my Grandmother and all the neighbors who worked in the garden would have "garden shoes" that were never worn indoors. They stayed in the garage with the garden tools.

On almost any given Sunday afternoon my Grandmother's house would fill up with family. Often between 12 and 20 people. Nobody took off their shoes, and if they all did it would probably fill up the whole of the kitchen. (I had a large extended family.) Christmas or Thanksgiving was worse, with even more people.

In other parts of the country it's common for kids to run around outside in the summer barefoot. Coming inside with bare feet that have been running around in the dirt seems to me to be worse than coming in wearing shoes. That said, where I lived there wasn't a lot of dirt to be running around in, and we didn't generally run around barefoot anyway. There was clover everywhere which attracted a lot of honeybees. If you ran around outside in the grass/clover barefoot you'd get stung a lot.

@Tarmaque I, too, grew up in the PNW. But I ran around a lot without shoes. The bees weren't that much of an issue; they didn't want to get stepped on any more than you wanted to step on them; only bumblebees were slow enough to not get out of the way, and they are gigantic so you could usually see them.

At our house there was no specific rule about wearing shoes or not in the house; the neighbor kids would wear their shoes in our house, but, as I indicated above, I was often barefooted outside, much less inside.

My grandfather was a farmer (and grandmother was an avid gardener), so they had a mudroom (off the kitchen) where they always took off their shoes before entering the house proper. Most family did as well. Only visitors actually entered through the front door, and they, generally, did not take off shoes when coming in.

Now I live on the east side of the mountains where there is cheatgrass and goat heads in abundance. No one ever goes around (except, perhaps, int heir own yard) barefoot. Our house is a mostly shoes off house, in no small part because my wife is Filipina, but generally we let guests do as they please. It is very common for people to ask if they should take thier shoes off, though.

As an American, I don’t understand why you would want to wear shoes indoors anyway. I mean, leaving aside the cleanliness issue, it’s just not as comfortable as being barefoot (or just in socks).

'@TuxedoCartman' Try flatfeet then diabetic neuropathy.

@Nephandus Well, then, how incredibly insensitive of us to eat sugar in America. And the nerve of us to go outside everyday when there are people dying of skin cancer, tsk tsk... We should all work from home to acknowledge their plight.

OR... and this is going to be incredibly wacky... you can put on your big-boy pants, be an adult for *three wittle seconds*, and realize that I was talking about general cultural norms, not people with special conditions. Can you do that?

@Nephandus who pissed in your cereal?

'@name' Keep your fetishes to yourself.

@Nephandus you didn't exactly keep yours to yourself

@TuxedoCartman I suppose it depends how clean and how cold the floor is indoors. But I mostly agree

Honestly here in Canada we take our shoes off. I always thought it was so weird to see TV shows where every one just walks about in thier shoes after coming inside. I was like they must have to sweep and mop thier floors every single day and the laundry must be insane because they would sit with thier feet on thier furniture and muddy shoes. It was a bit insane to me. Not sure if all of Canada does this but here on the east coast especially in Winter and Spring...take off your shoes.

@Thesunmaid Same here in Alberta and from relatives I know it’s the same in Saskatchewan. So it’s pretty common in the prairie provinces.

@Thesunmaid

It's the same reason we do it here in Scandinavia.
Denmark might be an exception but the rest of us have more or less the same climate as Canada and for much of the year you simply have to remove your shoes - or spend every waking hour cleaning your house.

@Thesunmaid Same thing here in Finland as well.

@Thesunmaid Feet on the furniture? How very very dare you...

I always remove my shoes when I come inside.

Then again, I'm way off in Massachussetts and I don't have to deal with any poisonous insects hanging out inside my house.

American here. If we walked into the house with shoes on, stuff would be thrown at us until we ran back outside to take our shoes off.

I don't wear shoes inside. I just can't. Not because of being hit by flying objects as a kid, but because it just doesn't make sense. Shoes are for outside and work wear. Why you'd want to wear them around your house (unless there's an orthopedic reason for doing so) is just beyond me.

@Sorflakne, and now, entering our fifth month into the COVID pandemic soft-lockdown, I... Just cannot wear shoes anymore. They feel more like a hygienic element for going to the Wild Outsides than like anything I'd ever want to use on a daily basis.

@Sorflakne
When I grew up, the kitchen was pretty much the only room in the house without carpets, and even then there would be a small rug for a place where you had to stand for a length of time (like in front of the sink). These days, hardwood floors have become so popular, carpets are often only in bedrooms, if even there. Not only are they terrible for your excitable pets (who fall down every time they have to turn a corner) but they're pretty hard on your feet to be walking around all the time on such a hard, unforgiving surface. (And if you don't think so yet... wait until you're 40 and have gained some extra weight to put on those aging feet).
Most of my family has adapted by borrowing from Japanese customs: At the door is a rack for everyone's shoes, and we'll all wear slippers of some design (each person's preference... my mother likes her crocs! Ew!) inside the house. I don't think we've yet progressed to the civilized point of buying extra slippers for guests (though I've been in a physiotherapist's office that does) but we'll probably get there within a generation.