4 ms·
I was standing at the deli counter of my supermarket and the person in front of me told the employee "I want more than a quarter pound but less than a half poun
by hansthehorse 5y ago
I was standing at the deli counter of my supermarket and the person in front of me told the employee "I want more than a quarter pound but less than a half pound". I told her "back when I was in school we called that a third of a pound but it might have changed since then, it was a long time ago". She turned around and continued her quest to discover what a third was.
- selcuka 5y agoIt is more likely that what she envisioned was 3/8 though.
- teawrecks 5y agoOr maybe 4/9
- silisili 5y agoAgreed. At least in the US, we really seem to love base 2 denominators on our strange measurements.
- jfengel 5y agoWhich I would have called "six ounces". The American measuring system is a pain in the butt for a lot of reasons, but "16 ounces to a pound" does make for a lot of very nice even divisions. Half is 8; a quarter is 4; midway between the two is 6.
- saghm 5y agoOne time when at a burger restaurant with my father when I was maybe 9 or 10, we overheard someone in line ahead of us say (completely seriously) "I don't think I could eat a 1/3 lb burger, so I'll just get a 1/2 lb). I found this terribly amusing back then, and almost two decades later my father and I still make jokes about it every time we go to that restaurant.