{"id":448,"date":"2007-11-25T23:01:50","date_gmt":"2007-11-25T13:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2007\/11\/25\/swedish-sales-pitches\/"},"modified":"2008-02-29T20:02:08","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T10:02:08","slug":"swedish-sales-pitches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2007\/11\/25\/swedish-sales-pitches\/","title":{"rendered":"Swedish Sales Pitches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A two Swedish anecdotes, inspired by the Danish <a href=\"http:\/\/wedonotuse.com\/\">WeDoNotUse.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The phone rang in my apartment in Sweden. I picked up and was greeted by a torrent of gibberish. &#8220;I am sorry. I do not speak Swedish. Do you speak English?&#8221; I asked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh, yes,&#8221; said the woman at the other end. &#8220;I am calling from <em>Svenska Dagbladet<\/em>.&#8221; That&#8217;s a daily paper printed in Stockholm. &#8220;We are currently offering a discount on home-delivered subscriptions.&#8221; She continued to describe the offer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>Svenska Dagbladet<\/em>?&#8221; I queried, &#8220;That&#8217;s written in Swedish, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Err.. yes,&#8221; she conceded, but quickly rallied, &#8220;but it is a great way to <em>learn<\/em> Swedish.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Laughing, I thanked her for the suggestion, but declined.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t need a newspaper to practice my reading. There was plenty of material available, such as junk mail.<\/p>\n<p>Once, early in my stint in Sweden, I tried to parse a brochure that had been shoved through the letterbox slot on my door. I made less progress than I hoped; the only interpretation I could make from the flyer was that they were offering &#8220;home-delivered toilet paper&#8221;! My comprehension skills clearly weren&#8217;t yet up to the task. I wondered briefly what the flyer was really about.<\/p>\n<p>I had already forgotten about the flyer the next morning when there was a knock on the door. A salesman was there to collect my order; how many rolls of toilet paper would I like?<\/p>\n<p>Half-an-hour later, I related the tale to a Swedish colleague. I was trying to gauge whether home-delivered toilet paper was considered unusual in Sweden. He appeared amused by the concept, but then quickly rallied. With a concerned voice, he warned me: &#8220;Be careful of the quality of the home-delivered toilet paper. It is best to unravel it all the way to check it is okay, and then wind it back up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Laughing, I thanked him for the suggestion, but declined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A two Swedish anecdotes, inspired by the Danish <a href=\"http:\/\/wedonotuse.com\/\">WeDoNotUse.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,41],"tags":[106,183,185,246],"class_list":["post-448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-based-on-a-true-story","category-story-telling","tag-anecdote","tag-junk-mail","tag-sales","tag-sweden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}