I found myself being annoyed in a very focused way today. Cindy is one of our company’s support staff. I really like her. She’s a bit younger than me but has worked for my company for longer, is friendly and chatty, and always offers me chocolate drinks.

Today she bounced into our pod.

“Hi everyone!” she drawled. Drawled? I swivelled in my chair. Cindy had just come back from two weeks in USA. Only two weeks and she had the full American accent. She was flattening her a’s and pursing her o’s and holding her r’s. She said ‘cell phone’ instead of ‘mobile’, ‘mom’ instead of ‘mum’, ‘take out’ instead of ‘take away’.

“Wow, Cindy,” my pod-mates marvelled. “You’ve lost your Australian accent!”

“I had lost it within three days,” she said proudly. “Look at these! Calvin Klein jeans — only 30 bucks! Everything’s so cheap. I’ve spent so much in two weeks. And omigod, I lurve Taco Bells. Do we have Taco Bells here? I’m so addicted to it.”

I listened in bemusement, thinking, “I spent two weeks in USA and I didn’t get an American accent. Those jeans are cheap because of cheap Mexican labour over the border. Taco Bells is Americanised Mexican food. There’s much better food around.”

I think Cindy has been struck down by a severe case of USA Worship. Symptoms? Wholesale, unquestioning adoption of American culture.

How annoying.