It was a normal Friday afternoon. I was driving home from Philadelphia, and somewhere in Maryland I saw an IKEA. I thought, “I just moved into a new house. I could really use some furniture.” So I made a detour.
I should never have stopped. I should have kept driving.
“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” – Pablo Picasso
It was my first journey into an IKEA, and I had no idea what to expect. Armed only with the Celsius I’d brought for the drive, I was hopelessly unprepared. The first thing I noticed was a lot of Swedish. That gave me some whiplash, since I didn’t know there was a connection, but it wasn’t a big deal. Then I took the elevator up to the showroom.
I started browsing what I can only describe as an interactive art installation. I couldn’t tell if I was supposed to be shopping or pointing at everything yelling “bullshit,” à la Danny DeVito in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Blood pressure spike #1
I get what IKEA is going for as a business, but the maze layout and partitions everywhere made me feel like a rat in a crude experiment. My immediate thought was that the person running the experiment was probably Jared, editor and founder of Caffeine Shark, putting me in high-stress situations to better understand the backward logic of my special brain.
Spike #2
Then I noticed the floor. There were literal arrows telling you which direction to walk. Not only had they abandoned aisles entirely, they’d taken away any independent thought. Everyone around me was content to obey this authoritarian establishment and follow the arrows. Never has my inner Guy Fawkes screamed louder to remember, remember the fifth of November.
Spike #3
Finally I found the bedroom section and a box spring, the whole reason I came. I asked an employee how to buy it. She told me to write down the location listed on the display and find it “in the warehouse.”
Not only were they making me dance through a maze to find a bed, I now had to keep going through the maze and cross the veil into some warehouse at the end of the rainbow.
I followed the exit signs toward the warehouse. Instead of walking in a straight line, the IKEA gods laughed as I wound through the maze for another 20 minutes. Maybe it was the Nordic setting, maybe it was the caffeine hitting, but I felt a strong urge to bum-rush straight through every partition like a Viking. I was a Viking warrior, and my Celsius was my axe.
Before the warehouse, I hit the next blunder: a cafeteria. In what world does this make sense? I didn’t sample anything, because I was sure I’d end up paying $30 for three microwaved meatballs.
Editor’s note: My new mission is to get Tyler cultured. A dollar hot dog or a plate of Swedish meatballs may have been exactly what he needed in that moment.
The final boss
I reached the warehouse and found my bed frame, loaded it onto a cart I had to search three aisles for, and went to check out. No barcode. I asked the cashier what the problem was.
“Oh, this is just box 1 of 2.”
The spikes stopped. I had become Christian Bale in American Psycho.
It took everything I had to stay calm (parody law). I made another lap through the warehouse for the second box, came back, and paid while making eye contact with a cashier who will live in my memories forever.
One bed frame took me 45 minutes to an hour. I believe it was a trial sent by a higher power, and I proved too feeble to accept the challenge. Without my trusty Celsius, I fear I’d still be stuck in the human maze that is IKEA.
The Celsius was delicious, though. 9.8 out of 10.
