# Incredibly common products which the store clerk never heard of **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 23, 2021, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225 "2021-09-23T21:29:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/182 "2021-09-26T04:59:49Z")
I looked near the peanut butter, near the jams and jellies, near the applesauce, even near the canned pie fillings. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/183 "2021-09-26T06:02:48Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > > [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > > > Sure it does. But it’s a lot easier to do on a laptop/desktop, and I almost exclusively Dope from my phone. > > > > So I don’t remember the instructions (sorry!) but basically you post the image link. > > Naw, to show an image here, you need to upload it to some other site first, and then link it. It’s against the rules to upload it here. (Although not completely impossible. One or two posters have done it.) I don’t want to mess with creating an account on yet another site, and leaving a photo lying around there if the only point is to show it here. Imgur doesn’t require an account, and, if you don’t publish it, the image won’t be visible anywhere else but where you post a link. That said, I think it might be better if we could get images re-enabled here. There’s already a workaround, and not having it breaks functionality, like the ability to scroll up. Have you talked to Ed about it? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/184 "2021-09-26T07:21:12Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Also, while there are weed scythes (the blades will be shorter and sturdier), they’re very often harvest tools, designed to cut a sizeable swath of hay or grain with each sweep of the tool. People cut whole fields with scythes, and a few people still do; would take you forever with a weed whip, which is designed for small areas. I have seen a farmer cut a field of wheat with a scythe, and it looked like a tool the Grim Reaper would be familiar and comfortable with, not really for home or indoor use. > [@batsto](#): > > Being asked for ‘dressing’ and finally figuring out that what she wanted was Miracle Whip, which I had never heard referred to that way. I guess that counts as “salad dressing”, which they should have in any supermarket? For wound dressing I would head to the pharmacy/chemist’s or drugstore. > [@eburacum45](#): > > . Is a ‘thumb drive’ a specialised type of flash drive? Sounds like a specific packaging format roughly the size of a thumb, as opposed to, say, a tiny keychain USB drive. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I once on a cold night asked for an Irish coffee at a bar that didn’t know what I was talking about. So I asked them for whatever hot whisky drink they could come up with – and they brought me a cold drink with hot pepper in it. Huh. Once I was at a café and fancied an Irish coffee, which was not at all on the menu but, following a brief discussion, they were more than happy to serve me coffee with Irish whisky in it. What I did not say was, “Just come up with something” 🙂 > [@alovem](#): > > I was also in need of a styptic pencil, but damned if I was going to ask for _that_ . But once I was at a shop that had plenty of “styptic pencils” like @susan 's as well as even more minuscule quantities for the same price, but do you know what they did not sell? _Alum._ [![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/AlumCrystal.jpg) ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/AlumCrystal.jpg) In any case I suspect they were deliberately trying to rip off customers with “boutique” shaving supplies. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/185 "2021-09-26T07:27:58Z")
> [@mixdenny](#): > > > [@Ruken](#): > > > > I was looking for pitas in a now-closed grocery in Urbana, IL, and the staff had no idea what I was talking about. Flatbread? Pocket bread? Nope… > > Pita is pocket bread as far as I know. You need to specify. I have had plenty of flat pitas as well as plenty of puffed up pitas suitable for pockets. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/186 "2021-09-26T07:40:48Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > UK, 1986. Away at University, and living on campus. My student cookbook had a recipe that required something called sour cream. So I went to the campus supermarket. The nearest other shop was several miles away. I couldn’t find sour cream. I asked the assistant for sour cream. Answer : all our cream is fresh. Paradoxically, in some countries you ask for “crème fraîche” ! ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/187 "2021-09-26T08:35:09Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > If you have Mexican tiendas in your town you can see about getting some “manteca,” which, locally at least, means the fat that renders out from making chicharrones (pork belly strips, like uncured bacon, slow baked to crispness) and it’s like a non-salty bacon fat and works beautifully in most south of the border recipes. That’s… pretty much what lard is - “non-salty bacon fat” At the store I work at the lard is labeled “LARD” on one side and “MANTECA” on the other. In fact, when I asked for where it was located my co-worker was clueless what “lard” meant but when I described what I wanted it for she said “Oh, you want manteca! It’s in the baking aisle.” OK, so now I know that in this area using the Spanish word might work better than the English. Apparently the White/Anglo folks have given up on lard and moved to Crisco for things like pie crusts (when they aren’t buying them pre-made) and it’s mostly the Spanish-speakers who are still using the pork fat. > [@OldOlds](#): > > My wife makes old fashioned mince meat, with real meat. She gets her suet from the local Wegmans. Well… of course. You can get all sorts of things at Wegmans that you can’t anywhere else. Wegmans is not your average grocery store. > [@Smapti](#): > > As a grocery store clerk, I often encounter the opposite of this problem - a customer is looking for a common product, but they’re using a regionalism for it that I’m unfamiliar with, or have a “unique” name for it that they seem to expect everyone to be familiar with. > > I recently found myself learning that “salsa inglesa” is what Spanish-speaking peoples call Worcestershire sauce when I had a woman asking me where the “English sauce” was located and me having no idea what she meant until she showed me a picture on her phone. The first time I encountered raw tumeric I didn’t know what it was. Unfortunately, the nice lady wishing to purchase it only knew the name for it her language. We eventually got it sorted out. