>Items such as screws usually aren't counted individually (unless they are large)

But people still try. During one annual inventory I was just lucky to have been assigned to the electronics lab, where they had a few of each - lots to write down, but at least interesting. In the mechanical workshop, there was a case full of ball bearing balls.. um, pardon my English, not balls giving birth to more balls, but rather balls for ball bearings. Still doesn't sound unambiguous but let it [be].

Anyway, someone had a bright idea that these should be counted, because they were expressed in eaches in the inventory. After a couple of thousand, they realized they didn't make much of a dent in the heap... so they measured how many balls fit into a cup, then recalculated via the volume - measured the size of the case, depth of the balls in it and then rounded up the result to an integer. The comment from one of the involved: "whoever doesn't believe we didn't get it right, is free to recount".