I don’t remember the subject ever coming up the last two times I’ve visited (2005 and 2009). Everything in the UK is Celsius and she uses that. Remember, she was born in San Francisco in 1950, lived there until 1976, then moved to the UK, so she is not in the generation of UK school children who were taught metric. However, wandering through Waitrow’s (which is a really great store, by the way), everything except a few bottles of milk is in metric only, with no imperial equivalent.
I didn’t pay much attention to how she cooked, so I don’t know what she did there. It certainly does not help that the roads are still marked in imperial. Carleton From: Kilopascal [mailto:kilopas...@cox.net] Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 12:07 To: 'U.S. Metric Association' Subject: Re: [USMA:53590] RE: Unit Pricing of Consumer Products in Retail Marketplaces OK. You answered the second question in the first paragraph, but what about the other questions that are actually more in line with determining a person’s knowledge and preference for using metric units? If you ask her the temperature will she tell you and others in degrees celsius or will she convert it to fahrenheit? What about volumes? Does she use litres or switch everything over to pints, quarts and gallons? How much metric does she willingly use? From: Carleton MacDonald <mailto:carlet...@comcast.net> Sent: Saturday, 2014-02-22 11:03 To: 'Kilopascal' <mailto:kilopas...@cox.net> ; 'U.S. Metric Association' <mailto:usma@colostate.edu> Subject: RE: [USMA:53590] RE: Unit Pricing of Consumer Products in Retail Marketplaces Because then the customer and the deli counter employee would get into a needless argument over the correct way to order things. It’s understood that a “quarter” gets you 125 g. Barbara understands it, the employee understands it, and everyone’s happy. Carleton From: Kilopascal [mailto:kilopas...@cox.net] Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 08:54 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:53590] RE: Unit Pricing of Consumer Products in Retail Marketplaces Just out of curiosity why does your friend not just ask for 125 g or some amount in increments of 100 g? What would she do if a new clerk behind the counter interpreted her request for “a quarter” as 0.25 kg or 250 g and sold her that much? Does it bother her that the scale doesn’t show pounds? Has she ever used the word ‘gram” in a request or does she always speak Luddite? I wonder if she is functional at all in the metric system despite the exposure to it in the marketplace. I wonder how quickly metric requests would increase if the shops would offer special discounts to customers (like 5 % off) if they asked for amounts in increments of 100 g? [USMA:53590] RE: Unit Pricing of Consumer Products in Retail Marketplaces carletonm Thu, 20 Feb 2014 09:03:28 -0800 I have seen "per 100 g" a lot at deli counters there. Most people don't buy over 1 kg of ham, of cheese, etc. so 100 g is closer to quantities they actually do purchase. My American-born friend Barbara (a fellow native San Franciscan like me) who married a UK professor in 1976 lives in Kenilworth, south of Coventry. She likes to shop every day. She goes to the local Waitrow's or Sainsbury's and asks for "a quarter" of ham, of cheese, etc. Although to the old-timers this means a quarter-pound, by convention what she gets is 125 g. Carleton No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com> Version: 2014.0.4335 / Virus Database: 3705/7116 - Release Date: 02/22/14
