I asked a kid working in the paint department at Lowes where the razor scrapers were. He looked them up on the computer and walked me to them in the tool department. He said he didn’t want to seem dumb, and asked what they were for. I explained how they are frequently used to scrape paint off of windows. He thanked me for the explanation and seemed pleased he had learned something new.
Good for him.
I bought a sheet of plywood at Lowes and asked for them to rip it at 37 3/8 on their panel saw. Had to show the saw operator (mid 20’s) how to read the fractions on his tape measure. No one ever showed him 16ths, 8ths, 1/4’s, halves, etc. All his previous saw cuts had been in exact inches.
Just try to explain to him how to use a Vernier scale…
I moved to Chicago in the early 1980s. I’d grown up in Texas, thinking that iced tea was the third or fourth most common liquid on planet earth, but many restaurants in Chicago seemed puzzled, or told me they only had it during summer. Usually, I could persuade them that they could bring me a cup of hot tea AND a glass of ice—but not always. It often felt like a scene out of Five Easy Pieces.
my grandma only drank tea water coffee and Pepsi oh and cocoa once in a while in the winter going around the country in the mid-80s was a bit of a shock as restaurants didn’t make tea at all or if it did it was a hot cup of water and a bag of Lipton or that Nestea instant crap with the sickening fake lemon flavor …
it wasn’t until we went south and west that it was common to see real tea on menus (actually as a 11 year old I loved to see a thing on menus in the south that until they started putting hi c or tropicana fruit punch in fountains was honest to god made at your table kool-aid in the flavor you desired )
We learned how to make sun tea after that year of vacations
And a left-handed screwdriver
Even with the same brand (Heinz in this example) there are often regional differences:
in the US, ketchup is made with high fructose corn syrup, as well as GMOs and natural flavouring, which is a recipe for addiction. “Think of this next time you’re dipping your fries in and can’t stop,” she says.
The craziest thing about this, however, is that in the UK, Heinz ketchup doesn’t have any of these ingredients.
Made with just a few ingredients (all pronounceable)—tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt, spices and herb extracts—ketchup is actually a relatively healthy product if you get it over there!
The US, however, contains tomato concentrate, distilled vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, salt, spice, onion powder, and natural flavoring.
You can get that version of Heinz ketchup in US supermarkets. Look for Heinz Simply.
I recommend being a little careful if you’re sending some new employee on a wild-goose chase for something like a sky hook. There was a story in the NotAlwaysRight site of someone who was sent to the store to buy some of these, and was told they were urgently needed. It was a prank of course, but he came back saying that he’d placed a rush order for them. (Supposedly there’s an expensive real thing by that name used in conveyor belts.)
I wonder how much difference there is between
and
No significant difference between HFCS and “sugar” either, for the same number of calories. Ketchup made with loads of sugar is not a “relatively healthy product”.
I have to wonder if the regulatory definition of “Natural Flavor” has a bit more wiggle-room in the U.S. than “herb extracts” does in Britain. “Natural flavor” can sneak in such nasties that I’m suspicious of any food product that contains the words at all.
Exactly. I think it’s simply a difference in how the FDA titles ingredients vs how Britain does.
Slightly off-topic:
A business owner who can’t figure out how to process a credit card payment. The customer (me) had to go to the bank, twice, and pay him in cash.
I agree, but I didn’t want to dive head-first into the sugar wars. 
This is one of the dumbest food claims I’ve seen in quite awhile.
The British version of Heinz ketchup might or might not taste different/better than the U.S. equivalent. But it’d be one hell of a stretch to say that it’s healthier for you, even without the dreaded high-fructose corn syrup and (shudder) GMOs.
As for “natural flavoring”, I look askance at that too. If you’ve got “natural” ingredients, why the hell do you need “natural flavor” added?*
*I’ve seen that on labels for bottled ground horseradish, which as I’ve noted elsewhere should only contain ground horseradish, vinegar and salt. And possibly beet juice if you’re a pervert. 
There are lots of contenders in that article. Another:
You want to avoid foods that have a long list of foods and chemicals you can’t pronounce.
There are at least three dumb things packed into that sentence. It’s recursively dumb.
I checked the online inventory of one of the largest grocery chains here in Canada. If “Heinz Simply” is indeed the equivalent of the British version, it’s not available here. There are many different packaging options, there is “low sodium”, and there is “no sugar”, but there is no “Simply”.
But hark! After fearing that I might grow a second head due to consumption of chemicals and GMOs, it turns out that Heinz does have an “organic” ketchup, for about $1.50 more than the regular stuff. It doesn’t have any fructose corn syrup, but it’s hard to tell how it compares with the US vs British types:
… or Ashkenazi
Seriously, horseradish without the purple color? Not on MY gefilte fish!
Is purple horseradish an “incredibly common” product?
Cuz I’ve never seen it in anything other than white or white-ish.