The furniture is not the issue. Nor is the price, the flat packs nor the staff . My issue is not even with the Swedish meatballs that stare up at me like eyeballs from the feeding troff next to me in the cafeteria. I love Swedish Kitch- but, alas I do not love IKEA.
IKEA is grim. It's not grim in the way a footballers autobiography is grim . IKEA is grim like a child burning ants with a magnifying glass is grim. This is grim in the sense that someone should be looking after said child, giving it toys to play with instead of weaponized glass. Or at the very least being responsible enough to lace the child's juice with whiskey.
Of course all my furniture was birthed from the sterile womb of the IKEA
storage floor - this isn't my point. I know people who enjoy walking
through the cattle cages of IKEA. These people as far as I am concerned
must be damaged. Nothing on the earth embodies the spirit of melancholy like IKEA. One only has to take the various chair graveyards as
proof of the undercurrent of sadness in the megastore.
These chairs are the off cuts- not good enough to make it into a mock bedroom or living area. The other chairs have been shipped out to student's hovels and middle aged sitting rooms. The ones who don't find a home are thrown into the fluro lit spare rooms that line the corridors of IKEA. The graveyard residents watch as other chairs are whored out to passers by for a 'quick sit' and forgotten.
It is hard life - I imagine.
The arrows point you in the right direction; which is essentially a spiral. IKEA is a snaking path of faux- living spaces that take you right out of the way of the section you actually need to be in. Of course this is not without cause. The IKEA experience is tailored in such a way that by the time you reach the point of 'easy to grab' items you are a victim of Stockholm syndrome. You suddenly feel a connection to the inanimate objects that have caged you . You align yourself with your captors which in this case are frying pans and lamps.
Everything in IKEA is fake. Ovens filled with paper, fake plants and the same books placed carefully into every lie-bookshelf.
Do the authors of these books have a deal with IKEA?
Do literary agents see labels on authors of obscure novels?
If author comes to conclusion that print is dying medium
sell novels to IKEA
- burn the rest , nobody reads books fuckwit.
IKEA is mapped out like a slaughterhouse with the ambiance of a casino. There is no natural light or windows in the corridors so as to confuse your body clock. When one enters IKEA one must forget the feel of sun on your skin or rain in your hair. There is no sun only IKEA.
I don't hate it all. My favorite part of the IKEA experience is the toys. My last trip
I stumbled across a
'Bargain bin of biracial babies.' This is literally the best thing in IKEA as it reflects perfectly the venue. A rainbow of ethnicities trapped in a box together unable to find the exit or the reason they are in the box to begin with . Countless people with faces contorted from focusing on the pronunciation of 'skånk' . When we visit the stores instead of shopping online like sane people we are accepting our fates as Baby Bjorns.
-Rhiannon C Davies.
