That Horrible, Horrible Place Called Ikea

Let me start by outing myself as a user of Ikea products. I sleep on an Ikea bed with two mattresses - my wife's was specially made for her, but mine was from Ikea (we have two-mattress beds here in Germany - which is quite sensible, the more you think about it). My clothes are folded (mostly) and jammed into one of those sturdy, practical Malm dressers. I get a little emotional when I think about the white Erktop couch we left inside the Washington beltway. In fact, I think the chair upon which I sit was a result of that merry band of Swedes, but I'd have to ask my wife as she bought it a long time ago.

But the Ikea shopping experience, which has happened to me several times, is a flagrant violation of the Geneva convention. Their enhanced shopping method is several surreal labyrinths of household goods, worthy of Dante, Kafka, Hitchcock and the latter levels of the original Super Mario Brothers. The purpose of this, to the best I can ascertain (it's always difficult, after Ikea, to remember what's real and what isn't), is that each display, each fluorescent lamp, each bag of affordable power strips, lands a body blow to the mind. Overloaded with information, color, stimuli and a complex series of numbers that supposedly guide the shopper/victim through their warehouse (final level where you fight the big boss if you have enough power points and appropriate ammo, though I really don't remember if that part is true), the shopper is unable to make competent purchasing decisions, so he buys everything on his list and requires a military convoy just to get it all home.

This week, my family, against our better judgment, embarked to Ikea. We have two Ikeas to choose from - I think they hover around major metropolitan areas like those space ships in Independence Day. They lured us in with an email: kitchen chairs were on sale - 20 Euros off. We needed kitchen chairs - four of them. To boot, we also wanted nightstands, various kitchen items and curtains. We hopped in the Ford Focus and drove over there, the day calm, the weather hot but cheerful, rock'n'roll on the radio. We arrived at the mothership and were ushered (invited? Tempted? Who can say?) into a parking garage - it had only two levels, but the first one must have been as tall as Mt. Rushmore, because we drove upwards for miles, our car twisting up the ramp like it was one of the screws holding an Ikea dresser together until, nauseated (and in no condition to drive a car through a busy concrete enclosure, not to mention actually parking the darn thing), we reached our destination.

Somehow I parked, and we walked in, already disoriented. There's a friendly-looking place where you can leave your child with a friendly-looking Ikea employee. I looked over there. Our daughter is only a year and a half years old, and the kids need to be three to be left there. All the kids were watching a movie. I couldn't see what it was. There was a Pixar poster on the wall, but I bet that was a diversion. I suspect that the kids were really watching an instructional video on breaking kitchen chairs and nightstands, so as to send parents back to buy more as soon as possible ("Hi kids! Today, we're going to see what a hockey stick can do to a table leg!").

I'm told all Ikea stores are basically the same, but I never remember what comes first. Beds? Couches? Bathroom? Kitchen? All I remember is that there is a lot of furniture, surrounded my mesmerizing displays of idyllic rooms full of suspiciously perfect right angles. I'm also told that there are shortcuts through Ikea, and if you know what you're doing, you can actually get through the store quickly, kind of like how, at Target, you can buy what you need and escape unscathed (except for being forced to breathe in that inhumane popcorn-maker smell when you walk in the door, but that's for another blog post). Maybe it's true, who can know? But I think it's just a rumor that the Ikea authorities let fester for the sake of false hope. All I know is that when we were in the bowels of the Ikea kitchen displays, we could no longer find the sale we were looking for. Filled with panic, my wife realized she had not printed the sales email. We looked at each other. Beads of sweat grew on our foreheads as I struggled to hold on to my squirming daughter. I knew that if she ran off among the maze of cabinets and high stools, I might never see her again.

My wife took out her cell to call her parents to make sure the email was correct (conveniently, we left our notebook computer on their kitchen table). No signal. Not a bar. I took out my phone. Same results - just a blank screen that glowed uselessly until its automatic lock-down kicked in. In Ikea, no one can here you scream.

My wife and I locked eyes. That's all we had time for. She was beautiful. Quietly, but with a sense of purpose, she raced back the way we came (we had left a trail of those papers where you're supposed to write your product numbers, just in case). Ikea can bring a couple together in our desperation. But it can also tear us apart. I observed another couple arguing. It was a heated, angry exchange about what to buy for their bedroom. The woman was arguing on the authority of her nesting instinct, magazine articles, color patterns and thousands of childhood dreams. The man was arguing on the authority of their bank account and the actual size of their apartment. I didn't see how it ended. In an effort to distract her from the gravity of the situation, I took my daughter to make faces in a full-length mirror.

Time is different in Ikea. Who knows how much time passes outside of the store, or how long we were actually in the store. What I do know is that my wife made it back to us, but I really don't know how long it took. My beard was thicker, though, and my daughter was taller, but that may have been the mirror playing tricks. My wife's parents were able to confirm the sale, even if there were no indications in the mother ship.

Bruised, tired and hungry, we made our way to the cafeteria. Some might argue that the cafeteria is one of Ikea's redeeming features. After all, Ikea is one of the few places in Europe that offers free refills. But, chugging down my third glass of Ikea-brand cola like a Roman oar man on a break, I realized that the that was the catch. The free refills! What spurs the obesity epidemic if not the mass availability of sugar water? And what causes furniture to sag, slouch and break more than obesity? I looked down at the cream sauce oozing over my salmon. I looked over at the fries my wife was sharing with my daughter. I felt my chair creak and struggle beneath me as the conspiracy formed in front of my eyes. I returned our trays, shaken, and we quietly made our way down the escalator to the lower level.

The lower level of Ikea is room after room, stage after stage, of small appliances, lights, silverware, art prints and potted plants. There are baskets of products so inexpensive and appealing that you find yourself filling up your yellow bag with them without really thinking. "Yes, I'll take six of those three packs of picture frames." But the good news is that the cunning furniture displays have mostly stopped, though the damage has been done.

The warehouse is the final stage. The warehouse is where you actually get your furniture, vacuumed packed into immovable boxes, stacked on shelves, row after row after row, like the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. After an Indiana Jones-like search, we found our chairs and night stands, which we put on a pushcart and made our way, wearily, yearning for freedom, to the checkout lines. The checkout lines are automated. I scanned the chairs. Still no sale. I swiped the Ikea-family card, which usually is good for a free cup of coffee. Sale! We got what we came for! We got what we came for! My wife and I embraced. My exhausted daughter napped in the umbrella stroller.

We hurried out, making no eye contact with Ikea employees or other customers. We wanted to see the sun again. Under the weight of six, compact boxes, the Focus bent but didn't break. We drove away. What day was it?

Later, struggling to build our new nightstand, I realized I put a shelf in backwards, compromising the entire project. The white boards of some sort of pressed meatloaf wood, twisted and scratched as I tried to correct the error. The horror. The horror.