CIDU indeed. It reminds me, though, of the story from this weekend that Amtrak tried to charge a wheelchair rider $25,000. It seems that their three allotted wheelchair slots were filled, and it would cost them to remove some seats and make new slots. After all the bad publicity, though, they recanted and apologized.
I get that the kid is clumsy, and the store owner knows it, but milk in glass containers? Not in MY lifetime.
He’s shopped there before. As noted, the clerk knows the kid is clumsy. So he adds in the expected damage to the cost of the milk. The milk is in a plastic container; the damage is to unrelated items.
The storekeeper can see that the kid is about to have an accident, and is somehow able to calculate the damages (plus the milk) will amount to $63.99.
We were still getting milk in glass bottles in the early 60s.
I’ve purchased milk in glass bottles, Andréa and I’m younger than you. It is a niche product, but it can be found. It’s quite cumbersome. Anything more than a litre/quart is too heavy/slippery to use effectively. But I did consider it a bit of a piggy bank, since the bottles had a deposit of 90 cents (back during my student days in the early 90s). I’d let a few pile up (after washing them) and, when I was tapped-out, I could take them back to to the store and have five or six bucks to spend.
Boise Ed, I can believe that. A couple of weeks ago I was pricing a TV bench from Ikea. I’d seen it before on their site, but delivery charges were always too high. Once it was $99 to deliver. Another time, $69. At one point, they insisted that delivery was not available in my area, even though I live in central Toronto, not the boonies. So, I check it from time to time. Put it in my checkout basket, entered my postal code so they could calculate the delivery charge. As God is my witness, it came back $999,999.00 for delivery. The entire order, therefore, was $1,000,214.00 before tax and displayed as such. Wish I’d taken a picture.
As for the comic, I guess I’ll agree with what these folks say.
There was a dairy store near where we lived that sold products in glass bottles up until some time after I graduated high school, which was in the mid-1970s. Not common in the supermarkets, but same selections have shown up. I don’t really look for it, so I’m not sure if it’s currently available at my usual store.
In Germany, almost all milk is sold in 1 or 2 liter cartons, but I still see a few glass bottles, both for milk and even cream. I’m not sure whether there’s a deposit on them.
We had milk delivered in bottles by a milk man until 1983. We may have been the only people supporting him. We were the *only* person on our block doing it for 1974 on. Every guest we *ever* had for as long as I remember *always* said “Wow, milk in milk bottles. That’s so far out, man! It’s like Norman Rockwell.” (used to irritate me).
And from 1989 to 1993 it was sort of yuppie for our chiche grocery store to sell it in bottles with a $1.50$ deposit. It wasn’t really the same.
But I don’t think any of those are glass….
From “Broken Words; A fifth century of charades” by William Bellamy, 1911
“Before the milk bill came to pass,
“My first was commoner than glass.
“My second is a little word,
“And very similar my third.
“My whole, a land of bees and kine,
“Was promised by a voice divine.”
….
I find the above is amusing as it considers Milk bottles to be new-fangled and replacing the more nostalgic idea of …. what milk used to come in…..
I buy milk from a local farm in glass bottles at the grocery store. Return the bottles for the deposit. Everything old is new again!
It’s not unknown for milk jugs to burst open on impact.
I’m so old I not only remember glass bottles, I remember a milkman who delivered it every morning.
That’s the smallest gallon I’ve ever seen.
There exist dairies in 2020 who home deliver milk in glass bottles.
In Fort Collins, CO there are a couple of dairies that do home delivery of milk and stuff with glass bottles.
I usually buy milk in 1 liter glass bottles (Germany), there’s a 15 cent deposit on the glass bottles
I’m guessing that if you are intimately familiar with this strip and its characters, this will be hilarious. As it is, it feels like a sitcom where a character walks in and the laugh track goes nuts, but you’re thinking “Who is this guy?”
I had a couple of pints delivered in glass bottles by a milkman only this morning. Mind you, I am UKland. Don’t think any are sold in supermarkets though.
