Ok, I know I often beat up on AAFES, and I'll be the first to say that there are times that they provide a valuable service...
... and then there are times they provide a good laugh.
Like today.
The AAFES PX was running a promotion this weekend. If you buy $50 (of qualifying merchandise), they will give you a coupon (good for this weekend only) good for 15 cents off of a gallon of gasoline (good up to 20 gallons).
Woo hoo! Not a bad deal, if you're already planning on buying $50 worth of goods, and it drops (er, I mean, raises) the price of gas to only ten cents per gallon higher from the previous month.
But, here's the fun part, and considering this was an AAFES Europe promotion, it is really fun.
Promotion details gas volume in... Gallons.
Gasoline Volume on Pump shown in... Liters.
Prices on roadside signs shown in.... Gallons.
Prices on pump shown in... Liters.
Gasoline Ration Coupon measured in.... Liters.
Prices Advertised in newspaper measured in... Gallons.
So, when you have a coupon for 15 cents off per gallon, and you're pumping in liters, and your price is in liters, how do you know how much you've saved? How do you know if you've reached the 20 gallon limit? You could always multiply the displayed liters by 3.78, but I'm guessing many people don't know that off the top of their head.
Certainly the AAFES clerks were having a ball. Every one of them had a handy-dandy calculator and were oh so excited to see people walk up with the coupons. Oh! What fun...
But, wait.... AAFES is expanding our metric knowledge. It is important that we all know and love metric, as most of the world uses it.
And AAFES is helping us. While pumping gas, I had to stop and laugh (again). The ad on the gasoline pump was: "Buy two hot dogs and 50 cl of Coke for $1.99"
50 cl. Anyone? For those long removed from such metric conversions, it's 50 centiliters. Now, common usage for metric liquid volume are milliliters and liters. AAFES sells 0.5 liter bottles of coke in its freezers. Fast food places sell cups of 0.4 liters. But, here, in this ad, we're dealing with 50 cl. Hahaha...
50 cl = 0.5 liters. Why didn't they just say that? We've become familiar (at least minimally) with the half-liter bottle of soda. They could have just as easily said it was 5 dl (deciliters) of coke. Or, perhaps 500 milliliters?
Fun with metric... AAFES style.
3 comments:
This is the very reason I try to do as little as possible with numbers! ;-)
On to another subject: Presently our Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, is in Washington DC with President Bush and entourages for 3 weeks mainly talking on World Peace which includes our involvement in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and also the troubles/threats to Australia from places such as Indonesia and our Peace involvement in Timor. We are witnesing on TV all the US anti war demonstrations being directed at John Howard and they are giving him heaps due to our support. Don't these demonstrators work? Yes we do have them in Australia also but not as many.
Les & Colleen
Would you believe, "Professional Protesters" and worse, protesters hired from temporary work agencies. Yep, quite often, to ensure that there are plenty of screaming, chanting people holding signs for the cameras (you don't think it's actually for the person being protested?), the group will hire temp workers for the day to come chant.
Post a Comment