The episode of 30 Rock (Season 6, episode 6) where Liz goes to IKEA with her boyfriend may be the most honest and truthful piece of television writing in history. While that show may have been the source for many crucial life lessons "Live every week like it's Shark Week" - Tracy Jordan, and "Never follow a hippie to a second location" - Jack Donaghy, the IKEA episode hits home the hardest. In that episode Liz Lemon makes the very real point that IKEA is where couples go to die and it makes everyone insane. Sing it true, girlfriend!
Ladies and gentleman....I hate IKEA.
I don't mean I hate IKEA in the same way that I hate having to stand in line at the post office or how I hate people who name their kids bulls**t names like Persephone Apple Blossom Rainchild...I mean I hate IKEA in a way that causes me to break out into a rash the moment someone even suggests going there.
Don't let their bright happy blue and yellow colours or their adorably quirky Swedish-ness fool you...they are pure evil.
The typical trip to IKEA is such an ordeal that it will completely suck up your entire day and spit you out so cruelly that you may not even know what just happened to you, or even who you are anymore.
Just think about every trip to IKEA you've ever taken....
First of all, you have to get there....the ordeal begins. There are no IKEAs close-by to civilization, you must always drive or subway out to the middle of nowhere, because they must lure you to the edge of all humanity so that you won't be able to go shopping anywhere else that entire day. Once you've entered their land, they have you trapped...there is nowhere else to go. You've spent so long getting there that you better make it worth the effort to have gone. They have succeeded in wearing you down by the time you've entered the store.
In every entrance stands the same disgusting children's playroom with the urine soaked ball-pit and influenza coated slides. There are stands with catalogues, pencils, writing pamphlets and those shitty foot-long paper measuring tapes. What there should be is a 'Proceed at Your Own Risk' sign and Gollum to guide you into the brightly coloured Scandinavian Mordor.
And so you enter and immediately you're overwhelmed by the amount of things to look at: room displays, price tags, huge vats of random trinkets and gadgets and the constant hoard of other shoppers, many of which have dragged along their screaming children for some reason that is beyond me. Like a stunned animal, you begin to wind you way into their maze, looking at the carefully crafted showrooms and finding a charming humour in the names of the objects.
Every 5 feet there is the question from your spouse "Do we need one of these?"....and it's always no...nobody has ever needed one...whatever it is.
Soon you arrive at the chairs and couches and every time, you feel some draw to sit in one- often because you're already exhausted, but you also can't help but want to learn more about the $200 couch. Your spouse is in a corner looking at a cheap flower pot, so you sit...and you adjust...and you squirm. You quickly realize that this is one of the most uncomfortable things you've ever sat in and it's almost no relief from standing because your lower back feels like it's being compacted. You get up, disappointed, and carry on, now a bit disillusioned and grumpier than before you sat down. Your spouse gives you a sneer because of the grumpy look on your face "What's your problem?" you both begin to think.
You slowly begin to wonder where the section you need is...this confusing maze of a store keeps winding you around but doesn't actually seem to have an ending or any sense of real direction. You look at the time and are amazed how late it already is...you'd better keep going. The moment one of you begins to dawdle...and you will...the other immediately snaps "Come on!"....no man left behind in IKEA...because if I have to drag my ass on, so do you dammit. At this point, you have stopped consulting each other on the little trinkets and are feeling resentful that you ever came.
If you're looking for furniture, it's about now that you'll spot something roughly the same size and shape as what you were looking for....although it's never exactly what you want. You look at the size, you argue over the colour ("The table is dark wood but I like white" , "Who would have a blue mirror?" etc). You read the size but neither of you really know what that equals in actual space...so you try to use the shitty paper measuring tape...but it's too short and when you try to stretch it at all, it snaps in half. You look at the price and figure you'll try it...but you can't just buy it there...you have to write down the coordinates to go attempt to locate it and pick it up at the end of your shopping fun.
