Big city!
There is a big difference between people of smaller low pace places compared to big out of size cities. I realized the same difference when I was in Iran as well. We moved from Shiraz to Tehran. The first thing you find out is that you should be careful or people would rip you up fast and without hesitation. The same thing is visible here in US, as I was driving through the States, I could see that people in smaller cities are more polite and friendly, unbelievably different from California.
My first bad experience was with a bank teller over the phone, a young girl who had a strong accent (sounded like black people in movies!), when I saw I am not getting anything off the phone I politely ask her If she could talk a bit slower and louder, she did not like that and started to talk even faster, since I was not getting what she was telling me, I repeatedly asked her to say stuff again which she did not like at all, at some point she was so annoyed that when she was confirming my long two part, unfamiliar family name, she said "G as in Garbage", I have had similar experiences in Iran, but never in Canada,
Second one, my wife hired 3 movers over the phone to help me move our stuff down the truc into the apartment. Du to my past experiences with the movers I already knew what kind of people these mover companies are but I had no choice. To make the story short: they screw up and dropped one wooden furniture and damaged it, even though I was covered by he insurance he is not paying for the damage, another negative stuff is that when he knew that the move has went wrong and I am really upset with that, he filed a positive feed back giving himself a 5 star rating (that is another story how he got the login information out of me, a simple country man coming to LA).
third one, I went to the LA customs head office which is close to LA international airport, I was doing the paper work for importing my car from Canada to US, the officer told me to go and have a seat waiting for my documents to get ready, while I was sitting two guys where talking Spanish and I realized they are looking at me. One of them asked me if I have forgotten my wallet at the counter where I submitted my documents, first I said no but then I realized my wallet is not on me and he told me some guy took it and quickly walked away, I ran out and luckily spotted the guy who just got in his truck, I ran to him yelling and before he got away I caught his jacket, since there was a lot of cops around he did not risk it and through out wallet out of window and speeded away. I got my wallet, but if I was 5 seconds late, I could not have it back!
the scary thing is that all these happened in a period of about 10 days, am I going to have more surprises?