I tend to eat the same meal at work every day. If you know me, you’ll concur. What I lack in variety, I make up for in knowing exactly how much sliced turkey I need for the following weeks sandwiches. Instead of generically asking for one pound or half a pound of turkey, I’ll ask for a more specific measure. This causes issues.

Organic sliced meat only lasts so long, so I like to buy the exact amount I need based on how many days I predict I’ll be taking a lunch into work. Quite often, for example, I need just under half a pound. If I were to buy exactly half a pound, then a couple of slices would be bad by Friday.

It’s worth pointing out, at this early stage, how supermarket scales are configured. They usually have settings for multiple weighing units including pounds, fractional ounces, decimal ounces, combined pound:ounce display (either fractional or decimal ounces), kilograms, and grams. The supermarkets I visit seem to favour “decimal ounces”. 

I’m very much against the concept of decimal ounces. Decimal essentially means out of 10, and there are 16 ounces in a pound. So, for example, 2.5 pounds is not 2 pounds and 5 ounces, it’s 2 pounds and 8 ounces. And 4 pounds and 9 ounces is 4. 5625 pounds. I don’t see the need for this unnecessary confusion.

The digital scales at the supermarket, set to decimal ounces

A better method would be to use “fractional pounds”, so 2 and a half pounds would read 2½ on the scale. Just under 1 and a half would read 1⅜. Not particularly difficult, but not as plain straight forward as my suggested configuration "combined pound:ounce", which would simply display the number of pounds and the number of ounces. i.e. 3 lb 5 oz.

So, when I visit the delicatessen, I ask for 0.4 pounds of peppered turkey, sliced thin. (I know that their scale is configured for decimal ounces, so I bite my tongue and ask for 0.4 pounds. This way, they don’t have to do any conversion in their head and can simply read the number off the scale.)

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been given ¼ of a pound. It’s incredible. The one person in the store who’s been put in charge of weighing stuff does not have a basic understanding of fractions and decimals. If you work at the counter selling meat by weight, you’d think you would know how to determine how heavy some slices of meat are.

0.4 pounds of peppered turkey, sliced thin

One Third

I’ve also tried using fractions to order meat. Some weeks maybe I’m having a team building power lunch, so I know in advance, I’ll need one less packed lunch that week. Typically, I’ll order ⅓ of a pound. Inevitably the slices won’t produce exactly a third so it’ll be just over, something like 0.31 or 0.32. They’ll look at me and say, “it’s just over a third, is that OK?”. To which I’ll politely say “Yes” but secretly be screaming inside, "No! It’s not just over is it, It’s just under!" They have clearly not understood that ⅓ is 0.33 recurring.

The meat counter is not the only instance of this incredible issue. Let’s visit the sandwich shop!

One of my favourite shops has large sandwiches and sometimes, if my wife and I are not too hungry, we’ll share. We have the same base sandwich and then choose different fillings. So, they’ll need to cut the sandwich before adding the fillings. However, I have a bigger appetite than her, so I don’t want them to cut the sandwich exactly in half. No, that would be too easy. I’ll ask them to cut it such that it makes a ⅔ portion and a ⅓ portion. 

This is what we're aiming for

Now if you’ve attended at least one day of school in your life you’ll probably not know where I’m going with this story. You’re thinking. Well, they’ll just cut ⅓ off sandwich and that’ll be that. What a boring anecdote Adrian. But you’d be bang wrong!

The sandwich maker has a look of panic on their face. What did he say? ⅓? ⅜? 3/444? What do these numbers mean? I better just cut it somewhere… but where? I see them nervously moving the knife left and right just above the crust like a pre-reprimanded surgeon, trying to decide where to make the incision. I usually end up having to talk them though it!

I’m not the only one who has experienced this phenomenon. Back in the 1980's, a fast food restaurant called A&W tried to introduce a third-pound burger. It was the same price as the classic industry standard "Quarter Pounder" despite the extra meat...

“More than half of the participants in the Yankelovich focus groups questioned the price of our burger. "Why," they asked, "should we pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as we do for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald's? You're overcharging us." Honestly. People thought a third of a pound was less than a quarter of a pound. After all, three is less than four!” - Alfred Taubman

Enough said. You can read the other 2 thirds of the article here.

Too Thick

Another issue I often face at the delicatessen is getting the right thickness of meat. I like my turkey to be sliced very thin, which I ask for very clearly along with the quantity. But by the time they’ve negotiated the quantity land mine they’ve forgotten my original specification of slice thickness. 

The thinner the better please

Other times, they’ll helpfully cut a sample slice before completing the order, but even if I provide my feedback at this early stage, I often find that it still isn’t thin enough. My wife says I should just keep asking until it's right. Maybe it's the Britishness in me, but I don’t feel comfortable asking them to cut a second or third sample slice.

Summary

I love maths. The idea of solving a second order differential equation appeals to me greatly. But this isn’t engineering maths, this is Sesame Street maths. I just don’t understand how anyone would find these simple requests hard to resolve. I acknowledge that numbers are not everybody's cup of tea, that's OK, just don't work in a role what involves weighing.

To be honest, the scale is doing all of the work. All you have to do is place thinly sliced pieces of meat, yes, I said thinly, on the scale until the numbers match what I asked for. You don’t have to convert fractions in to decimals, you don’t have to solve for x, you just need an IQ somewhere in the region of Ernie's. Not even as high as Bert's.

On a positive note, every so often I get served by someone who knows exactly what they are doing. It's very refreshing. On rare occasion, the person behind the counter will even recognize me and quote my order back to me before I ask. They must see hundreds of customers a day so it's astonishing that they remember me, a socially awkward, lanky bloke with scruffy hair, British accent and who's asking for exactly 0.4 ounces of very thinly sliced peppered turkey.

Astonishing!