The dangers of phone consumer surveys

My colleague Miriam Erez contributed the following:

"Last night I answered a phone consumer survey on moist wipes (yes, I do this if I have time, having once done this job and thus testifying that it's one of the hardest jobs I've done. Plus I actually enjoy them!). Anyway, moist wipes. The caller repeatedly asked for my evaluation of various properties of (a list of) moist wipe products that included *Farsh Wahnz* and a product I'd never heard of called *AH-geese*. The survey took 18 minutes (even though she told me it would take eight). It wasn't 'til Minute 15 that it dawned on me: *AH-geese* > Huggies!"

- I don't know how many of you are familiar with Israeli slang, but my daughter-in-law uses "farsh" quite often, to describe things that are lame, unsatisfactory, shvach (Yiddish) or schwach (German).

Miriam continues:

"Well I sure wasn't gonna 1) embarrass her and 2) take up more of my own leisure time by informing her that due to her inability to correctly pronounce the name of the product she's supposed to be surveying, we'd have to backtrack and change all my *AH-geese* answers (all of which were "never heard of it"). If it throws off their results, serves them right for 1) Not localizing the product's name (*chibuki*?) and 2) Having failed to localize, neglecting to instruct the public in how to correctly pronounce it. Aaargh!"

2 comments:

conrad said...

"Farsh Wanz" is pretty obviously "Fresh Ones". Wonder what "chibuki" was...

Nina Rimon Davis said...

Not sure... But since Huggies are diapers and "chibuki" is a childish version of the word "hibuk", meaning "hug", maybe those too are disposable diapers... A quick Google search came up with various items for babies and toddlers, e.g. a towel, a teddy bear, etc.

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