Ikea Sucks
Posted by Matt Johnson | 2007-09-24 11:41:17
I know I am supposed to write stuff on web development, but I really don't want to right now. I'm redoing my office and my dad and I are building a custom desk (it's going to be sweet). We needed some table legs for the part of the desk that wouldn't be supported by the wall braces. So we looked online and found the ones that we wanted from a new store in the area called Ikea. We drive over to the store and find out it is like Disneyland for college kids. The parking lot is so huge it has lettered sections so you know where to go, if you get out.
We take a small hike from our car to the front doors where we are immediately shuffled up an escalator. We knew what we wanted, and we just wanted to get them and get out, but no way, that's not how things work in Ikea. The whole store is setup like a giant showroom. You walk and walk and walk and all you see if showrooms. But's it's not like you can go where you want to, you have to follow this 3 ft wide path through the entire frat boy infested store. That's not really the problem though, unlike Home Depot, Lowes, or any other non-weird store, there is only 1 aisle, you just follow these little arrows around the entire store. There are no short cuts to the section you want to look at, you just follow the path, like a bunch of fat kids running the mile in PE (well, kind of). You get stuck behind old grannies and goofy looking kids, women pushing their annoying children in strollers and you can't get past them because the path is only 3 ft wide. You just have to pray that they'll move off to the side to look at an awe inspiring kitchen setup.
We finally found the legs we wanted for the computer desk but, much to our disappointment, you couldn't just grab the legs and force your way to the checkout stand. They were just for show. You had to continue down the maze of crappy European inspired furniture, and, once at the end, there is a warehouse type thing where you can grab the legs and checkout. Well, my dad and I, frantic because we had to keep going down the yellow brick road, were very glad when we reached a set of stairs to get back to ground level. That feeling of warmth and joy soon wore off when we realized the maze continued on the ground floor. There wasn't just one floor of crappy European furniture, there were two.
Every door that looked like it might lead to an exit was labeled "Staff only" or "Alarm will sound". After 15 minutes dazed and confused on the ground floor we finally saw the light, a warehouse looking thing where we could grab the legs and head to the checkout stand. While this objective was accomplished rather easily, I cannot truly say the same for the checkout process.
These fancy European inspired stores don't have normal staff people who man checkout stands. They have 22nd century technology with talking robot checkout stands, of which no 21st century human can use properly. The talking checkout stand was not amused by our human ideas (like taking a box of legs, instead of 6 individual ones) so we had to scan each individual leg instead of one box of legs. While the next problem was not entirely the fault of the computer, it still could have been solved faster if the checkout stand was human and could tell my dad to slide his credit card the right way into the scanner. After about 15 swipes of the credit card, my father decided to switch his card around, and much to his surprise, the 22nd century checkout stand read it and we were off.
After the trek back to the car, we drove out and entered a fancy European inspired round-about (which are supposedly all the rage in Europe). These fancy stoplight replacements may be uber-cool in Europe, but no self respecting American knows how to use them. So we waited behind a cable repair truck, who was slightly confused by the idea of driving in a circle to take a right turn. But eventually he made it out, and so did we.