Friday evening at diner, my wife looked up from her plate and said, “Honey, let's go to IKEA tomorrow.”
Her suggestion landed like a bomb just south of the salad bowl, one that ticked while I considered the implications.
***
Gals - I need to speak to the guys for a bit. Please skip ahead and rejoin us at the next section (marked with three asterisks).
Okay guys, here is a test to determine how well you speak relationship.
What did my wife actually say?
A: “I'm broke but still want to shop, bring your VISA.”
B: “I going to make a haul and require a pack mule.”
C: “I value your taste in household furnishings.”
D: “Tomorrow you will yet again prove your love for me by lugging bags through a crowded store while I wander slowly through the aisles examining every item in detail, even stuff I have no interest in - and don't forget your VISA.”
If you answered C, you are either sensitive or an idiot.
If you are sensitive, please skip ahead to the next section (marked with three asterisks). If you are an idiot, bail out now because nothing here will make sense to you.
So how do you know which option is correct? Well, you don't.
What you need is more information. I suggest waiting a respectful 15 seconds before asking, “So what do you want to pick up?”
If her response is specific, such as “I need a reading lamp” then you are in luck, the answer is “A: Bring your VISA”.
But vagary means trouble. For instance, “I don't know, just something for the living room” translates directly into “B: Wear your hernia belt”.
And if she says... “Oh, let's just go for the fun” - that would be a “D”.
***
Gals and sensitive guys, great to have you back. The guys had a wonderful talk... Now onto IKEA.
For those of you who have been living in the south seas with a soccer ball named “Wilson” and don't know what IKEA is, allow me to explain.
IKEA is to furniture, what Volvo is to cars - both Swedish and terribly strange.
The company specializes in flat-pack furniture, the kind you can bicycle home from the store with, but their product line is so much more. IKEA produce a bewildering array of items from four basic materials: white coated particle board, stainless steel, Tupperware and meatballs.
It is as if IKEA had discovered the retailing equivalent of the atom. They simply combine these materials like molecules to create products of such infinite variety, configuration and color that every possible human desire is satisfied.
However the most salient feature of IKEA is its odd product names.
Warning: Experts who speak fluent bar code have suffered injury while trying to pronounce the names of IKEA products. Never attempt it without proper training by a certified instructor.
Here is the key to the IKEA naming system:
- Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, doorknobs: Swedish place names even the Swedes cannot pronounce.
- Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: words not allowed in scrabble.
- Dining tables and chairs: Finnish ghost towns.
- Bookcase ranges: Forgotten occupations.
- Bathroom articles: Scandinavian bogs and tidal flats.
- Kitchens: Swedish tongue twisters and Latvian Limericks.
- Chairs, desks: Bushmen names for evil spirits.
- Materials, curtains: Sri Lankan women's names.
- Garden furniture: Volvo part numbers.
- Carpets: words discovered in Danish pastry
- Lighting: chemical compounds.
- Bedlinen, bed covers, pillows/cushions: errors found on 3rd grade spelling tests.
- Children's items: words not possible to assemble in scrabble.
- Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms.
- Kitchen utensils: foreign words (huh?).
- Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions banned in Tibet.
Next there is the IKEA store experience.
IKEA stores are windowless boxes with a “one-way” layout. Think of them like massive inside playgrounds, along the line of what you would find at Mac Donald's, only for adults.
In the mind of the designer, the concept is “a long natural way”. However for the customer, it is more like a timed scramble for a chunk of cheese. For all practical purposes, the one-way layout is an only-way layout. You must run the complete course or risk of an eternity spent eating meatballs amid a universe made from white particle board.
Ladies and sensitive guys, sorry but this is the end of the article for you. I understand if you are disappointed. I am sorry for that, but at least I've left you with a brief but useful description of IKEA and a few safety tips
Thanks for reading...
***
Now guys...
An unaccompanied male in good health can make the run through IKEA in under two hours.
My personal best is 3:15:14 and on Saturday there was every reason to believe that I could shatter the record. All the Missus said she wanted was an inexpensive modular reading lamp.
I should have known better.
I should have asked, why IKEA?
IKEA furniture is incredibly cheap which means it is where college kids go to outfit their dorm room.
It is where young lovers go after signing a lease together. It is where young families furnish a house on a negative budget.
In short, IKEA is where adult life begins, its average customer is half our age. So what did she want there?
At the very first display, a one room apartment furnished entirely in particle board and foam, she cried, “Isn't this CUTE!!”
I nodded meaningfully.
Of course she wasn't asking for my opinion on a AKURUM Swedish modular couch nor on a kitchen utensil named after a fish.
She hadn't gone to IKEA to shop. She had gone there to dream.
What she was saying on Friday was... “Come with me for a day, and dream like we used to dream when we were young and life was open to every promise.”
I will leave you with this guys, no matter what she says, no matter what fights you might have had – the real stuff in a relationship – is dreaming together.
Never lose that.
© Greg Schiller, 2009
Author: Greg Schiller
Feel free to rummage around my collection of essays and stories at Greg's Garage
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Comments: 30
If there was a Nobel Prize
exposing bullshit marketing
You should get one!
I wondered into an IKEA here in Sydney with the wife and son,
it took us hours to navigate the maze and finally escape..'
Did you clock your time?
We have a local group devoted to navigating the IKEA maze. The record is 1:22:18.
Ouch, Greg! LOL
Marilyn
Once again, you attack the really important issues of today's world. Thank you.
You describe a very common experience among men. Why just the other day, I woke up in my Lazy-Boy and shouted to my wife, "Hey Hon, where did we get all this stuff."
She shouted back, "Go back to sleep."
To which I replied, "Okay, wake me when the Vikings come on."
When the Vikings came on, I turned to her and said, "Hey Hon, where did we get all this stuff?"
To which she replied, "Watch the game."
And so it goes in our household.
It's kinda like Trader Joes, I don't need the "experience" in shopping at these places.
They are not for me.
They have products for that constructed out of white particle board and named for random letters in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Now that they're grown and I don't see them enough to feel the need to abandon them places, IKEA is just too much like work. They did have some cool stuff though - but gotta go without hubby to buy cool stuff.
Now IKEA has a playground for adults. You can leave hubby there until you need him to carry stuff.
P.S. - Glad you're back on Gather.
Take it from the father of a couple of twenty-somethings, the bean-bag chairs are still in. They are larger than ever. One bag now seats six sober kids and one not-so-sober kid.
As for bookcases....... what's a book?
Seriously, the reason bricks are out is safety. Kids are nuts for safety. They learn that in school. It is the only thing they learn in school. But hey, you don't want to break up with a significant other and have them toss your (brick) bookcases out a sixth floor window.
Now they just disassemble your flat-pack furniture and have UPS deliver it to your parent's basement.
P.S. - Thanks, it's great to have time to be back.
Then, there was the day we were in the middle of the upstairs maze with loaded bags...and the nice, calm lady came onto the PA system and told us that the alarm was going to sound and that we should all calmly walk to the nearest exit or emergency exit and leave the building. We lugged our bags with us, until we went down the back stairwell where we sadly had to put them down. Abandon them or become shoplifters...sob, sob, sob.
Then, we had to leave because it was going to be quite some time for the fire department to clear the building for re-entry...and the crowd outside kept getting larger and larger as new shoppers arrived...