Just answer the question

Posted in Old blogger by Twenty Major on July 27th, 2006

I do hate conversations like this.

“How far is it to X place?”

“Ooooh, I’d say it’s a good 45 minutes.”

Now, the first thing I would say is that I did not ask you how long it would take to get there. I asked you how far away it was. Therefore I would expect the answer to consist of a certain number of units of measurement. There are many acceptable forms…

“It is 14 miles away.”

“It is 22.530816 kilometres away.”

“It is 4.055 leagues away”

…and so on. Even if you couldn’t be that exact you could say “It’s quite far away indeed” or “It’s actually quite close”. That would be fine as follow up questions could help narrow things down a bit.

I do not understand people’s insistance in measuring distance with time. The second thing is that it’s a ‘good 45 minutes’.

Is there a difference between a bad 45 minutes and a good 45 minutes?

Perhaps a good 45 minutes means we will travel on a newly tarmacadamed EU funded road. A bad 45 minutes we have to travel a dirt track with a punctured and run the risk of attack from trolls, goblins, Romanians and other despicable underworld creatures.

It’s just wrong. If somebody asked you for the time you wouldn’t say “It’s delicious and minty!”. No, you would say that if somebody asked to describe a mojito. It’s the same thing.

Why can’t people just answer the questions they’re asked?