At our Lowe's none of the clerks or stockers that I ran into struck me
as being Hispanic. I think it's just more a matter of how the pallet was
set down that they unloaded from to stock the shelves.
Jim
John M. Steele wrote:
I notice in Lowe's and Home Depot, nearly every box is marked in English
and Spanish, but French seems quite rare.
I don't object to the Spanish, but I do get annoyed when all the boxes
are turned so the Spanish face is visible and the English isn't.
(this happens at Costco too)
I wonder if it has to do with the primary language of the stocking
clerks? (or somebody else who speaks English bought the last "English" box?)
--- On *Sat, 9/12/09, James R. Frysinger /<[email protected]>/* wrote:
From: James R. Frysinger <[email protected]>
Subject: [USMA:45801] Re: Unusual USC/metric combo on packaging
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Cc: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Date: Saturday, September 12, 2009, 8:47 PM
A lot of stuff here in Middle Tennessee is labeled in both English
and Spanish on the packaging. Lowe's does that quite a bit and one
day my wife pointed out to the store manager that it would be nice
if at least a few of the boxes of the ceiling fans she was looking
at were turned around to show the English side!
We have a fairly significant Hispanic population here -- probably
due to the very large nursery business in our area -- but that alone
would not account for all the English/Spanish bilingual labeling, I
suspect. We also have a fair number of Tiendas Mexicanas (Mexican
convenience stores) and most of their stuff is labeled only in
Spanish and only in metric units -- fooey (or however you say that
in Spanish) on the dual labeling law.
Jim
[email protected]
<http://us.mc824.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected]>
wrote:
> I came across an unusual (for me, at least) kind of packaging today.
>
> The product was a raised seat to be placed on a toilet for those
who find a regular height toilet seat too low to comfortably sit
down on or get up from; the store where I found this was a pharmacy.
>
> This was not a NAFTA box (since there was no French). Morever,
while there was also Spanish, that text was in a smaller size font
than the English text. What struck me was that, while the height of
and the acceptable weight on the raised seat was given in nice round
USC (Imperial) numbers in the English text (with no metric), the
Spanish text showed the same values in unrounded (odd-ball looking)
metric (and only metric).
>
> If it were a NAFTA package, I could understand why the Spanish
would use metric only since the Spanish would be targeting a Mexican
market (and the French on such a package would be targeting a
French-Canadian market). Since this was an English/Spanish bilingual
package, I would assume the Spanish is there to target Spanish
speakers living in the United States, most of whom presumably have
been "converted" to USC by sheer habituation over the years.
>
> Have others seen this kind of packaging? Any hypotheses as to
what the rationale is for this?
>
> -- Ezra
-- James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
