Menu item unaffected by css

ive had this probelm for several months, ive tried everything i can think of and nothign is working.

one of my drop menu items will not change width, regardless of what i do to css.

from what i can tell the rule that is supposed to alter this is


#access ul ul li {
min-width:180px;
}

i have changed this rule to as low as 50px, both in the child theme css and the parent theme css and yet every time i reload and check the page in firebug (or similar) the rule remains unchanged.
but when you look at the css files the changes are there.

can someone PLEASe help me figure out what the F is going on?

First of all, min-width only means minimum width, so the width won’t change if there is not something “pressing” on the item. If you want to make sure that you are changing the relevant css-files, set width:50px, that is absolute and will change the menu-item, if there is not another css-rule after the one you have changed.
I always do ‘view source’ on web-pages to see what is actually there once they have been generated.

i have tried width: 50px;
i have “inspected element”
i have looked through the css and cannot find another rule for this.
thats is why i am confused.