@ narmitaj – I would have thought that in the UK, pints in glass bottles would be delivered by the beerman.
They sell milk in glass bottles at my big chain grocery store.
Pints are sold in glass glasses* in pubs but generally in 500ml (glass) bottles in supermarkets. My milk people Milk & More don’t deliver alcohol except for low alcohol beer and wine – 330ml and 750ml respectively. https://www.milkandmore.co.uk/Low-Alcohol/c/Low-Alcohol
*not a completely daft thing to say; they can be delivered in plastic glasses at festivals or times, like N Y Eve, of expected excessive japery and tomfooling.
I still don’t get it. If the clerk knows that the employee is clumsy, that’s fine, but it doesn’t explain why the customer is responsible for damages, and why he seems okay with that. If there was some evidence that the customer spilled something causing the employee to fall, then maybe. But if that’s the case, the clerk is a bit of a jerk for realizing what was about to happen and yet not warning the kid.
Actually the wine is alcohol-free – just the beer is 0.5%
@ Mark M – I don’t follow the strip, but I’ve been assuming that the customer at the register is the parent of the teenager who destroyed all the jars.
Thanks Kilby. That makes more sense!
narmitaj: If you get “plastic glasses,” would you call them “glasses”? I would just call them “cups.” For me “glasses” are by definition made of “glass.” (Not criticizing your usage, just curious if it’s different than mine.)
I’d say “morons” but I remember some of the dumba** s*** we did when I was young, so…naw, we were morons, too.
Oops, premature posting: I assume the kid is his, so the store is charging him for the dipshittery.
The dad was buying one gallon of milk, the boy broke $60 of WHATEVER else that was, not necessarily more milk. Also, first and third panels I thought the clerk had a massive scarface
In the UK you can still get your milk delivered in glass bottles to your doorstep although most people get theirs in plastic containers at the supermarket. And the tits ( birds: coal, blue, great etc.) still peck through the foil tops.
My first take was the sudden onset of hyperinflation, the suddenness bowling over the second customer with the simultaneous corrections at the register. Probably not the cartoonist’s intent.
I think very few people in a British pub would refer to a drink – other than something like coffee – coming in a cup (I would say in normal British usage a cup is non-transparent). The bar staff might inform you that they are only selling beer in plastic, but I think mostly they would indeed say “plastic glasses”.
Similarly people wear spectacles/ eyeglasses that they call glasses even though they are mostly made of high-tech plastic these days. No-one, I expect, says, “Let me just put on my reading plastics”.
narmitaj: Yes, “eyeglasses” are definitely “glasses” regardless of what they’re made of.
Thinking about drinking “glasses” more, I think my usage is actually similar to yours: it’s not the material that’s important, but whether the container is transparent. When you referred to a plastic container, I had been thinking of something like a red solo cup, which I wouldn’t call a “glass.” But if the plastic is transparent, then it’s good to call it a “glass.” Because then it looks like it’s made of “glass,” so close enough.
Yes, we call all our plastic drinkware glasses, even tho it’s all made of plastic, due to ceramic tile floors (indoors) and pavers (lanai/pool area). It’s a bit like calling one’s cutlery ‘silverware’, altho it’s highly unlikely it’s made of silver.
Andréa: Would you call an opaque red Solo cup a “glass”?
Fascinating (endless) discussion of milk containers aside, do we have ANY reason to think the person who fell is connected to the customer? I mean, the joke makes sense if he is, but that’s working backwards.
WW: If I was requesting a red Solo cup, I would probably say, “Can you hand me that [points]?” If I wanted what was inside the cup, I would say, “Get me a drink.” And if the service was slow, I’d break out the sharks.
Dr. Shrinker: Those are both regular characters in the comic. The father is the one paying, and the one who fell is his son.
If I ask someone to, say, “bring me a glass of water,” I’m only interested in ingesting water in the volume it would occupy in a typical “glass.” I don’t care if said water is *actually* delivered in a glass glass, a plastic “glass,” a cup, a ceremic flowerpot, or the hollowed-out skull of the youngest son of my clan’s traditional enemy. I might not even notice.
