IKEA sucks!

I hate IKEA.

On Saturday, I went out to eat with my girlfriend in a town that we rarely frequent. After we left the restaurant, she noticed the packed parking lot at the brand new IKEA store.

"I thought it didn't open until Wednesday!" she said.
"Hm? Yeah, ok. Sure."
"Do you wanna go see?"
"I don't really care."

We parked and walked up to the door, where an old lady stopped us.

"Do you have tickets?" she asked, smiling and exposing the black gunk between her teeth. We told her we didn't. She told us we'd have to come back Wednesday, when they officially open.

It was at that moment that I decided I would never buy anything from IKEA.

Let me be clear on a couple points: I hate shopping, and I have no problem boycotting a large corporation for an incredibly trivial reason. If a store gives me any kind of reason to avoid shopping there, I gladly accept it. I understand that the early entry tickets, like most everything IKEA does, was just a marketing gimmick. I know they were trying to build some buzz for their new store. The thing is, I don't care that it's just a business tactic that makes perfect sense. No, all I really care about is the fact that I got out of a car at IKEA, only to be told by the lady at the door that I wasn't special and that I would have to go back to my car. I imagine the whole incident, parking, walking, and leaving, wasted about three or four minutes of my life. I know, I know, I was told moments before parking that the store wasn't supposed to open until Wednesday, but where the fuck was my opportunity to score one of those tickets?

I decided to research my new found hatred of IKEA on the internets, so I googled 'ikea sucks.' That led me to this dude's page, where I learned that there were, in addition to my trivial reason, many excellent reasons for hating IKEA. I learned that I was incredibly lucky to only have a few minutes of my life wasted. If you're considering doing some shopping at IKEA, do yourself a favor and check out the comments on this page.

IKEA has built their entire business on clever marketing. It's the same cheap, shitty furniture you can get at other stores that sell cheap, shitty shit. People think they're getting something better than they'd get at Wal-Mart because the experience of shopping at IKEA is different. Instead of walking down convenient aisles of stuff, looking for what you want, you get to wander a maze to make sure you see everything they have to offer. Woohoo!!

Today there was a story about the IKEA I was at posted on Fark. These fools are camping out two days before they open to get $100 worth of free stuff. That's like getting paid $2.09 per hour, and then being told you can only spend the money on cheaply made Swedish crap that will probably fall apart in a year or so.

Fuck IKEA.