I'll try to look again, but most of this is for items such as small kitchen appliances, electronics, washing machines, and the like, where the use of either units is not as prevalent. I live in Maryland and hence am much closer to Quebec; there are 18 warehouses in that province. http://www.costco.com/Warehouse/WarehouseList.aspx # Carleton ----- Original Message ----- From: "ezra steinberg" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 10:41:16 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [USMA:45808] Re: Unusual USC/metric combo on packaging Carleton, Given the English/French packages you're seeing in Costco (which I don't see out here in Washington State in the stores I go into and I'm not a member of Costco here), which units appear in which language, in which order do the units appear, and which units appear to be "rational"? Ezra ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carleton MacDonald" <[email protected]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 5:25:05 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: [USMA:45808] Re: Unusual USC/metric combo on packaging I shop at Costco weekly, and I see a lot of packages in English and French. Costco has many stores in Quebec and this avoids dual packaging. I think the placement of the boxes is purely random. The staff are just taking them off the pallets and stacking them up for the customers and are not taking the time to line them all up. Carleton -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of James R. Frysinger Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 13:37 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:45806] Re: Unusual USC/metric combo on packaging 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
