Once there will be no more digits to use for displaying price per gallon they will be forced to display price per liter as it still could fit
Many US gas stations switched to liters for a while during the original “gas crisis” in the 70s. One crooked station near my house switched to liters without saying so - they simply covered or removed “gal” on the price signs, so they said like $0.85 with no units, so the price for a gallon was over $4. To further hide it, when customers asked to fill the tank the attendants only put in about a quarter tank, so the price would be realistic for a fillup measured in gallons. It pissed off one guy so much he stood in front of the place for about a month with a ginormous sign that said “BUYER BEWARE! REG OVER $4/GAL”.
Liters are communist.
We’re switching to pints!
Damn French communists! Wait, what??
Is this gonna be like that time Americans didn’t buy the 1/3lb burger from Burger King because they thought the 1/4lber from McDonald’s was bigger. As an American myself, and a teacher for over a decade, people are legitimately retarded. I’m surprised shoes with laces is still the norm TBH.
Pretty sure the 1/3lb burger fiasco was Whataburger, but yeah, a LOT of consumers are that dumb.
Lol I can see the boomer tantrums now
This would literally work. If one station has $9.49 (/gal) on its sign and the station across the street is $3.79 (/L), there are absolutely enough dumb Americans who will line up for the more expensive gas with the lower number.
A&W nearly went bankrupt because Americans couldn’t figure out that 1/3lb is more than 1/4lb. This is a good idea.
A&W nearly went bankrupt because Americans couldn’t figure out that 1/3lb is more than 1/4lb.
Myth.
Anyone who had their 1/3lb burger knows why A&W nearly went bankrupt, and it had nothing to do with the size of the patty.
It was easily the worst burger I’ve ever experienced.
“Americans don’t understand fractions” is the marketing they used to save face. The reality is that they didn’t have any repeat customers.
Who went to A&W for anything other than root beer floats and why were they allowed in public while being so wrong?
The firm eventually conducted a focus group to discover the truth: participants were concerned about the price of the burger. “Why should we pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as we do for a quarter-pound of meat?” they asked.
It turns out the majority of participants incorrectly believed one-third of a pound was actually smaller than a quarter of a pound.
They didn’t almost go bankrupt, but yes they did have a focus group where the majority of people did not understand fractions.
When you order one turd sandwich from my restaurant and never come back for another, the problem isn’t that you think my 1/3 lb turds are smaller than BKs 1/4lb patties.
The focus group did not capture the reason why the people who did buy it didn’t become repeat customers. It was a fucking awful burger.
Are you serious dude? If i went to a restaurant, and thought I was paying MORE money for LESS food i would never go back. But go on your rant about how much you hate A&W or whatever.
And I’m betting if you went to a restaurant and the food was absolutely terrible, you wouldn’t go back either, or at least wouldn’t order that same, terrible meal.
A&W is great. They’re one of the last drive-in restaurants in my area. I have coney dogs and root beer floats every time I go. But their 1/3lb burgers were so complete shit that I won’t even try their burgers now. Their burgers were worse than DQ’s. Worse than cafeteria burgers. They could have made them twice as large, and they still wouldn’t have sold, because they were utter shit.
Focus group is the same group as those that do phone surveys.
Not representative of the norm, who like to do either about as much as jury duty.
Exactly. To have been confused about the price they’d actually have to have gone there. Which I don’t believe ever happens.
The Americans will summon quarts or some other unholy measurement.
1 quart = 1.14 litre. Price per quart will be lower than price per litre, so you’re definitely correct. If it was the other way around I’d say there could be some wiggle room for the marketing benefit, but alas that is not the case.
“It comes in Pints?!”
200 per fillup.
That’s what I thought too. It would make way too much sense to switch to an actual standard
I thought about this too while I was filling up my tank yesterday, but I think they would just switch to quarts since that is just 1/4 of a gallon
Pints.
That’s right. Europe uses liters because that’s their biggest liquid measurement. Ours is gallons, so we’ll just split that by 4. You think MAGAs are going to go along with switching to a foreign commie system for our beautiful American gas?
Let me introduce you to quettalitre, 10^30 litre. a.k.a. cubic gigametre
We tried the metric thing in the 1970s - people hated it. Some things stuck like alcohol measurement in ml. Most didn’t .
Anyone who thought changing the measurement system wasn’t going to be met with resistance was delusional. People hate change. Sometimes, change is better. As someone who went through it in Canada, there was a lot of disgruntlement from the previous generation, but the rest of us just moved on (mostly), and being able to just use decimals everywhere instead of base 2 fractions here, decimals there, multiples of 12 over there was absolutely refreshing. Now my kids barely even use imperial and just shake their heads when the oldsters talk about it.
And I’d still rather measure people’s weight in pounds than in stone like a monster.
That’s a really great perspective I never had. I only see it as a kid growing up in the 70s usa. But you folks got through it and we didn’t. That’s telling on our stubbornness at the very least. Btw I never had more trouble with alcohol than the time I visited … asked for a pint. Do you mean a Mickey? Chuckles.
Fuel efficiency is already reported using the American backwards notation: miles per gallon. Why not use the same silly method to screw people at the gas pump as well. Just go with barrels per cent, if you’re feeling extra diabolical.
Argh. Miles per gallon makes me angry enough. And then you’ve got the metric using proto americans using km/L like that makes any sense.
More likely, the last cent digit will just drop because it isn’t significant (rounding up of course, don’t want to miss an opportunity to squeeze even more!).
they’ll just tape 1 in front of display
Exactly! It’s the same thing they did after gas went over a dollar per gallon.
It’s a hypocritical gambit that works both ways. Here in Canada we are ‘metric’ but in our grocery stores we label meat for sale ‘by the pound’ because it looks cheaper on the label.
Nah, we’ll do it by a metric we’re much more familiar with - 2 liters.
Naw, just post like 10.2… the exact pennies doesn’t matter really. It would get printed on the receipt still, but doesn’t need to be displayed everywhere.
Yeah, especially since we got rid of the penny 🙃
jesse, what the fuc are you talking about??
