I thought myself to be smart, so with help of Google Translate, I found the Chinese characters that were supposed to spell "3 cm"[0]. I copied them down, and in

I thought myself to be smart, so with help of Google Translate, I found the Chinese characters that were supposed to spell "3 cm"[0]. I copied them down, and in the barbershop, I proudly showed them to the barber, who nodded and invited me to the chair. The guy was stellar, but halfway through the cutting it dawned on me something is wrong. Turns out, what I thought was "cm" was actually spelling "mm"! He would've likely double-checked with me if I tried to spell this out at the shop[1], but apparently I came across as someone who really knew what they want, coming in confidently with the order already precisely written in Chinese and all. Lesson learned. I still think the idea was good, and I'd still go for giving explicit length (it's a natural fit, as it translates to cutting head numbers for the electric hair cutters). I'd just triple-check it next time, and not act like I have it all figured out. -- [0] - Or thereabouts; I'm sure about the unit, but the exact number might've been something else between 2 and 6. [1] - The barber didn't know English, but knew the metric system and arabic numerals, so we've confirmed the misunderstanding with pen and paper.