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So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

sheeplady

I'll Lock Up
Bartender
Messages
4,479
Location
Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, USA
And you know this how? (Just kidding)

Growing up, for several years in grammar school we were told that "by the time you are adults, we'll have converted to the metric system" so they jammed it down our throats for a few years and then, magically, it stopped. It was - my unstudied hindsight guess - an educational fad for a few years. Anyone know why it took of as an educational fad?

So I do know that my former city, syracuse ny was the testing grounds for going metric. I believe in the 1970s or 60s. The government changed all the signage.

People were irate about it. Hence no metric system for the US.

It was thought if the metric system was a success in the Syracuse area, it would be adopted anyplace. Syracuse is still the testing ground for company products. Regularly you'll find products on store shelves and in vending machines that "don't technically exist yet" or that you'll never see again.

Like soda pop skittles; which I can tell you were a major disappointment. As were the ice cream skittles, which i believe were released nationally? I've also had weird twinkies, odd cling wrap, and funky smelling shampoo. In many cases, there will be a product on the shelves branded as Product Name that will exist for 3 to six months and then disappear, followed by it being replaced with Different Name, but it's the same darned product it just has advertising now to boot.

They also try to trick you with this crud. I ate a lot of ice cream skittles for a three month period because they were in the same wrapper as the original, and in the vending machine I couldn't see the fine print that said, "new ice cream flavor!" Since it had "please call this number to provide feedback" I did once and let them have a piece of my mind.

And then they messed with my skittles making the green ones sour apple. And that change went national. :mad:
 
Messages
13,672
Location
down south
a35fbc879d09393c585f2f1b40abb5c4.jpg

Where blue m&ms really come from.
 
I understand Congress made the metric system legal for trade in the US in 1886. So, you can use it if you want to.

The metric system is widely used for scientific and technical applications across the US. But most US commodities are still sold using something else, sometimes the US customary units, sometimes Imperial units, sometimes some nonsensical goofball measurement such as a barrel of oil. We obviously hate change.
 

p51

One Too Many
Messages
1,119
Location
Well behind the front lines!
I'd totally forgotten that Florida, for a while, went to dual metric/standard speed signs on the highways. People kept arguing that they WERE going the speed limit or less when pulled over, mistaking the metric for MPH. In a state with an amazing amount of people who don't speak good English or aren't very lucid due to age, the state eventually gave up as judges were often throwing those tickets out in the cases where people would contest them.
 
Messages
10,939
Location
My mother's basement
If my feeble memory can be trusted, there was a push to "go metric" in the early- to mid-1970s. I recall PSAs and the like promoting it, and I think I recall speed limit signs in both kph and mph.
 

Nobert

Practically Family
Messages
832
Location
In the Maine Woods
There are two reasons I will never embrace the metric system:

One) It lacks poetry. I concede that it makes much more sense to use a decimal system of measurement for science and technological purposes, measuring both the staggeringly vast and bogglingly minute. If that's what you're into. But it's rigid and unforgiving. It makes a more natural and wholesome sense to divide things by 12 and 16. In the continual halving of an inch, one encounters Xeno's Paradox, in a foot you can make threes, fours, twos and sixes, each with their own feel and rhythm. An ounce might find its mer-cousin, the fluid ounce, as mysterious as we do the mysteries of the deep. Try nicknaming a small person by calling them "Deciliter." Just doesn't have the same ring does it? The whole ten tens thing is like reading a tax form by comparison.

Two) It has no human proportion. How many meters tall are you? Most likely, somewhere between "one' and "two." That's no basis for a human size. Sure, one might be five feet and some change, but within those increments lies the basic, median scale of humanity in its full grown state. Between one and two meters could be anything. In metric, do you express your height in centimeters? Then you're into triple digits. So in that regard, the metric system serves only the purpose of those who like to pretend they're a giant. In meters, you could measure your yard, but then you might as well do it in yards. An inch is about the smallest distance most of us would consider noticing in our day-to-day life. That's how much an inanimate object would have to move before it really concerned you. Anything less could be explained away by fluke circumstances. If you move less than an inch, you're an artist's model. Nobody could move less than a centimeter, not even those people who work as living mannequins.
 
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Hercule

Practically Family
Messages
953
Location
Western Reserve (Cleveland)
Places, mostly cheap food establishments, that complain of being "slammed".

While I can understand being caught off guard by a sudden influx of customers beyond what you normally would expect, I refuse to believe it's an acceptable excuse for poor service. Seriously, you are unable to function at full capacity? Put your big boy undies on and deal with it! Get going and thaw some more burger, put more bagels in the oven and make more coffee!
 
Places, mostly cheap food establishments, that complain of being "slammed".

While I can understand being caught off guard by a sudden influx of customers beyond what you normally would expect, I refuse to believe it's an acceptable excuse for poor service. Seriously, you are unable to function at full capacity? Put your big boy undies on and deal with it! Get going and thaw some more burger, put more bagels in the oven and make more coffee!

In the restaurant business, this is known as being "in the weeds". And it's not that they can't operate at full capacity, it's when suddenly everyone comes in at once and expects to be served immediately. The idea of having to wait one's turn, turns people into entitled, obnoxious Neanderthals.
 

swanson_eyes

Practically Family
Messages
827
Location
Wisconsin
Bingo to the second power. A certain number of people on staff can only do a finite amount of things. I don't work in a restaurant, but I lost a customer today because the technology wasn't working and every time he came up to see if I could help him, I was with someone else. He walked up no less than 3 times and each time just walked away instead of waiting a few seconds so he could be next in line. We were slammed, but he was too impatient.

Put your big boy undies on and deal with it!
? Yeah, I do that whenever we are overrun by customers. I go far above and beyond what I should have to do, but it doesn't make service any faster, the amount of customers any more reasonable, nor the staff any more adequate. I resent the implication that people in the service industry don't work hard enough. We work extremely hard and most of the complainers would not be able to handle a single day of it.
 
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