Escaping IKEA

Synne (Sunny) was a forgien exchange student this past year from Norway. She told me a joke one time that went like this,

Synne-"How do you save a Swedish person from drowning?"

Me-"I don't know...."

Synne-"Good."

I wasn't sure why that was supposed to be funny, but I laughed anyways and assumed it was similar to our blonde jokes.
Well this past weekend I think I learned why it was funny...

IKEA - (pronounced Land-of-Crap)

I swear I never want to go there again in my life.

For those of you who have yet to experience this store-It is big, blue and yellow. Filled with cheap furniture. And the "theme country"? You guessed it, SWEDEN.

I may be a storephobe but this was ridiculous.

You walk in and they have a DAYCARE center...When I first saw it I laughed to myself and said, "Only in Utah." Now I'm wondering, should I have said, "Only in Ikea"? (Oh, and the daycare was at max capacity as well which means people actually let the store babysit their children while they shopped.)

They try to make the store more personable. So in this Swedish furniture store they feed you, watch your kids, play movies for your kids, write signs that sound completely unprofessional, organize show rooms by product (an entire room of lamps, a room for pillows, a room for wood, a room for kitchen ware...) and try to keep you there as long as possible by creating a MAZE you can only go forward in.

It feels like a strange cult store.

So we walked past the day care and the movie and went up an escalator.

At the top we ate lunch (on the menu were a few "Swedish" entrees.) They had big signs hanging around with Swedish words on them and punctuation guides...it was kind of cool at first but i didn't get why they were there at this point in the story.

Then we followed the arrows on the floor and wound up in the first of the show rooms. My parents looked around and my sisters grabbed at everything in sight. My parents then suggested that we turn around and go back over to the movie playing next to the day care. Great, I though, they're playing mega mind and I don't have to walk though this entire place:)

So my parents went on their way and we turned around.

(This is where the trouble begins)

Remember how I said we went UP an escalator to get to the cafeteria? After that we went DOWN an escalator to get to where we were.

But there was no escalator taking us back to where we started.

But the entrance wasn't far away and I knew it. So we turned around and headed toward it. Soon the doors were in sight, the only thing in our way was a 4 wide lane of shopping carts stacked from wall to wall baring our way.

But then the sign read "Check out -->" So we followed it.
Room after room after room after room we followed those signs.

At one point everyone was sure I had gotten us lost. But I reassured them that there was NO WHERE ELSE TO GO and the entrance was blocked by shopping carts and backwards escalators!

So we walked some more...Room after room after room after room after room.

The building made our mall look small, and they had it so segregated and mapped out that you had to walk through every single section of it.

About 10 minutes of walking later we saw a long long row of check out registers.

Hallelujah!

We navigated our way around them and back to the movie (getting close to over) and sat down in the chairs (might I add that the chairs were not butt friendly-my chair was sufficiently filled) And I called my dad. I told him if he wanted to make it out within an hour he had better start walking NOW.

They started walking then.

We saw them 20 minutes later.

Adios Ikea,

I hope we never meet again.

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Synne, "How do you save a Swedish person from drowning?"

Me, "I don't know..."

Synne, "Good."

Amen.