I Kan't Ever Again

I've just had to go to Ikea. I decided that a good strategy might be to leave it until late - they open until 10pm - and thus avoid the rush. Silly, silly plan. I left home just after 9 to make the 10 minute journey around the A406 to Wembley. This was all easy runnings. Step two of my plan involved parking as close to the loading area as possible, and enter against the flow, leaping the barriers at checkout, briskly walking through the warehouse bit at the end, and then into the Market Place or whatever tossy name they give it, to the curtain area, for the curtains, and then return to the exit.

What I hadn't banked on was that the place would be, well, pretty much like it is on Saturdays. Rammed to the gun'whals. Heaving. Turgid with humanity. And so, I had quite a flow to work against, each of them giving me a slightly quizzical look. Eventually - and my dread was building as I approached, as I mentally scanned all the people passing me, all the people who would be joining the already-swollen queues at the end before me - I got my curtains. I spun on a sixpence and started walking briskly back towards the checkouts. I survey the queues, and go for the Small Items & Bags Only line, which - for some unknown and unproven reason - I felt would move more quickly.

Ikea claims to have revolutionised the home furnishings experience. Streamlined it. Made it more cost effective, by letting you do the assembly at home, while 'passing the savings on to you'. This is certainly one way they've made things more cost-effective. The other major way they've achieved that is by employing people who don't really even deserve minimum wage.

It's unfair to blame it all on the idiot human resource at the place. It's also the fact that - and I think I can say this has happened every time I've ever been to the godforsaken pit - the scanning system and barcoding just doesn't seem to work properly. I wondered whether another way the company had streamlined was to get the cheapest-ass EPOS system, and was passing that saving onto the customer in the form of long, tedious queues, manned by increasingly-frustrated staff. And there's nothing worse than a wound-up dumbass.

It occurred to me that Ikea was not capitalist - it was communist. As I stood in line, tutting and having light conversation about our lack of progress, it reminded me of Nigeria. I thought: Ikea has brought the Third World, slap bang to the heart of capitalism. Here we all are, hot and bothered (well, I was, and I'm sure I wasn't alone), standing in a nigh-stationary queue, grimly accepting our fates. At the mercy of the chugalong electronic dinosaur system, operated by drones, to buy objects we've still got to build and get blisters off. Sucks, dunnit?