You could say 1 meter and 83 centimeters, or if you prefer, 1 meter, 8 decimeters and 3 centimeters. If you really want to complain about metric, complain that

You could say 1 meter and 83 centimeters, or if you prefer, 1 meter, 8 decimeters and 3 centimeters. If you really want to complain about metric, complain that it is base 10 instead of base 12. Twelve is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6 making dividing into fifths, quarters, thirds or halves easier, while decimal is only divisible by 2 and 5, which base twelve already does and more and more difficult to divide into quarters and thirds. This is why clocks have 12 hours per half day instead of 10.