The Ikea Incident.

Having admired the set up (amazingly from the same store and with the same product line) at Mooville West during our little jaunt, Rob and I decided we should finally get our office/dining room into shape.

Weekends at Ikea are horrible. Young couples, poor students, families with their fifty children (all in strollers) crowd the aisles, pausing, pawing and pondering. It's an alliterative and figurative nightmare.

We did notice something amusing. Rob is much better and faster at swimming with the masses. He'd grab my hand and start off, me stumbling behind him, knocking over pregnant women at every turn. However, when it comes to swimming against the current, I'm better at diving in between folks and so it was my turn to have him stumbling along behind me and whacking into people. Turn about really is fair play. :-)

In the office furnishing section, we managed to wade off to the side to study desktops. I brought along our little template, which showed us (using the handy cut-out figures in the catalog) exactly which pieces we had wanted and how we were arranging them. After looking at different options and measuring them, we agreed that our first configuration is the only one that would work, given that we're going to fill up three-walls-worth of the room with desktop and need to leave doorways on either end open.

We grabbed a saleswoman and I said, "We want to order these things. These desktops, in these styles, with these legs and then we want two of these drawer things to..." "Oh, you don't want to do that," she said. She brought out a template and drew different configurations, while I murmured that we liked our choice and we only had so much room to work with. She did different things to try and stay within our parameters but was stuck on the idea that we shouldn't want drawers stacked atop the desks. This was a mistake. Rob does not take well to how "you west coasters" take pains to tell people what they can and can't do or want and don't want. It took a lot of cajoling to calm him down, as well as some swimming up and downstream in the store to work it off. When we returned to the office section, I approached a different salesperson. "We want to order these things. These desktops with these legs." He set up the order and said, "Hmm. That right side desktop is out of stock in that color. Have you thought about maybe trying to ..." He brought out the template and another bit of graph paper and Rob began to foam so I said quickly, "You don't want to do that. I'd stop if I were you. Now."

Fortunately, he was bright enough to notice that Rob had started turning green and was about ready to become the Incredible Hunk, so he put in the order as we presented it and told us the store would call when everything was in. He probably was counting his blessings when we walked away, order summary in hand.

I never thought of them as being on commission but Rob figured it out immediately. Maybe that's why I'll put up with folks giving me different suggestions -- I honestly think they're trying to help me look at something a new way. Rob however is sure they're trying to boost their income by offering us different things. Maybe they're trying to do both. Who knows? I can't wait for our desk stuff to come in, though. Then maybe we'll invite Broos to come up and help us install it since he's so handy with an allen wrench and all.

Muahahahaha!