And heaven help 'em if they ever had to read a vernier scale.
Funny you should bring this up.
Back in my high school days, I worked after school and weekends as a shipping clerk at a small manufacturing plant. One day "Rich", one of the "engineers" from the front office, fresh out of college, showed up in the warehouse with a clipboard and calipers to measure the thickness of some of the metal our product was made out of. I was asked to help him locate the items and pull them out of inventory in the warehouse
So I did . . . and it was almost funny to see the expression on his face when he opened up the caliper case and saw it wasn't a dial, but a vernier caliper.
I asked if there was a problem . . . he said "Well, Joe gave me these, and I don't know how to read a vernier . . . I'll have to go get a set of dial calipers."
I said "Here, no problem" and took the calipers out of his hands and proceeded to take the measurements, explaining the use of the vernier as I went along.
SO he got his measurements, and went back up front. He told "Joe" that next time he wanted a set of dial calipers, as it was pretty embarassing to have some young high school kid in the shipping department show him how to do his job. And the kid rubbed it in by saying his Dad taught him how to read calipers when he was "just a little kid" in grammar school.
Other guys started laughing . . . and asked him what the clerk looked like. (He described me.) This set off more hoots and hollers. "Sounds like Joe's son bailed you out!"
Yep. :grin: