SmellyBroom.com

Last week I had the immense misfortune of shopping at IKEA. And it was hell. Literally. If you were sent to hell to live out the rest of your days, then IKEA would have to be the only shop available. Nothing in it makes sense.

The trauma starts before you even get there. All the roads leading to the store have dedicated IKEA lanes and IKEA road signs. The lanes aren’t even wide enough for a car, not even a special IKEA flat-pack car.

At the entrance of the store you’re expected to take a special bit of paper, a pencil, and what appears to be a builder’s gravel bag. Apparently IKEA have never heard of such items as trolleys and hand baskets.

Next up is the fancy-pants showroom area which, from what I gathered, is a glorified warehouse with a compulsory one-way, zig-zag path through it. The idea here is to pick out your favourite pieces of furniture and take a note of the location and name of each item.

And that’s another thing. Every item has an utterly ridiculous Swedish name associated with it. I myself purchased three Flarkes and one Kullen. How useful.

After you’ve argued your way round the warehouse, you’re then presented with the option of sitting down and having a meal. Clearly this is the most logical thing you would want to do when picking the perfect bookshelf.

Nearing the end now, we get to the random section of the store. Here you’re actually allowed to use a trolley to cram in as many useless accessories as possible. Items range from the obscenely expensive living room rug, to the cash-keepingly cheap, piss-poor toothbrush holder.

And finally, they’ve saved the best ’till last, the warehouse treasure hunt. An utterly brilliant concept. The idea being that you take your little piece of IKEA paper and look up the location of your chosen products on the warehouse map. You then get the pleasure of wheeling your flat boxes down to the checkout and out into the car park.

All in all, IKEA have crafted what is perhaps the most unpleasurable shopping experience on the planet, and they have to be congratulated for that.