Well,O.K., maybe not the flowerpot. That sounds icky.
Up until a year or so ago, there was a dairy in Rhode Island that had a fleet of classic vintage DIVCO delivery trucks. Sadly they went out of business and there were a handful of ragged examples parked in front of the closed business when I saw it last summer.
A local store offers milk in glass bottles (half gallon, IIRC?), and the deposit is heading to near $3. That particular product does seem popular there.
Nope, I’d refer to it as a Solo cup because it’s become so well-known. All my plastic drinkware is clear, so looks like glass and is referred to as ‘glasses’.
“Well,O.K., maybe not the flowerpot. That sounds icky.”
Re the Charade, I guess that before the Milk Bill milk was sold in metal cans.
Previously more common than glass: can. Little words: a, an.
The whole, the land of milk and honey: Canaan.
Mark In Boston
That’s the answer I came up with as well Richard Bellamy apparently famously refused to tell what the answers were but provided a proto-encryption key so you can see if you answer was *incorrect*. The code for “Canaan” was a positive so that implies our answer was correct.
That was one of the easy ones.
We used to get milk delivered in the 1960s when we moved out and it was in bottles.
When we were first married and for some reason had a need for milk (I am guessing what I cooked back then used milk in some dishes) I would go to a store that was part of a chain called Dairy Barn. One would drive up to the door and give their milk (and they carried other items also) and they would hand you the bottled milk and take the payment. Bottles had deposits and so one would hand them the empties before getting the new ones and paying. I am not sure when they went out of business – some time after 1988 when we moved into our house as I found an empty bottle or two in the porch when I cleared it out a year or so ago (which means it could be 5 years ago).
Comics I Don't Understand 
CIDU indeed. It reminds me, though, of the story from this weekend that Amtrak tried to charge a wheelchair rider $25,000. It seems that their three allotted wheelchair slots were filled, and it would cost them to remove some seats and make new slots. After all the bad publicity, though, they recanted and apologized.
I get that the kid is clumsy, and the store owner knows it, but milk in glass containers? Not in MY lifetime.
He’s shopped there before. As noted, the clerk knows the kid is clumsy. So he adds in the expected damage to the cost of the milk. The milk is in a plastic container; the damage is to unrelated items.
The storekeeper can see that the kid is about to have an accident, and is somehow able to calculate the damages (plus the milk) will amount to $63.99.
We were still getting milk in glass bottles in the early 60s.
I’ve purchased milk in glass bottles, Andréa and I’m younger than you. It is a niche product, but it can be found. It’s quite cumbersome. Anything more than a litre/quart is too heavy/slippery to use effectively. But I did consider it a bit of a piggy bank, since the bottles had a deposit of 90 cents (back during my student days in the early 90s). I’d let a few pile up (after washing them) and, when I was tapped-out, I could take them back to to the store and have five or six bucks to spend.
Boise Ed, I can believe that. A couple of weeks ago I was pricing a TV bench from Ikea. I’d seen it before on their site, but delivery charges were always too high. Once it was $99 to deliver. Another time, $69. At one point, they insisted that delivery was not available in my area, even though I live in central Toronto, not the boonies. So, I check it from time to time. Put it in my checkout basket, entered my postal code so they could calculate the delivery charge. As God is my witness, it came back $999,999.00 for delivery. The entire order, therefore, was $1,000,214.00 before tax and displayed as such. Wish I’d taken a picture.
As for the comic, I guess I’ll agree with what these folks say.
There was a dairy store near where we lived that sold products in glass bottles up until some time after I graduated high school, which was in the mid-1970s. Not common in the supermarkets, but same selections have shown up. I don’t really look for it, so I’m not sure if it’s currently available at my usual store.
In Germany, almost all milk is sold in 1 or 2 liter cartons, but I still see a few glass bottles, both for milk and even cream. I’m not sure whether there’s a deposit on them.
