What's this world coming to?

I overheard an amazing snippet of conversation today. Amazing in a bad way, not in a good way.

I was at the local big-box office supply store, waiting in line behind two people who were ahead of me. Behind the counter, a clerk was talking on the phone in an almost-conspiratorial tone: "Can you help me? If I have eighteen inches, how do I turn that into square inches? I already asked Jeffrey, but he didn't know."

I was trying to make sense of her question. She obviously didn't know that something was missing. My mind flashed back to grade . . . five? Length times width equals area. That's square somethings - feet, inches back then - nowadays, centimetres, metres.

As I stood there, the clerk took her attention from the phone call and addressed me, pointing to the next till: "They can help you at Till One." So I darted over to Till One, where the drama continued. A man, perhaps a supervisor, leaned over the counter, took the phone from the clerk who was talking with the Need-to-Know-Square-Inches clerk, and said into the phone: "Length times width. You need two numbers to get square inches. What's the second number?"

None of the foregoing constituted the amazing part of the conversation. After the supervisor left, but before the two clerks at Till One turned to help me, one said to the other: "Square inches? You ever hear of that? Inches I know, but square inches?"

The other clerk, with a slightly superior toss of her head, answered: "Well, I've heard of square feet, but . . . not square inches."

I was amazed. Admittedly, they were young--teens with part-time jobs--but I was sure they had finished grade five. What I was unsure of was whether I should trust her to ring in my purchase.