Monkeytreats

I’m increasingly fascinated by the psychological effect of a visit to Ikea.

Old friends of mine know that I’m hugely interested in Vegas casinos, not because I’m a huge gambler, but because of all the little psychological angles. The fact that you when you enter a hotel there isn’t a path straight to the front desk, but rather you have to wind your way through banks of slot machines, and it’s hard not to sit down and try your luck. The cocktail waitresses, wearing skirts that end just under their forehead, who bring you complimentary drinks, make you feel important. The complete lack of clocks and windows, with the artificial light set just right so that you have no idea how much time you’ve spent there, pumping money into the slots. There are all these incredibly subtle and devilish things they do to encourage you to stop just for a second to lose money, and then there are all these other diabolically clever things they do to keep you there, losing money, until your wallet is finally dry.

They do an analogous thing in slaughterhouses, with the environment designed to calm the cow until it’s in the killing pen.

Ikea is interesting because it has the opposite effect, at least on me.

The typical Ikea visit for my wife and I goes something like this: on a Saturday, my wife mentions that there’s some piece of furniture that we really need to replace–an end table, let’s say. I think about it for a second and decide, yes, I think I can handle going to Ikea today. It might even be kind of satisfying, I think to myself, to go there and consider how some element of Nordic design might make our lives a little simpler, a little more organized, a little more comfortable.

We drive down, fight for a parking space, look at a few of their room displays, find a bookcase that looks surprisingly nice–no, it’s not the end table we were looking for, but it really is nice. We’re maybe fifty yards into the store at this point, and it is at this point that I often am overcome with hubris. At this point, I imagine that this will be an easy trip.

You may recall from your eleventh-grade literature class that Oedipus had plenty of hubris, and that it ultimately lead him to stab out his eyeballs. Ikea hubris works out pretty much the same for me, except without the maternal boning and patricide.

Anyway, at this point I’m feeling good. We wander a bit further into the store. I’m frantically scanning all these room displays, my brain’s pattern-recognition engine furiously working to pick out an acceptable end table from amidst the sea of couches, TV stands, file cabinets, ottomans, etc. My eyes start to get tired, and my head starts to hurt.

We round several bends on the meandering linoleum-clad main Ikea thoroughfare, and I start to feel edgy, anxious. I don’t realize it yet, but after losing sight of the windows and turning several times, I have completely lost my sense of direction. I have no idea how to get out of this place, other than by following this damnable path.

Further in to the dark fortress of our Swedish overlords, and my brain is starting to shut down from sensory overload. There is crap on every inch of every wall, and crap strewn artfully all over the floor. Some of the crap is organized into little rooms, some of it is organized by item type. All I want is a God-damned end table. I don’t want to look at four thousand couches and office chairs and kitchen organizers, but I have to, and it exhausts me.

The path turns again, and I realize that I’m far too fried to rationally evaluate a purchase at this point. I don’t want the end table any more, I just want to go home. I don’t know how to get out, though. In desperation, I look around, trying to find something recognizable, and I spot the entrance to the cafe. Food! I could just get some Swedish meatballs, find a seat facing a blank wall, decompress until I feel strong enough to make it to the exit. And yet, the cafeteria line, which zig-zags and turns back on itself to reach the cashier, is far more than I can cope with in my reduced state. Its complexity seems unimaginable. I have no means to evaluate how long it will take me to navigate this queue, and I feel that my brains are starting to liquefy and run out my ears.

I panic and flee from the cafe, walking quickly now, desperate for the exit. It takes every ounce of self control not to break into a run. Now, however, when I need speed the most, I find my route blocked at every turn by oblivious, overweight shoppers who come to a dead stop in a narrow space and gravely ponder a package of tea lights.

Resisting the urge to elbow them aside, to kick their cart out of my way, to trample their whining children underfoot, I break into a punctuated jog, now running, now forced to stop. I hope that my whimpering is just under my breath and is not audible to those around me; if they smell my fear, they will surely turn on me and tear me to pieces.

Finally, the generic potted plants, and the warehouse, and the interminable checkout line. We stand there, with our flat-packed attractive bookcase, fully aware that we failed in our intended mission to locate an end table. Somehow I resist the urge to hurl our purchase into an end-cap display of Easter bunnies and vault over the conveyor belt, yelling “Fire!”

And then, finally, it’s over, and we’re out in the car, fighting through parking-lot traffic to try to leave this godforsaken place. We vow never to return.

The obvious question posed by all of this being:

How the hell does my mental and emotional ruination make them money?