Let’s just pretend that metric doesn’t have fractions.
Not that they don’t exist, but in my experience I have never seen them used, if something is, say, 1/2 liter you see it written as 50cl…
For burgers, I have seen
- 150gr
- 250gr
- 2 x 150gr
- 500gr
- 1kg
But maybe it’s only my experience and in other parts of Europe it’s different
1/2 liter is usually marked as 0,5 liter.
? No it isn’t
It depends on the country.
Would you rather eat the 113-grammer burger? Or the 151-grammer burger?
Yes.
There is also a metric pound but honestly people don’t use it.
1/3 equals 1/4 because in both cases you have 1.
I’ve just had a radical idea to solve obesity in America
I’m gonna move the goal posts here and say smaller burgers are inherently better. I don’t want to chew on a giant pile of ground beef.
You must love the smashburger trend
Absolutely. Throw on some cheddar or muenster and drizzle some hot bbq, we’re in business.
I hear this type of take often but I’m skeptical that it happened (originally heard it as McDonald’s doing it, not A&W) and I’m skeptical that it’s the reason it failed.
You could test this by setting up a food stall that sells something like this as a control.
- 6 pc for $5
- 9 pc for $5
- 12 pc for $9
Then do something similar with the burgers. See how many people inherently want more for the same price. Then switch it up so the middle one is cheaper. Switch the ordering of the lists as well. Etc.
Do I think some people just don’t understand fractions and think third is less? Sure. But I think there are too many variables to say that’s it alone. If someone is that bad with math, it’s gonna matter if you write it as ½ ⅓ ¼ or half third quarter. Then it’s gonna matter if they ask what the ⅓ means versus if the cashier asks if they want “half, third, or quarter”.
All that to say, I think there are definitely some people who don’t inherently want more food, even if it’s the same price (and maybe even if it’s cheaper) and I’m not sure how many people like that there are versus people who are bad at the math aspect. Throw in stuff about how the menu is presented and I just don’t see how we can really come to this conclusion.
Shout out to the time my buddy realized it was 1¢ cheaper to get two 6 of meals than one 12 pc meal. (Basically 6 of was like $5.99 and 12 pc was like $11.99 or whatever.)
I mean, I don’t know why you’d be skeptical.
A&W has a write up about it https://www.awrestaurants.com/blog/memories-history/the-truth-about-aws-third-pound-burger-and-the-major-math-mix-up/
And Snope’s did an article https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/
There’s plenty of blunders like this. Like when JCPenny’s just gave great prices and sales dropped because if something is $50, that’s too much. But 75% off from $200, well, that’s a deal! We know more about the JCPenny one, because it happened in 2012 and not 1980-something
It’s not like I’m gonna do research before making every comment. I was skeptical because it sounds far fetched.
I see this repeated all the time and I’m sure there’s some truth to it, but A&W burgers are also disgusting and more expensive than their competitors. So there’s that.
It was more because there weren’t many A&Ws around. Closest to me was over an hour away.
This is so dumb
the whole meme is just euro cope
Is that like a crab cake as a burger? What’s up with the giant chunks of cucumber? That sweet and sour sauce running down it is gonna make that so messy and the bun is gonna be sliding off in both sides and soaked through.
Christ that is more cursed a burger than an A&W burger could ever be.
Yeah, if this is the burger they introduced then I think we know why it failed.
No, Americans could have had bigger burgers if they weren’t stupid.
There are three countries using the ass backwards Imperial measurement system. USA, Liberia and Myanmar…WTF???
Should have sold it as a 2/6ths burger.
The maths teachers wouldn’t have been happy, but apparently the buyers would have.“Woah, 2/6 is waayyyy bigger than 1/4, not like that teensy 1/3 burger they used to have”
[VINCENT]
And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
[JULES]
They don’t call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?
[VINCENT]
No, they don’t have fractions, they wouldn’t know what the fuck a Quarter is.
[JULES]
Then what do they call it?
[VINCENT]
They call it Royale with Cheese.
