One reason to avoid imperial units is that people seem to be generally unsure if they're even using them! I might be wrong, but you're probably more familiar with the US system rather than imperial units (given you said you're american). Did you know there are 20 fluid ounces in a pint?

It’s easy to convert between units, miles and yard and feet and inches make my brain have a BSOD

I generally find them easier to manipulate, which is a frequent use for measuring distance. Honestly, I think the big thing hampering metric adoption is that no one uses decimeters. Kilometers are useful for trip distances, centimeters/millimeters are useful for small/precise measurements, but meters are deeply unuseful (for the same reasons you rarely see things measured in yards).

1/10th of a meter gets you a lot of the same usability as a foot measurement, but now adding centimeters onto that is more straightforward. A lot easier to calculate for measuring space for furniture, height, etc. . .

We do actually work in decimeters a lot, we just refer to them in 10cm increments. And conveniently there are 10 units of 10cm in a meter.

That’s usually called the zeal of the convert. First generation immigrants are quite adept at it.