That’s how you get cat toys out from under the refrigerator. I don’t think anybody actually measures anything with them.
We have rolls of paper towels in the kitchen cupboard on the top shelf. Tall person puts them there, then goes away, so when I need a new roll I spear it with the yardstick through the tube.
Yardsticks also help adjust curtains when you don’t want to tug on them or climb the ladder.
Yardsticks can give you that exalted feeling of being a tool user, in places where a whip or a gun just aren’t appropriate.
I have used mine to measure lots of things. But it is used more often to get things out from under bigger things. We got ours from the county fair.