You're done the first section and you come across a section that God (or Gods) forgot. The IKEA cafeteria. It's not a restaurant, no matter what they call it. No restaurant would ever sell $1 meatballs and $2 turkey dinners. It is inexplicably overflowing with children and people, you don't understand how so many people can be fooled into eating rubber food and tasteless slop. One of you will want to stop and go in, if for no other reason than to take a break from endless parade of showrooms and not-quite-right furniture. Whether you stop or not, you're in for a bad time, either you eat the horrible food and feel worse for having ingested it or you soldier on and the person who wanted to stop resents the lack of repose.
There are no more showrooms in the second half, it's all just utensils. frames, kitchen goods, lighting and the smaller household things that can really cause misery. Furniture is big enough that most couples will go into it with the understanding that both parties should have a common goal- the smaller utensil type stuff is a total free-for-all. Each item is small enough that you feel you shouldn't need to justify it, and it's always too cheap to want to really start a fight over...but yet you find yourself arguing about the $4.00 blue vase every time. This is where the resentments build to breaking point "We don't need a cheap lemon zester...you won't use it...you don't use half of the crap you already own...and it's always me cleaning it...you never clean up....I do everything...I hate you". Boom. Ikea has caused another relationship to explode in anger.
You walk through the remaining sections looking at every item because you'd rather look at the crappy wicker garden basket than look your spouse in the eye right now. You're so filled with hate and resentment right now that you draw out how long you look at everything just to avoid them. You contemplate buying the ugly huge fern right near the exit just because it will be something in the house you could talk to rather than your partner.
And so you think you're done...oh no....you aren't done yet. You enter the warehouse in which you need to comb through the aisles of brown boxes to find the one product you wanted to buy an hour ago and can't even remember what it is. You look at the coordinates written on your pamphlet with the stupid golf pencil you dropped 20 minutes ago in a basket somewhere....and you go hunting. if you're lucky, when you track your boxes, they have it in stock; or if it comes in two parts, they may have stock of only one. You are ready to grab it and go...except once you lift it you find that it weighs roughly the same as a neutron star. How on Earth are you going to get this home on the subway? And it's huge...this won't fit in the trunk. Screw it, you came all this way, spent all this time and energy, you are determined to not leave without it. You haul it onto one of those weird trolleys that never steers properly and head to the cash, bumping 5 bystanders on your way and getting your ankles rammed about 4 times by others. You see the lines....the ungodly long lines...and then the spouse says the magic words "I just want to check out the As IS section".
The As-Is...the unholiest of grounds on the planet. Where broken and damaged furniture that was crap when it was brand new are sold at a slightly reduced rate in an attempt to pawn off garbage onto the weak and gullible. Random planks of wood, old unlabeled parts, couches with huge rips and dressers with gouges are all on sale for 10% off. Every second you're forced to stand there and assess the heaps of garbage, you are about to explode...you just want to leave and get out of this fluorescent lighted hell.
You return to the mile long line...and you wait and wait and wait. Finally, it's your turn and the cashier rings you through....and you feel yourself throw up in your mouth when you see your total. How did all of that cheap crap add up so so much money?! You're so desperate to get out that you pay and figure you'll look at the receipt later. You pass by their last trap...the ice cream and hot dogs. For $1 fat and carbs, you figure you've earned it...who cares if the line is twice as long as the one you just stood in. It tastes bland and the kid behind the counter didn't wash his hands...but you're too tired to care. You walk outside into the loading area and it's more crowded than a sale at Walmart. You send your spouse to bring the car around and after 20 minutes, they finally find a parking spot close to the loading zone. This is where your years of playing Tetris as a kid come in handy...because the huge heavy box versus the trunk/backseat is about as complicated as the German Enigma Code machine from WWII. You scratch the leather interior...you drop on it our foot...you back your knuckles on the side of the car and then you hit your head as you back out of finally shoving it in the corner.
You're exhausted, you hate your spouse, you're bruised and you paid too much. Now you get to journey home laden with that Satan spawn box of crap furniture. And guess what? You still have to assemble it.
But that is another story.
Happy IKEA shopping!
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