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? 🙂
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.
I want a 0.5 liter burger, please.
No it’s 500 mL
SI says either 0.5 Liter or better 0.0005 m^3
? No it isn’t
It depends on the country.
Depends where you live, but it definitely is
Yes it is, living in Brazil all my life and I’ve** seen it and wrote it myself that way
Edit: one to I’ve, stupid gboard has gotten so fucking bad with
shippingswipping latelyOh ok cool never been to brazil
Would you rather eat the 113-grammer burger? Or the 151-grammer burger?
Yes.
Viertel Pfünder und Drittel Pfünder isjust as confusing.
There is also a metric pound but honestly people don’t use it.
Americans if they adopted the metric system: “.25kg > .5kg”
Classic.
“.25kg > .5kg”
Which one of those is a third?
Deoends on whether you’re asking for a third of 0.75kg or a third of 1.5 kg
0.25 > 0.3
0.03333333333333333~
Missed a bit
But that’s easy to solve by just adding a zero to .5
.25kg < .50kg
Though I could see some profit seeking companies selling a .250 burger for 25% more than their .25 burger.
The likely answer lol
No, Americans could have had bigger burgers if they weren’t stupid.
TIL fractions don’t exist in the metric system.
We wouldn’t normally say “I’d like a 18/100 kilogram burger”…
Yup for us its 250g vs 333g burgers. Or 0.25 vs 0.33kg
especially in the context of foodstuffs the decagramm (or just deka in common language) is getting used in Austria, don’t know if it’s the same in germany, so it would be a 25 deka burger
MORE DEKA!!!
Eh that’s regional still, like in dutch we’ve changed the meaning of old imperial words to be equal to metric quantities, though probably used more common by older people. So 1 ons (ounce) = 100g and a pond (pound) is half a kg. But this is mostly used at a butcher. For other stuff we mostly just use the metric nomenclature.
And these signs could have used ounces instead. But they didn’t. We had other units available. The units weren’t the issue
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.
Sounds to me like they missed the opportunity to sell a 1/5 burger for more instead.
Fifthy pounder on the way
The filthy pounder with cheese. Sounds like a good movie.
A regular McDonald’s hamburger is 1/10, I think people would have figured it out at that point.
Do Americans need bigger burgers?
Yes
Fair question. ☝️
metric system
Is this one of those intentionally-obviously-wrong comments designed to encourage people to comment on the meme?
Worked didn’t it?
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”
Lol that’s amazing, I’m not American so I’ve not come across this ad before. Thanks.
[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.
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.
#woosh
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.
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.
20¢ coins would be better for transitioning away from smaller denominations of coins. If you got rid of everything smaller you could drop a decimal place.
We can already just round to the nearest quarter. Basically no machines take anything less than quarters.
It’s not like Americans need bigger food.
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 love them, but I wouldn’t consider them a trene. It’s one of the original burgers in the U.S.
Before BK or MCDonalds. And sold at places like Steak N Shake which is fairly common.
I’d consider them a trend, at least in my area. Maybe they’re not new, but I never saw them until last year and now they’re everywhere.
They are less prominent by location I suppose. A lot of it likely had to do with speed. Places like McDonald’s went with thin patties to compensate for speed. Krystals was one of the first chains, and they press 5 holes in each patty before they hit the grill. The smash burgers were just another way to cook them high and fast. I like them a lot but it’s something I rarely do at home because the odds of setting off the smoke alarm is high. And that’s annoying as all hell. Flat tops on outdoor grills are becoming more of a thing from what I’ve heard, which may be lending to more people making them at home. I’ve heard several people talking about Blackstones or what not. The American family was known to make burgers on a grill from most films, which you couldn’t really make smash burgers like that with grates
Quar ter poun der. Perfect size. Good marketing.
“A ThIRd PoUnDeR pLeASe”. Too much to chew. Bad marketing.
No one went to A&W for burgers back then, footlong chili dog and root beer.
This, exactly.
Anyone repeating this 1/4 vs 1/3 bullshit never had one of their 1/3lb burgers. They were fucking terrible. Sysco prison-grade burger patties, drowned in store-brand ketchup with a thin slice of “American”-flavored yellow #5.
Absolute worst burger I’ve ever had.
Growing up, A&W was for chili dogs and a big glass mug of rootbeer. Never order anything else; its always a fat sack of disappointment.
I miss it. We’d get footlongs and a gallon of root beer then go to the park across from it. I wonder if it’s still there.
That must have been a US thing. A&W in Canada has had excellent Teen burgers for decades.
The hell is a “teen burger”? Canadians are eating the underaged!!
A&W now is pretty damn good in the US. As a Wisconsinite, their cheese curds are better than Culvers and it’s not even close.
But that can’t be right! I have it on good authority that A&W stands for Amburgers and Woot beer!
Why does this meme have a veggie burger?
Is it a vegan meme?
How do you spot a meat eater? They’ll tell you.
Just pointing out the odd choice of pictures.
It’s obviously not a A&W burger or from McDonald’s.
In fact I don’t think either chain had a vegetarian option in the ‘80’s but I could be wrong.
I just found the picture with the caption during a web search for such an infographic. Only the Goodfellas-part is from me. But does it matter what kind of burger it is?
Only for the quality of the meme. And seeing as this is the comment section of the “memes” comm, it seems like the perfect place to discuss just that topic. If this was in shitposts then yeah, who cares. But since it is this comm, people are going to critique things more minutely.
I almost commented that I’d never seen the burger attached to this story before and if that’s what it was, it may not have been the fractions!
If you’re happy with it that’s all that matters.
The meme is literally about two fast food restaurants and the quantity of ground beef they sell. It’s not like he was stretching to point out that’s a plant based burger…
I just used the opportunity to flip some of what vegans come across daily.
I’ve just had a radical idea to solve obesity in America