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/188 "2021-09-26T08:38:37Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > That said, I think it might be better if we could get images re-enabled here. There’s already a workaround, and not having it breaks functionality, like the ability to scroll up. Have you talked to Ed about it? It costs money to host photos. Not going to happen. (And i can scroll up just fine.) One of the Discourse sites i use is funded by donations, and the owner publishes all his costs. He pays more for photo hosting than for the basic text functionality. (He also pays a little for email, so the photo hosting may not be half the total costs. I don’t remember the exact numbers.) ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/189 "2021-09-26T10:26:53Z")
You can still link to images, though. This is pitta bread in the UK, which I think is the same as pita bread in the US. [![](https://assets.sainsburys-groceries.co.uk/gol/7796502/1/640x640.jpg) ](https://assets.sainsburys-groceries.co.uk/gol/7796502/1/640x640.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/190 "2021-09-26T10:49:02Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > tumeric People might do better with **turmeric** if they spell and pronounce it properly. There’s another “r” in there. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/191 "2021-09-26T10:55:04Z")
Well, the local dialect here doesn’t pronounce that “r” I left out (which might have something to do with why I misspelled it…) ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/192 "2021-09-26T11:26:04Z")
> [@mixdenny](#): > > Pita is pocket bread as far as I know. I used every name I could think of. Then just tried to describe the product. Which resulted in them suggesting I squish a roll. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/193 "2021-09-26T11:38:29Z")
That’s considerably more oblong than an American pita, which tends to be round, and thick and pillowy in the exact same way that flour tortillas aren’t, but with a similar flavor. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/194 "2021-09-26T12:02:51Z")
But other than not being circular, it looks like American pita bread. ---
**Author:** ![Dandan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a87d85/32.png) [@Dandan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dandan)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/195 "2021-09-26T12:14:48Z")
> [@glee](#): > > > [@hogarth](#): > > > > asked where I could find a grass whip > > I’ve never heard of that. 😲 > If it helps I’m 67 and live in the UK… Garden flogger? Dan ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/196 "2021-09-26T12:23:23Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I guess that counts as “salad dressing”, which they should have in any supermarket? For wound dressing I would head to the pharmacy/chemist’s or drugstore. It says “salad dressing” on the jar, but I think most people looking for it in the store would be looking for it near the mayonnaise rather than the salad dressings. ---
**Author:** ![Dandan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a87d85/32.png) [@Dandan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dandan)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/197 "2021-09-26T12:37:56Z")
> [@seal\_cleaner](#): > > I was in a hardware store and the clerk didn’t know what a cotter pin was. Split pin. Dan ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/198 "2021-09-26T14:51:49Z")
Those look very much like packaged naan bread here. I hadn’t heard of a grass whip before this thread. The Polish grocery has tons of dried mushrooms all over the place but also has a rack of them right at the checkout, like where other stores have TicTacs. “Oops, better toss some mushrooms in, don’t want to run out. Also, better get some bootleg Kinder Eggs.” …which they also have, along with the gossip magazines. A long John is a rectangular chocolate frosted pastry. Long Johns are long underwear for cold weather. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/199 "2021-09-26T16:50:35Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > That’s… pretty much what lard is - “non-salty bacon fat” No, because there’s the pure white fat stuff that doesn’t smell like bacon and would go well in a peach pie crust and there’s the rendered light brown stuff that does smell like bacon and would be terrible in a peach pie crust. They really are different things entirely. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/200 "2021-09-26T17:44:54Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I have seen a farmer cut a field of wheat with a scythe, and it looked like a tool the Grim Reaper would be familiar and comfortable with, not really for home or indoor use. Oh definitely not for indoor use! but any homeowner with a sizeable yard might have one; though most people don’t. It takes practice to use one well – mine generally goes unused because I never got good at it. Kind of a circular effect; if I’d used it more, I probably would have gotten good at it. > [@DPRK](#): > > Huh. Once I was at a café and fancied an Irish coffee, which was not at all on the menu but, following a brief discussion, they were more than happy to serve me coffee with Irish whisky in it. What I did not say was, “Just come up with something” Thinking about it, I might have been remembering that story wrong; I think now I was trying to get hot buttered rum, assumed (obviously incorrectly) that the problem was with a particular ingredient and not with the meaning of the word “hot”, and asked them somewhat more specifically for whatever hot rum drink they thought they could make. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225/202 "2021-09-26T21:10:43Z")
I just came from one of the larger nurseries in the area. Not only did they not have a grass whip, the clerk didn’t know what one was. Nor do they carry one at my local hardware store. I’d probably have to go to a farm supply place to find one. It certainly isn’t an “incredibly common product” around here. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/incredibly-common-products-which-the-store-clerk-never-heard-of/951225.md?page=11)