Forgive me for the following stereotype non politically correct thingy I'm going to say, but I thought Asians in general were supposed to be good at math? I seriously once read if you are in a math class or a scientific class and it's graded on a curve and it is full of Asians - run and drop the course. I'm not making that up!
So what brings this on? After just writing about being made to feel like an idiot while in line - I turned the tables on somebody Sunday night. I went back to Home Depot for the 37th time since the bathroom remodel began to buy a piece of trim. No silly, not that kind of trim. You can't buy that legally in PA.....unless dinner counts as payment? Anyway, I knew I needed a piece exactly 90 inches long and I picked out a piece that you pay for by the linear foot.
The lines were long in the main part of the store so I thought I would go pick out an extra Sheppard's hook and check out in the garden section. Well, the young Asian man who checked me out must have been about 22 or so and he seemed disgusted that I brought building materials down to gardening to checkout. Now, would the main floor be mad if I bought some bush up there? No. So gardening shouldn't be mad if I buy some wood or trim down there. Damn. So he said "we don't have the visual vertical tape down here to measure it". I said no problem, mate, it's exactly 90 inches, I cut it myself to size. He stared at his register looking like a 16 year old at McDonald's looking for the picture of the Big Mac. He sighed. He looked at the person working the other register and said "how do I do feet?". The person said "What?" and he said "oh never mind I have my phone."
At this point I'm lost because I thought he didn't know how to key it into his system. He stopped, pressed some keys on his phone, frowned, then looked at me and said "so you don't know how many feet it is?" I said yes, it's 7 1/2 feet. "Thanks! I needed the feet number, you can't key in inches. I couldn't remember how to do it".
Ladies and gentlemen, he wasn't even embarrassed. It's not like he forgot how to spell embarrassed. It's not like he couldn't remember who the last 10 Popes were. It's not like he couldn't name every element in order. I have to assume the man knows there are 12 inches in a foot. So either he didn't know that A. division was the required operation or B. he just couldn't divide 90 by 12 in his head.
I said "If it doesn't take inches how do you put in the half foot?" I was assuming that you just pay for 8 even if you bought 7 1/2. If it were my store, 7 feet 1 inch would equal 8 feet. Or, maybe they actually divide the per foot price by 12 for each inch but I doubt it. He replied, "I just put in 7 feet."
God help us. My daughter is 10. She can convert mostly all English units of measurement. Time, weight, liquid ounces, distance...... Home Depot needs some Home Schooling. They measured all of their IQ's. They were pretty Lowe's. Booooooooooooo.
6 comments:
That reminds me of the young girl at the convenience store here. I ordered 3/4 pound of sliced turkey breast and she didn't know how to weigh it because it was a digital scale.
Her helper had to explain it was like a dollar and 3 quarters would be 75. It's a wonder I didn't get 7 1/2 pounds!
order 12/16ths chipped ham next time. it's not even the people who just don't know, it's also the people who have to even think about it. there are a ton of people who still can't even conceptualize a million or billion.
Maybe he was thinking in meters...
That's hilarious! Hey, be happy - you got some free trim! lol
Too bad you didn't try for a free bush.
If Fan came home with both bush and trim, Mrs. Fan would have taken a rusty hand saw to his wood!
Big Ben sez it is illegal to obtain trim in Georgia using alcoholic beverages as well!
This reminds me of when Em was a baby. She was very lightweight and we were going to to pediatrician every 2-3 weeks for a weigh-in. They had a digital scale, and she weighed in one day at say, 8.9 pounds. The nurse wrote it down as 8lbs, 9oz. I told her that was wrong, and she didn't believe me! The dr came in and corrected her and rolled her eyes. I commented that I hoped my kid's prescrips weren't weight-dependent, as she had just erred by more than 10 percent of her body weight!
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