04.18.03
One day, Erin and I found ourselves at the Schaumburg IKEA, with a truck, a stack of money, and a couple credit cards.
She was on watch for a reasonably-priced sofa, and and I had a list of a bunch of things I wanted -- mostly furniture.
The only other IKEA I had ever been to was in Renton, Washington, on a weekday. There were lots of people there, but nothing more than a case of tightly controlled minor-league chaos. The place rocked. All of the furniture was on display in one building, where you picked it out and paid for it, then you drove over to the other building, where they put it in your vehicle for you.
Not so in Schaumburg.
On a Saturday.
First of all, while you can clearly see the damned store from the highway, interstate, expressway, or whatever the hell major roadway you are travelling to the store upon, you must first get off the roadway, pay a toll, and then drive through a rather long, convoluted, and tightly-packed maze of parking lots, business driveways, and other motorists, before you can even access the parking lot of the IKEA store.
Then, you must find a place to park your car, somewhere in the 16,000-acre parking lot. The wisest bet is to park as far away from the store as humanly possible, as your vehicle will ultimately be farther, but much easier to access when you need it later.
Making your way into the three-story store, you are reminded of Crate & Barrel's layout on Michigan Avenue, except you realize that this is a warped, nightmarish, Lego-ey version of that store, in bold primaries, and difficult to access, poorly-positioned merchandise. The third floor is where rugs and housewares and living room furniture and beds are hiding out.
Now, I wanted a bed, a sofa, a sofa slipcover, a bedside table, a rolling cart, and a rug from this floor. I wasn't aware that you had to self-serve your furniture until I was brusquely told this fact by an associate stocking slipcovers into bins on that floor. I has asked where the orange slipcovers were, and was told that slipcovers were on the first floor in a bin near the sofas. Despite the presence of every color of slipcover except orange sitting in bins next to the sofas where I was standing. Excuse me for being stupid, and thinking that the merchandise I wanted would be with the rest of the same merchandise, and not two floor beneath me in a yet-to-be-revealed place.
Then I tried to find the bed I wanted, but it wasn't there. A different woman working there told me that the beds were self-serve, and walked away from me before I could ask about the one I wanted. On the other side of the store, as I was almost ready to drop what little merchandise I had managed to accumulate on to the floor and go home, a nice younger man looked up the bed for me, to tell me that it was no longer made and wasn't in stock. We went back to beds, where I was told that the one I decided would also be okay only came in queen, not full.
In the bedroom accessory section, I found both the table and cart I wanted, and went to the rug department. There was no sign of the rug I had seen on the website, except for an empty bin with the words "BREUM $59.95" printed on the front. There wasn't even a sample hanging in the air above the bin.
I went to housewares, found a few small houseware-y things, and then went to the next floor down, for an entertainment center, a corner shelf unit, a desk chair, and some glass shelves for the bathroom.
I didn't like the entertainment center I had picked out of the catalogue, but decided the one next to it looked pretty good, and made a note of that. I found the shelving unit, and went to search for the chair.
According to the sign attached to the chair I wanted, it was temporarily out of stock. I didn't like any of the other chairs, except for the one that was three-times as much as the original chair, and I didn't want to pay that much.
We went over to find my glass shelves, but they were no longer made, out of stock, and unavailable. We did find an acceptable substitute, but they were enough more expensive that I only bought two instead of the three that I had wanted.
Right before we went down to the first floor, we found a cute storage unit that I added to the list, but after we ended up getting all of the other stuff downstairs, we forgot to grab this one too.
Downstairs, we grabbed a flat-bed cart, and went to look for what I wanted.
(To be continued...)
What's in your head?