Cultural Communication Differences

I'm guessing here, but you're probably American taking offense to someone being frank and direct in their communications. It's a cultural difference.

Definitely cultural as the other guy said. When I visit the US I imagine I get much the same experience as you but instead of "friendly" and "alert" my description would be more "intrusive" and "transparently faking a level of happiness I only experience very infrequently and never while at work."

The cultural differences about this are vast even in the United States. In the part of the Midwest where I grew up, strangers would come up and offer compliments about your outfit or car, make friendly small talk in the grocery store checkout line, or at least offer a quiet "hi" and smile when passing on the sidewalk. In the Pacific Northwest, we try not to even look at each other when passing, although people are friendly when something does get us talking.

It's a cultural difference. As a foreigner, the American way of exaggerating everything has always amazed me. They don't even notice themselves, so expect more of these "what's odd about it?" reactions.

European here, this might explain that awkward time when my American girlfriend tried to have the formal talk with me and I thought it wasn't necessary.

In the United States this is considered a "normal" amount of politeness. In some other cultures it is considered weird and fake. Some Americans go abroad and complain everyone was "rude" to them not realizing the cultural differences.

Don't forget to read the room, culturally. In Northern Europe I would wager that most people would not appreciate random small talk from strangers as much as Americans do, I know I don't.

It's also a cultural thing.As a Frenchman, many Americans find my totally France compliant speech a bit rude.On the other hand, I find their way of calling everyone a "friend" and every single nice things "amazing" extremely annoying.But if people are adults, having a little friction is not a big deal. We don't need to appreciate all behaviors to live together.This is something that is well understood in jobs with harsh conditions, but in our very comfy

Hmm, I found American culture a bit indirect, not saying what they mean.

I face it A LOT with US people. I'm a Pole, and this additional layer of "politness" presented by US is quite difficult and strange. Especially that I observed that such short lived enthusiasm shown on meetings is not followed by long term behaviour (and does not represent real feeling of US person, but is hard to get at start).IT's nice at start, and while it last, yet it's quite a difference I observe. I wonder if they find us cold and impolite during such encounter