TINPLATE & SITA

A hindu friend who is in tinplate trade has send this story which dates back to mid 90 s when he was just starting and had gone to England to source tinplate for his Indian customers. This friend is an extremely religious man who says his daily prayers and without fail makes four visits to various temples in a year.
He had a meeting with the Sales Manager of then British Steel ( now Corus) . After exchanging pleasantries the friend gave the sales manager the various specs of tinplate he was looking for. After seeing the specs the sales manager asked my friend " How many SITAs are you looking for ?". My friend not understanding the question just said " What ? ". The sales manager repeated his question. My friend had by now started thinking of Ramayan and how Sita could be linked to tinplate. He almost started imagining of religious slur. He just said " I 'll get back tomorrow " and walked out of the sales mamager's office. The whole of that evening was spent calling his contacts back home to find the relationship between tinplate & Sita. Unfortunately no one could help him.

The next day he told the sales manager that he was looking for 200 tonnes of tinplate. The sales manager gave him the quote and later my friend got the tinplate he wanted without knowing what " SITA " was.

For the uninitiated , tinplate world wide is sold in terms of area and SITA is an acronym for System International Tinplate Area. SITA denotes a area of 100 sq mts.
This friend now is fully aware of relationship between tinplate and SITA. He now gets all his quotes in Sita terms and then converts it to tonnes for his Indian customers.