Very nice, I got a chuckle from the one that said "How do you want your eggs".

In the 80s where I worked, we had a large project to enhance the systems to our plant in Ireland. So for a couple of months a team from Ireland came here to the US to work with us.

The question "How do you want your eggs" at a breakfast place confused them to no end. Seems at the time in Ireland, eggs only were cooked one way, kind of like pouched. I do not know if that is now still true.

(Brit here). When I used to travel to the US for work / holidays I was always amazed at how many breakfast options were available compared with UK ‘greasy spoon’ cafes. I used to make it a game to try to order breakfast specifying all the choices I wanted without the waiter having to ask me any questions.

Coming from France, the first time I was asked how I would like my eggs in the US I was incredibly confused. In France the menu would list the different cooking style the kitchen is offering explicitly. Many times they don't tell, it's whatever the kitchen chef decided was appropriate for the dish. In France it is also uncommon for the kitchen to customize the menu to your preference.

I'd just like to add to this little subthread that short-order cooking had a lot to do with this - it's the intermediate step we went through between family restaurants and fast food. When I think of a single person standing at his station making 100 customized meals for people over the space of a couple of hours, that's my idea of "socialism" working.

Incredibly hard to find real documentation on how short-order cooks work, but the best resource I've found (though brief) is Fast Foods and Short Order Cooking, by Pepper, Pratt and Winnick (1984). I've been dreaming about writing a manual for years, but I'd have to find some shifu to teach me. I was a grill cook (as a young person), but never had to handle the entire thing.

Had a similar experience when i first went to the US. Apparently "fried" was not an adequate answer, because there are numerous ways to do that.