Reddit<\/a> with a post tagged as a \u201cculture shock\u201d, they shared their grievance.<\/p>\nThe American penned: \u201cSomething I\u2019ve noticed living in the UK is how differently \u2018closing time\u2019 works. In the US, if a place says it closes at 9pm, you can usually walk in at 8:55 and still get served \u2014 ‘closing’ means that\u2019s when they stop serving new customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the UK, closing time is when the employees expect to be walking out the door to go home. Restaurants shut their kitchens an hour before the posted time, and grocery stores might even stop letting people in 20\u201330 minutes before closing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis caused some frustration my first year here: I\u2019d walk into a caf\u00e9 ten minutes before closing, hoping to grab a coffee, only to find the machine already turned off.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr I\u2019d run out to pick up milk or eggs ten minutes before a grocery store\u2019s closing time, only to find they\u2019d stopped letting people in.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a bid to counteract this confusion, they\u2019ve now \u201cmentally pushed back every posted closing time by an hour to reflect British reality\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the comments section, fellow Reddit users were keen to share their thoughts, with many on board with the British way of doing things.<\/p>\n
One person said: \u201cAnd that\u2019s another reason why I love living in the UK. Staff leaving on time since they have their own lives and family. Bartenders earning a decent wage so they\u2019re not dependent on tips to survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve gotten used to the closing time means closing time. I think back when I used to work in retail and cursed the customers that would show up 5 minutes before [store] closing to buy a hair tie\u201d.<\/p>\n
Another shared: \u201cI used to work in a big box retailer and we were forbidden from telling customers it was time to close, or that the store had already closed and they should pay for their stuff and go. I once had to hang around for an hour after closing because the manager wouldn’t do this.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate stores saying \u2018hey you’ve got 15 minutes to pay for your stuff because we’re going home\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
A third commented: \u201cThe British way of retail is so much more civilised.\u201d<\/p>\n
Someone else disagreed with the original poster\u2019s line of thinking and added: \u201cUmmm, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but no one, and I mean NOBODY, that works in a restaurant thinks \u2018anyone that walks in at 8:55 is [the] last new customer\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201c9pm is when they close, meaning they want you out at 9pm\u2026 Any other thinking is entitlement [to] the nth degree\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though Brits and Americans share the same language, there’s still an abundance of cultural and social differences between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,393,4884,2511,183,16,15,416],"class_list":{"0":"post-447929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-reddit","12":"tag-travel","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-viral"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115259333213052522","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Motion-blurring](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0_GettyImages-2203440149.jpg\")
An American living in England is ‘frustrated’ by one big difference about life in the UK (stock image)(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n