A friend of mine who just went through surgery won’t ask for help, won’t ask anyone to take out her trash or play with her dog, or bring her food, so her friends just do it. I called her and she said she was fine, the day after the operation, so I knew to go over and play with the dog and bring food.

The dog is a massive lab with muscles, and he likes to fetch and pull the rope toy until I make him sit to give it back. He’s used to playing with a woman that barely pushes one hundred pounds. I’m used to playing with big dogs. It doesn’t take me long to wear him out and wear him down.

But I got ahead of myself here. First, there was food. Let me say right off the bat, I despise living in a country that still uses gallons, quarts, and pints. I drop in on a Chinese restaurant and order a quart of shrimp fried rice and two egg rolls. The young woman behind the counter reaches over to a shelf then hands me a bag with food in it and smiles.

I do not smile back. I do not understand what just happened.

I look into the bag, and there are two egg rolls, but the container of fried rice is small. I explain to her this is not my order. She doesn’t understand. I explain I want a larger container of fried rice. She looks at the paperwork on the order and says something that isn’t English and I don’t understand it.

Meanwhile, because this isn’t nearly weird enough, there is a guy wearing a toolbelt trying to repair the cooler they keep drinks in. By the way, it is warm in this restaurant, and while not uncomfortable, it’s easing into that territory. The guy with the toolbelt is melting down. He can’t fix the cooler. How do I know this? Because he’s on his cell phone and has it on speaker.

“I can’t fix this, I don’t know how,” he says loudly.

“Replace the module going to the condenser,” the voice on the other end of the line says.

“I don’t know what that is,” the repairman laments. And he takes pictures of the guts of the cooler and sends them. They are basically walking him through the whole thing at a volume. But he sounds more than a little freaked out. I’m not sure why. This thing isn’t going to explode if he cuts the blue wire instead of the red wire, is it?

Is it?

Meanwhile, the young woman is floundering. I ordered what’s in the bag, so the bag is mine. She rings it up. No, it isn’t mine. Finally, she asks if I called in and I tell her no. She asks me if I ordered the same thing. I explained, yes, I did order shrimp fried rice, but a bigger container. Quart, not pint. And why, why on earth would anyone who is running a restaurant use these units of measure? But here we are.

Now. We have established what is in the bag is not mine. It is not mine because it is not what I ordered. The container, no matter what units are being used, is too small.

“Yes, too small,” the young woman smiles at me, and quite frankly, I never want a young woman to smile at me while using those three words.

And go.

A woman comes in, and it is her order. The young woman and I exchange a glance of relief. More customers come in, and another order isn’t right. The cooler repairman wails to his phone like a blues singer on a Saturday night. It’s getting warmer.

My order is placed on the counter. I look inside. It is exactly the same as the previous mistake.

It’s a pint, not a quart.

I could just cut and paste the previous section and save some trouble, but the manager wades in. Suddenly, she’s using the words “large” and “small.” Okay, large. Let’s ignore the menu and go from there, shall we? Meanwhile, this is going to add to the bill, which I have already paid with a card. I have enough cash to pull it off but have to wait. It’s getting warmer. The cooler repairman is getting excited because whatever it was they had him do isn’t working.

“The machine is unplugged,” I tell him. And by the way, he moved the cooler to work in it, and underneath that thing is a mat of black and ugly gunk that I would set on fire before I touched it.

My order is ready. It’s right. I’m gone.

But the whole ordeal cost me thirty minutes. What it did was negate what I was trying to avoid, and that’s the lunch hour rush traffic. I get stuck for ten more minutes trying to get out of it.

Let me be clear here. This isn’t an issue of having a woman from another country not being able to function at her job because of language. Yeah, that was a problem, but quarts and pints are stupid. Why use such things? Why do we live in a nation where two people cannot communicate the size or volume of anything because we’re still using units invented when a King was telling us we had to do it?

Take Care,

Mike