This happened in real life a couple of years ago at the building site of our new home.
Xenios, the guy doing the steel reinforcements had 3-4 foreign laborers working for him and one day while we were all on the 2nd floor he handed one of them a standard 5m measuring tape and asked him to go down, cut a 6m long, 18mm rod, and bring it up.
A few minutes later the laborer was back empty handed and looking VERY worried...
“Where’s the rod?” …asked Xenios.
And in his broken Greek the laborer replies…
“Mastro… the measuring tape is only 5m!”
I kid you not!