We had milk delivered in bottles by a milk man until 1983. We may have been the only people supporting him. We were the *only* person on our block doing it for 1974 on. Every guest we *ever* had for as long as I remember *always* said “Wow, milk in milk bottles. That’s so far out, man! It’s like Norman Rockwell.” (used to irritate me).
And from 1989 to 1993 it was sort of yuppie for our chiche grocery store to sell it in bottles with a $1.50$ deposit. It wasn’t really the same.
But I don’t think any of those are glass….
From “Broken Words; A fifth century of charades” by William Bellamy, 1911
“Before the milk bill came to pass,
“My first was commoner than glass.
“My second is a little word,
“And very similar my third.
“My whole, a land of bees and kine,
“Was promised by a voice divine.”
….
I find the above is amusing as it considers Milk bottles to be new-fangled and replacing the more nostalgic idea of …. what milk used to come in…..
I buy milk from a local farm in glass bottles at the grocery store. Return the bottles for the deposit. Everything old is new again!
It’s not unknown for milk jugs to burst open on impact.
I’m so old I not only remember glass bottles, I remember a milkman who delivered it every morning.
That’s the smallest gallon I’ve ever seen.
There exist dairies in 2020 who home deliver milk in glass bottles.
In Fort Collins, CO there are a couple of dairies that do home delivery of milk and stuff with glass bottles.
I usually buy milk in 1 liter glass bottles (Germany), there’s a 15 cent deposit on the glass bottles
I’m guessing that if you are intimately familiar with this strip and its characters, this will be hilarious. As it is, it feels like a sitcom where a character walks in and the laugh track goes nuts, but you’re thinking “Who is this guy?”
I had a couple of pints delivered in glass bottles by a milkman only this morning. Mind you, I am UKland. Don’t think any are sold in supermarkets though.
Confirmed, it is available in my town. https://www.freshcityfarms.com/market/product/milk-whole-homogenized-glass-bottle-harmony-organic
@ narmitaj – I would have thought that in the UK, pints in glass bottles would be delivered by the beerman.
They sell milk in glass bottles at my big chain grocery store.
Pints are sold in glass glasses* in pubs but generally in 500ml (glass) bottles in supermarkets. My milk people Milk & More don’t deliver alcohol except for low alcohol beer and wine – 330ml and 750ml respectively. https://www.milkandmore.co.uk/Low-Alcohol/c/Low-Alcohol
*not a completely daft thing to say; they can be delivered in plastic glasses at festivals or times, like N Y Eve, of expected excessive japery and tomfooling.
I still don’t get it. If the clerk knows that the employee is clumsy, that’s fine, but it doesn’t explain why the customer is responsible for damages, and why he seems okay with that. If there was some evidence that the customer spilled something causing the employee to fall, then maybe. But if that’s the case, the clerk is a bit of a jerk for realizing what was about to happen and yet not warning the kid.
Actually the wine is alcohol-free – just the beer is 0.5%
@ Mark M – I don’t follow the strip, but I’ve been assuming that the customer at the register is the parent of the teenager who destroyed all the jars.
Thanks Kilby. That makes more sense!
narmitaj: If you get “plastic glasses,” would you call them “glasses”? I would just call them “cups.” For me “glasses” are by definition made of “glass.” (Not criticizing your usage, just curious if it’s different than mine.)
Smashing containers of milk in a store was a “thing” a while ago among dissolute utes (as Vinny would say–“youths”).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallon_smashing
I’d say “morons” but I remember some of the dumba** s*** we did when I was young, so…naw, we were morons, too.
Oops, premature posting: I assume the kid is his, so the store is charging him for the dipshittery.
The dad was buying one gallon of milk, the boy broke $60 of WHATEVER else that was, not necessarily more milk. Also, first and third panels I thought the clerk had a massive scarface
In the UK you can still get your milk delivered in glass bottles to your doorstep although most people get theirs in plastic containers at the supermarket. And the tits ( birds: coal, blue, great etc.) still peck through the foil tops.
My first take was the sudden onset of hyperinflation, the suddenness bowling over the second customer with the simultaneous corrections at the register. Probably not the cartoonist’s intent.
