You’re on a long train journey that lasts several hours, maybe most of the day. You brought simple food with you: slices of bread and slices of cheese, plus some ice tea to drink. Nothing fancy. You don’t count how many slices of either you brought. You don’t even think about it, because train journeys are cool and you’re just chilling out. You just assemble cheese sandwiches one by one, eat them during the trip, and enjoy the ride. Each sandwich uses exactly one slice of bread and one slice of cheese. When one of them runs out, the sandwich-making stops. You arrive at your destination and, naturally, the numbers didn’t line up perfectly. I mean, why would they…
Now you open your bag and discover that something is left over:
• either a few slices of bread with no cheese, or
• a few slices of cheese with no bread.
Which one would be worse? Standing there at the end of the trip, one of these outcomes just feels more annoying than the other, right?
Which leftover would bother you more, and why? Is it purely practical? Emotional? About mess, smell, value, or expectations? Or do you genuinely not care either way? I’m curious how different people experience this.
The premise is flawed. I would not only count them properly in the first place, but continue to keep tabs whilst I supped, and adjust ratios as necessary in order to avoid unpaired leftovers.
I wouldn’t pre-count, but I cannot conceive of a world where I wouldn’t be adjusting the ratios for the last few slices once the discrepancy was obvious.
This is acceptable. It also indicates that you make a solid guess at the beginning.
Having not scanned your history, are you German? That sounds like something a German would say.
No, but I’ve been mistaken for one before. Und Ich sprech ein bißchen Deutsch.
That is a valid approach too.