Ikea, Swedish utopian lifestyle supplier, is one of those places where everything works great until it doesn't and from then on, you are doomed and there is no escaping your doom. This weekend, Wifeana and I went to Red Hook to by desks. They fucked up one of the orders and didn't include hardware. Today I went back to demand I get screwed. Screw me they did. After waiting for an hour for them to move through 4 numbers at the Returns desk, the obese woman finally called my number--385. But of course, she didn't know what part I was talking about and, after fifteen minutes of research, when she finally did figure out that yes, it was indeed purchased yesterday at IKEA and yes indeed they do carry it (which I knew because I purchased it at Ikea yesterday). After a half hour of aimlessly lolling about amongst the Blue Bins, she returned with a baggie full of screws. Only later when I returned home did I realize she had given me the wrong screws. What do you expect from people who can't spell Thursday? Now I have to reenter this crapsuck cycle of shitty Ikea bullshit and I'll never--I feel--be able to escape. Is this what being an undocumented immigrant is like? I think so.
But the real point of the post is thus: Ikea's uber simple sans serif straightforwardness only works as long as they maintain a base level of competence. Usually their system of cheap and easily assembled products does work. But there exists no mechanism, or no well working mechanism, for remedying what happens if something does go horribly wrong. The system can't cope and can't fix itself. Instead, it sucks you into a blue-and-yellow inferno which stretches from here to the last Thrusday in hell.
