I Hate IKEA
I bought this unfinished changing table from IKEA a couple of weeks ago, along with an unfinished TV stand. Both are made from solid wood, which is uncharacteristic of IKEA; typically, they'd like to sell you something made from MDF, which has a nasty habit of leaching formaldehyde into the air in your house. I was excited at the idea of buying unfinished furniture from them. I scored some non-toxic, 100% pure tung oil from Lee Valley to finish each piece off with.
The first warning sign this was going to be a colossal pain in the ass was the phone call after I placed my order on the Web. See, IKEA doesn't like the idea of just letting you order your items online without having to talk to anybody on the phone, so rather than quote you the shipping and taxes, they make some poor guy call you back with that information a day or two after you order. IKEA has changed their shipping fee rates, so they were trying to charge me $120 to ship $160 worth of stuff to me.
I told the guy there was no way I was paying that, so he should cancel my order. He came up with a counter offer: If he split my two-item order into two one-item orders, IKEA would use normal shipping carriers to get the items to me, rather than sending a truck with a big IKEA sign painted on it. This little trick knocked 50% off the shipping cost. Does IKEA really think people are going to spend 75% of the cost of an item on shipping? This seems nuts to me.
When the items arrived, I got a new surprise. Seems IKEA thinks 'unfinished' means "slap all sorts of stupid, hard-to-remove warning labels all over stuff so you can't finish it yourself." I personally take 'unfinished' to mean 'not yet finished,' not 'never to be finished'. The sticker in the photo above basically just says "Don't leave your baby unattended on this" in 15 different languages. So I'm stuck trying to get this stuff off before I slap finish on it, and it'll probably always look weird because the sticker glue set into the wood. Couldn't they put a flyer in the box? Or print this helpful message on the bag containing the hardware, so I'd only have to look at it then?
It'd be great if IKEA had an ironic slogan I could make fun of to sum up this post, but all they offer is "affordable solutions for better living," which I can't turn into anything worth writing. So I'll just say screw IKEA!
Shakeup
So, we moved today.
Stayed up until past 3 packing, then the alarm went off at 6 AM so we could be up in time for the movers. I always feel dumb when they're moving you out... You just sit there, until they remove the things to sit on. Then you sit on the floor. You can't go out and do stuff, because they have to keep on asking you "Is this going?" "Yes." "Is this going?" "Yes." They head out, take out the cable TV feed to a nearby building with their truck, and we scramble to sweep out pounds of fur and dust and gather up the cats and beat the movers back to the new place. And beat the ticking timebomb urinary doomsday that is a terrorized cat in a carrier in a car on a stressful day.
Then, on the other side: Guy walks up, shows you something you own, says "Bedroom?" "Yes." "Office?" "Yes." I'm grateful I can afford movers, because I don't think I could carry a piano on my back alone. But there's something about just sitting there while it happens that makes me feel... impotent. And spoiled. Impotent metaphorically, mind you.
God I'm tired now. Which box has the toothpaste?
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