My Silent Battle With the Swedes

Since February of 2001, I have been actively boycotting a certain furniture company. Let me stop you right there...before you go searching the internet for why somebody would boycott said company. This boycott was not founded on any high moral standard. It was not because I discovered that their furniture was crafted by pygmies who were captured from the jungles of Papau-New Guinea and forced to work long hours in a poorly ventilated factory adjacent to the red light district of Stockholm. Nor was it because of their eventual plan for world domination. (In that area, I'm more wary of the Westfield company. Their rapid acquisition of shopping malls all across the United States is, no doubt, nefarious in nature.) No, my boycott of Ikea was the simple result of a personal vendetta spurred on by the shoddy, incompetent service I received from the store in Burbank.

Let me explain. Prior to February 2001, I slept on a mattress on the floor. Not only was this decidely uncomfortable, it also robbed me of the valuable "under-the-bed" storage space, which we so often take for granted. So, after a particularly painful night of sleeping on the floor, I headed off to Ikea, determined to make that my last night on the floor. I spent a good part of the afternoon browsing through the store, finally choosing a style of bed that seemed to fit me. I purchased the bed, and then loaded all the parts that they gave me into and onto my Volkswagen Jetta (which has since met an untimely death.) I drove home, and carried everything up two flights of stairs and into my bedroom in order to begin to assemble my bed.

It didn't take long before I realized that assembling the bed would be absolutely impossible. They had given me the parts for two different beds. Half of the pieces were for the bed I had purchased, and the other half were for a twin sized bunk bed. For a brief moment, I entertained the idea of trying to build some sort of freakish-bed-hybrid, but decided against it. I loaded up the bunk bed parts into my car and drove back to Burbank. Additionally, I had noticed that the headboard, or frame, they had given me was all scratched up. Rather than going through all the trouble of loading the cumbersome headboard back into my car, I requested that they deliver a new one to me, along with the rest of the parts. They agreed to do so (free of charge, since they had made the error) and told me the parts would be delivered that Monday. They also said they would call Sunday evening to let me know what time they would deliver the parts.

Sunday evening, at around 9:00, I still hadn't heard from them so I decided to give them a call. I spoke to the person in charge of delivery, and he told me that they had no record of my order. At this point, I was slightly perturbed, and I drove down there to talk to the manager who had booked my delivery. She apologized, said she didn't know what had happened and left her office to go find out what the problem was. While she was gone, I happened to notice my delivery order sitting on the table in her office where I had filled it out. She had never even given it to the delivery people.

She came back to tell me that they would not be able to deliver it the next day, and that the soonest they could deliver it would be the following Monday. I agreed to that, and returned home. The next Sunday, they called to tell me they would deliver the goods at around noon. On the day of delivery, they did not actually show up until about 4:00, but that's pretty normal as far as deliveries go, so I didn't let that bother me.

When I began to assemble the bed, however, I discovered yet another problem. The new headboard they had given to me had the holes drilled backwards, thus making it impossible to assemble. I called and spoke to the same manager with whom I had been dealing and let her know about the latest problem. She was again apologetic and said they would send me a new headboard at the next available delivery time...which was the following Saturday.

Friday evening, they called and told me that they would deliver the new headboard at 8 am. Three weeks after purchasing the bed, I assumed everything was finally going to be in order. The next morning, however, at 7:45, the delivery driver called to tell me that they had loaded the wrong item on the truck, and that they would not be able to deliver the parts that day. Normally, I'm fairly soft spoken, opting simply to seethe with rage rather than voice my discontent. I'm fairly sure that at this point, however, I was near my breaking point...minutes away from going on a Los Angeles-wide rampage somewhat akin to Michael Douglas's rampage in the movie Falling Down. I managed to keep my rage to a minimum as I firmly explained to the driver that I expected my order that day and would not be able to receive delivery at any other time. He told me that he would do his best to get it to me. That evening at around 9:30, after an entire day of waiting for them to arrive, I finally received my new headboard and was able to assemble the bed.

The next day I wrote a seething letter to the store manager, lambasting his store's staggering levels of incompetence, and telling them that I would never purchase anything from them again. Never once did they attempt to contact me to apologize or somehow make up for all the inconvienence.

In my mind, I often compare this experience to a time that I purchased a shirt from the Men's Wearhouse. I got the shirt home and discovered it was slightly dirty, as it had been taken out of its plastic in the store. I returned to the store and requested to exchange the shirt. The manager gladly exchanged the shirt and also gave me a ten dollar gift certificate to compensate me for my trouble. All I'd really been expecting was a new shirt...but instead, he went out of his way to make certain I was satisfied.

Ikea never did that. As a result, I swore that I would boycott their store forever. And I never did return...

Until yesterday. Yes, it's true. Yesterday, I caved in and purchased a chair from the Burbank Ikea. The thing is, I've been using this really uncomfortable chair at my desk that often caused great pain in my tailbone. It was particularly noticeable over the last few weeks, as most of my waking hours were spent in front of the computer working on school projects. Yesterday, I just couldn't take anymore. I would have just gone to Office Depot, but I also wanted to browse for a decent bookshelf, as I need a better system of organization than just having my books and CDs stacked in piles all around my room. I didn't buy the bookshelf yesterday, as I wouldn't have been able to fit it in my car, but I did purchase the chair. I guess it was just time to let go of my anger.

So, you know those "How to Draw Your Favorite Superhero" type of books where they show the first few steps and then WHAM there's the finished product? Like, they'll have the first step be a bunch of circles, then the second step somehow involves connecting the circles and then the third step is a picture of Spider-Man? Well, the instructions for assembling this chair were sort of like that. They showed two somewhat vague steps on the box and then WHAM, they had a picture of a fully assembled chair. Naturally, I was able to figure it out eventually, as I am now sitting in that very chair.

But I'm still unable to draw Spider-Man.