I think very few people in a British pub would refer to a drink – other than something like coffee – coming in a cup (I would say in normal British usage a cup is non-transparent). The bar staff might inform you that they are only selling beer in plastic, but I think mostly they would indeed say “plastic glasses”.
Here’s one place selling plastic (drinking) glasses:
https://www.alternative-glass.co.uk/plastic-glasses
Similarly people wear spectacles/ eyeglasses that they call glasses even though they are mostly made of high-tech plastic these days. No-one, I expect, says, “Let me just put on my reading plastics”.
narmitaj: Yes, “eyeglasses” are definitely “glasses” regardless of what they’re made of.
Thinking about drinking “glasses” more, I think my usage is actually similar to yours: it’s not the material that’s important, but whether the container is transparent. When you referred to a plastic container, I had been thinking of something like a red solo cup, which I wouldn’t call a “glass.” But if the plastic is transparent, then it’s good to call it a “glass.” Because then it looks like it’s made of “glass,” so close enough.
Yes, we call all our plastic drinkware glasses, even tho it’s all made of plastic, due to ceramic tile floors (indoors) and pavers (lanai/pool area). It’s a bit like calling one’s cutlery ‘silverware’, altho it’s highly unlikely it’s made of silver.
Andréa: Would you call an opaque red Solo cup a “glass”?
Fascinating (endless) discussion of milk containers aside, do we have ANY reason to think the person who fell is connected to the customer? I mean, the joke makes sense if he is, but that’s working backwards.
WW: If I was requesting a red Solo cup, I would probably say, “Can you hand me that [points]?” If I wanted what was inside the cup, I would say, “Get me a drink.” And if the service was slow, I’d break out the sharks.
Dr. Shrinker: Those are both regular characters in the comic. The father is the one paying, and the one who fell is his son.
If I ask someone to, say, “bring me a glass of water,” I’m only interested in ingesting water in the volume it would occupy in a typical “glass.” I don’t care if said water is *actually* delivered in a glass glass, a plastic “glass,” a cup, a ceremic flowerpot, or the hollowed-out skull of the youngest son of my clan’s traditional enemy. I might not even notice.
Well,O.K., maybe not the flowerpot. That sounds icky.
Up until a year or so ago, there was a dairy in Rhode Island that had a fleet of classic vintage DIVCO delivery trucks. Sadly they went out of business and there were a handful of ragged examples parked in front of the closed business when I saw it last summer.
A local store offers milk in glass bottles (half gallon, IIRC?), and the deposit is heading to near $3. That particular product does seem popular there.
Nope, I’d refer to it as a Solo cup because it’s become so well-known. All my plastic drinkware is clear, so looks like glass and is referred to as ‘glasses’.
“Well,O.K., maybe not the flowerpot. That sounds icky.”
Flowerpots ARE used for bread baking. BEFORE being use for plants, of course.
https://oureverydaylife.com/443734-how-to-bake-bread-or-cake-in-terra-cotta-pots.html
Re the Charade, I guess that before the Milk Bill milk was sold in metal cans.
Previously more common than glass: can. Little words: a, an.
The whole, the land of milk and honey: Canaan.
Mark In Boston
That’s the answer I came up with as well Richard Bellamy apparently famously refused to tell what the answers were but provided a proto-encryption key so you can see if you answer was *incorrect*. The code for “Canaan” was a positive so that implies our answer was correct.
That was one of the easy ones.
We used to get milk delivered in the 1960s when we moved out and it was in bottles.
When we were first married and for some reason had a need for milk (I am guessing what I cooked back then used milk in some dishes) I would go to a store that was part of a chain called Dairy Barn. One would drive up to the door and give their milk (and they carried other items also) and they would hand you the bottled milk and take the payment. Bottles had deposits and so one would hand them the empties before getting the new ones and paying. I am not sure when they went out of business – some time after 1988 when we moved into our house as I found an empty bottle or two in the porch when I cleared it out a year or so ago (which means it could be 5 years ago).
Points to Shrug!