Do Americans Have....

[Arti]

Do Americans have built-in compasses? In films, how come they always know where the 'south exit' is?
If, in this country, some coppers were in say, a department store looking for a suspect and they got a message on their radios saying, 'he's left through the west exit', they wouldn't have a clue. So how do Americans know? I can understand them perhaps knowing directions on streets, because a lot of US cities are laid-out in grid style, but how do they know in other places?

[bednobs]

are you seriously saying that is if you were in a dept store and someone asked you to got to the west exit (for example) you wouldn't be able to roughly work out which way it was?

[Eve]

I noted that a lot of directions seemed to be referred to by compass eg go east on x street. Guess it's second nature if you have it around you all the time and if you can reference yourself in relation to streets then it works in other places.

[starone]

I was in Marks and Spencers once, years ago as usual, and there was a bomb scare. I didn't wait to find out whether it was north, south east or west, just headed for the nearest exit. As for stairs, I think I developed wings.