Ikea - More Than Just Furniture

[Amadeus]

And there I was, thinking that the four letters only stand for crappy furniture that no human being could ever assemble - how wrong...

 

The Swedish Feeding Trough

 

Furniture giant IKEA lures customers with homey interior landscapes and cheap warm meals. But more and more people are starting to use the stores as an ersatz for social services and babysitting.

 

Every day, at 8.50 am, Bodo Scheel gets into his Nissan car, his stomach rumbling with hunger, and drives 11.3 kilometers down the A7 highway near Hamburg. He turns off at junction 23 to reach his destination: the Ikea furniture store. The 67-year-old pensioner has been coming to the restaurant in Ikea for breakfast for years now....

 

...The pensioner and his wife are not the only ones who have turned going to the furniture shop into a daily ritual. In the western German cities of Cologne and Bielefeld there are even specially organized breakfast clubs. From Munich in the south to Kiel in the north, Ikea is increasingly turning into a welfare center for pensioners, young moms, low-earners and the unemployed.

 

The main draw is the price: a hot dog costs €1, a beer €1.30 and apple pie and vanilla sauce 50 cents. On average guests at an Ikea restaurant spend €4.30 per meal -- a price which allows them to eat in a half-way decent atmosphere......Flocks of people wait outside early every morning in order to storm the buffet at 9 a.m., when the store opens its doors. ..

 

...The Swedish buffet is also an El Dorado for people who like to scrounge. Used cups can be rescued from the plate-return stations, washed in the bathroom and refilled forever. And tips for stockpiling food can be found on the Internet: "Just fill out a customer feedback form, give your address, write down something unfriendly like, 'I had to wait 30 minutes.' Then you'll get a coupon for breakfast at the store," writes Daniela at a German site, "Frag-Mutti.de."....

 

.....More than food-scroungers, though, IKEA workers fear lazy parents. Around 150 three- to 10-year-olds are deposited daily at the Hamburg-Schnelsen store's play area -- a complimentary offer to allow mom and dad to wander in peace through the showrooms. But many people misuse the service as a free babysitting service. Sometimes moms just set their loved ones down among the colorful balls, with the nursery girl watching -- and hurries to the hairstylist or the tennis court. The desperate store announcements asking the mother to please pick up her screeching child then go unheeded......

 

....The diaper stations also work a strange allure on parents. "The free diapers used to be carried home in sacks," says Fayme Brockmann of the IKEA restaurant in Schnelsen. Now they're only available in small lots, just enough to keep babies dry during a shopping trip.

 

So little kids don't starve during these marathon tours, IKEA also offers free Alete baby food. The offer has caught on: Cheapskates collect the 190-gram bottles like batteries and stockpile them up at home -- around 1,500 a month go missing from the Schnelsen store alone.

 

Hehe - aren't we Germans sa..er..clever! Letting IKEA play DHSS, and make'em pay for the countless hours lost while trying to assemble their stuff - keep that in mind when you go there next

[Lonan3]

The only possible way to deal with IKEA is to be found here -

 

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how...expert_ikea.php

 

in Ikea - The Game!