Recently it occurred to me that in the US we have 25¢ coins but $20 bills. It never bothered me before but it’s really odd. Especially when many other countries have 20"¢" coins.
No, they don’t have fractions, they wouldn’t know what the fuck a Quarter is.
“No they have the metric system, they don’t know what the fuck a quarter pounder is”
Fractions aren’t imperial, fractions are fractions, everyone has them. It’s the ‘pound’ that’s imperial and normal people don’t use.
How could OP have transcribed the movie clip so wrong, but still made an absurdist joke? Thanks for clearing it up.
I’ve been a victim of Poe’s Law, but there has to be some threshold where it’s not ambiguous.
#woosh
metric system
Is this one of those intentionally-obviously-wrong comments designed to encourage people to comment on the meme?
Worked didn’t it?
TIL fractions don’t exist in the metric system.
well they do, but since it’s metric it’s always 1/10 1/100 … and they have their own name so no math needed
Fractions still work the same way. The thing is Americans would think the 1/100 is bigger than 1/2, because 100>2. Doesn’t matter what unit you start with
Edit: I see what you’re saying with the names. But do you think the average american knows that a quarter pounder is less than a third pounder?
I don’t think they’re significantly stupider than anywhere else. I don’t know if there even are statistics on that, I should probably check. Plenty of people are terrible at math over here in Europe too.
The average American literally works in random-ass fractions all the time and doesn’t rely on everything being base ten.
I really want to believe that, as an American. I really, really do. How would a legitimate way of testing that go? There’s no feasible way to test EVERYBODY, so you’d have to consult the statistics people, who I am not.
I was about to start looking into median ages and education rates and literacy, but I really don’t care that much about this as I lay in bed and am about to go to sleep, so I asked chatgpt, which then gave me a long answer with this at the end:
Yes, the average American probably knows that 1/3 is greater than 1/4, but a noticeable percentage—especially among adults with lower educational attainment or math anxiety—may hesitate or answer incorrectly, especially outside of a clear, direct question.
And my intuition tells me this is likely right on.
one way to test it is if a major corporation active all over the country introduces a product with a fraction in the name, meant as a competitor to another product with a smaller fraction. the sales numbers would roughly reflect the result.
Mmmmm… Doubt.
I grew up with a mcds and an a&w nearby in the 90s and 00s. A&W is kinda like Wendy’s: their food just kinda sucks. I don’t look at value that closely unless all other things are equal. So saying “nobody bought our burger because they all can’t read numbers” is kind’ve a petulant behavior unless it’s proven imo… it’s like making excuses for your failures.
People just LIKE McDonald’s. And and brand loyalty is real.
People just LIKE McDonald’s
…why?
Here in Japan, it’s one of the few restaurants that’s often open at 4 AM and has free wifi and phone charging, and is the same across the country. Kinda like wafflehouse, I rarely eat there, but it’s nice as a last resort.
The food is still mid, and kinda expensive at 2/3 or less the cost in the US.
People all over the world like McDonald’s for different reasons. That’s not a serious question.
Can this not be Reddit? Please? Reddit culture sucked and I left there for good reason. It doesn’t have to be funny or clever anymore. It’s just real people having real discussion, intelligently, on a real level, yeah?
Most Americans are educated, but it’s a really diverse country with lots of issues. There are plenty of people in countries that use metric that don’t even understand metric or fractions, too, as most people are the exact goddamn same, especially now with the internet. A&W burgers were a specific type and I don’t remember them being very good. I think that’s why they failed, not because people couldn’t maximize the value. If anything, I think it was a death spiral in a company known for putting soft serve and soda together, not 1/12th of a pound of shitty beef.
They probably weren’t making much money, had to cut back, shitty employees cutting quality because they don’t care and bad leadership, and people stopped going even more, and then leadership blamed literacy instead of their own repeated fuckups and that nobody really liked them anymore.
Had they adopted the metric system
Or at least had an education system capable of teaching basic maths
You’re from the UK I presume then? 🙂
