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What seemed weird when I visited your country

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Grognard:
here's a tidbit...

at my work, everyone calls me "Mr. Grognard".
but then, I call them by their ranks.

referring to me as "Mister" makes me feel old.
but then: I am the oldest person in the office.

Mlle Germain:

--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 04 Jun 2014, 05:25 ---See, I kind of find it funny, because people who know me to pretty much any degree call me Eric. But my closest friends? Those are the ones that call me by my last name! Also, I find it depressing when someone says that "x is not my friend" in a context where you don't have a reason to dislike x. Why isn't x your friend? Why can't they be your friend for a little while? Not having everyone be your friend to some degree by default sounds like an awful way to live.

--- End quote ---
I totally disagree. (I realise this might well be a language/culture thing and I think it is an interesting thing to explore in this thread! Probably friend means something different to you than it does to me.)
Somebody not being my friend does absolutely not mean I dislike them. I like a lot of people very well that I just do not know well enough to call them "friend". My friends are people who I regularly spend time with outside of work/university and probably also other regularly scheduled activities like team sports, whose private life I am interested and invested in, who I keep in contact with because I genuinely enjoy their company and they are important to me, whom I will help if they ever run into trouble, who I will rely on to help me if I am in trouble. Of course I met most of my friends at university or via hobbies, but just knowing someone from there doesn't make them a friend, it makes them an acquaintance. There is not enough time in my life to have more than, say, roughly ten to fifteen actual friends.
Of course I won't say to anybody: "My friend quota is full, go away." That's not how it works. If it so happens, I will spend more time with them and get to know them better and we will become friends.

And at work, trying to be friends with your collegues can be very annoying and bad for the work environment: Let's face it - you don't spend time with each other because you enjoy each other's company, but because you're being paid to. You have work to do and your job (or especially the bosses job) is to make sure everything is running smoothly and effectively. Friendship has nothing to do with it. And one shouldn't confuse a work relationship with friendship; that is really not fair on the other person.
Of course you can be friends with your collegues outside work, but at work that shouldn't play any role. Also, I am not a fan of employees being urged to spend time together outside work to bond or whatever - it is a job. You have every right to keep it separate from your private life and it absolutely doesn't make you a bad employee.

About how you address other people: The UK is turning out to be way less formal that way than Germany, at least on the surface. At uni in Germany, everybody says "Sie", the German formal personal pronoun, and students address professors (actual professors, not tutors or postdocs, usually) by their last names by default, and the same the other way round. If you work together on research, that's different. Then people will usually use first names and "du", the informal personal pronoun. The default thing for people you meet in a business setting (not via friends or sports or hobbies, there it's usually "du") or on the streets is to address them with "Sie" and "Herr"(Mr) or "Frau"(Ms) + last name. That is not considered overly formal at all.
Teachers start calling their students "Sie" from 11th grade (17) onwards, though usually in combination with the first name (students always call teachers "Sie" and Mr/Ms last name at least at school).
I actually get annoyed when people in Germany that I don't know (in shops, at the doctor's etc.) address me with "du", because that means they treat me like a child. At almost 23, that's kind of annoying.
The only situation where it's really awkward is with your friends' parents - I never know how to address them. I usually either go with "Sie" to be safe until I am told to use "du" or I formulate all my sentences in a way that avoids addressing them at all. My parents say "Sie" to my friends (which I and also my friends usually still find weird at our age. My friends then tell them to use "du"). Usually going from "Sie" to "du" is a mutual thing that is mostly offered by the more senior person, though.

In the UK, this seems to be vastly different and people seem to call each other by their first names almost immediately, regardless whether the setting is business or private. For me, it still feels weird to address my professors at university with their first name, but I am getting used to it. When I contact someone for the first time, I still always address them as Mr/Ms, Dr, Professor etc., and then when they reply, I will address them similarly to how they addressed me or how they signed their message the next time. I guess people from Germany who are used to using first names only in a pretty familiar setting have to be a bit careful not to confuse calling someone by their firstname with actually being on familiar terms with them.

Oh god, this is a wall of text :-o Sorry...

Edit: I now after rereading Garand's post, I still have something to add: To me it feels very weird to address your parents in a formal way or even by their first names (again a cultural thing, I am sure). A few friends of mine call their parents by their first names and it just feels so... I don't know, unfamiliar. I call my parents "Mama" and "Papa", the German versions of Mum and Dad. And they usually call me little kid nicknames that can be kind of embarrassing in front of other people, but I don't actually mind, because they're my parents and so they're allowed to call me things I would let noone else call me.

nekowafer:
I'm basically always called by a nickname by people who know me - mostly because my first name is difficult to pronounce. I am used to working in non-formal settings (retail, specifically Hot Topic, where most of my customers were teenagers), where calling me by my last name would have been far too formal. Now I work with physicians. I call them Dr. [last name], and they call me Elesia or Miss Bowers. And it's weird being called the latter, as it makes me feel kind of old.

Basically I have never been in an actual formal setting and wouldn't know what to do with myself were I to be put in one.

My parents are still mommy and daddy. My brother goes by his nickname, my sister by her first name.

Oh and for most of my childhood I went by my middle name, Lynne (or Lynnie), which is far easier to pronounce.

Pilchard123:
UKian here. Both jobs I've had have been first-name jobs with everyone in the office, with the exception of those with the same first name. Then it's usually 'FirstName SurnameInitial' (Bob A and Bob B) or NonoffensiveDistinctiveFeature FirstName (Small Bob and Tall Bob).

Barmymoo:
I have called almost everyone by their first name since I was sixteen (not because that was the age cut off for doing so, but because at 16 I moved to a sixth form college where teachers went by first names). Almost all my lecturers and supervisors at both universities use their first names - we would sometimes refer to lecturers who we didn't know personally by their surnames between students, but never had cause to address them so I don't know what we'd have said to their face. Probably Dr/Professor Surname, because we hadn't been introduced.

I actually can't think of a single instance where I call someone by their title and surname. Possibly my doctor - I don't know his first name. Then again I can't usually remember his surname either. I call my mentors by their first names. Some of the doctors in the hospital go by first names, some by last, some by nicknames. I never know who any of them are anyway.

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