{"id":324,"date":"2004-01-28T02:45:30","date_gmt":"2004-01-28T09:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=324"},"modified":"2004-01-28T02:45:30","modified_gmt":"2004-01-28T09:45:30","slug":"top-ten-things-i-hate-about-stockholm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2004\/01\/top-ten-things-i-hate-about-stockholm\/","title":{"rendered":"Top ten things I hate about Stockholm"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first in an occasional series.<\/span>Ten: Predatory seating.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why do normally civil Stockholmers turn French when they set foot inside McDonalds? All the tables are usually taken, but not by people eating — no, they’re taken by people hoarding tables with a view to eventually eating, when their accomplices are done queueing for food. Because of these predatory seating tactics, the tables are occupied twice as long as necessary, which means there are only half as many tables available, which means everybody scrambles to find a table as soon as they enter because there is a shortage.<\/p>\n

Cleary, there is a better way. Everybody should look for a table only when they have food in hand. There would be twice as many tables available, hence no shortage, hence no incentive for this race to a patently suboptimal solution.<\/p>\n

But try to sit down at one of these hoarded tables and have a reasonable conversation with its usurper as to why their behavior is noncollaborative, parasitic and, frankly, rude, preferably while you start eating your Big Mac. They call you rude! Clearly, we have different ideas about what that word means.<\/p>\n

To be fair, Stockholmers only seem to express this selfish meme in cafeteria situations. I can think of far more egregious behavior elsewhere in Europe. In New York, smoking in a non-smoking area is rude; but in France, asking somebody to stop smoking in a non-smoking area is rude. In London, cutting the queue is rude; in Rome, telling somebody off for cutting the queue is rude.<\/p>\n

I suspect that the French and Italians behave this way because they balance individual freedom and the public good differently. To massively overgeneralize again: Southern Europeans expect and tolerate more selfish behavior in social contexts, whereas those of the anglo-saxon persuasion expect and tolerate their behavior being constrained for the common good. Which makes for a counterintuitive conclusion, given the far stronger libertarian roots of American politics, especially when set against the socialist heritage of large chunks of Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first in an occasional series.Ten: Predatory seating. Why do normally civil Stockholmers turn French when they set foot inside McDonalds? All the tables are usually taken, but not by people eating — no, they’re taken by people hoarding tables … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-sweden"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-5e","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}