I burnt the chicken!

Well yesterday in class we had a sheet of really exercises, and little did I know that later that night I was going to have a dilema very similar to "John told Steve he won the prize". So last night I was trying to be little miss domestic and decided to cook some chicken patties. Well I was reading the directions and it said for a skillet, "Cook for 8 minutes on each side". So first I was like okay no problem, but then I had a "uhhh?" moment. I wasnt sure if it meant cook on each side for 8 minutes OR cook 8 minutes total meaning 4 on one side and 4 on the other. I would have never even thought twice if it wasnt for our class lecture. The directions were ambiguous and clearly lacking any reference to how exactly I was supposed to cook the chicken! Needless to say I just went with the 8 minutes total, and it definately wasnt done enough! Maybe I should send them the journal of pragmatics in the mail! ;)