IKEA Rhodes - Family friendly? I don't think so!

I went to Ikea, then Ikealed myself ©

I'm led to believe that IKEA is family friendly; colourful images of happy families cavorting around homes and lounging on brightly coloured couches with names like Agneta and Bjorn all over their marketing material. I aspire to the bright, happy family dream, so some weeks ago I commit to spending several thousands of dollars on new beds, tables chairs, couches and fittings for the kids' new bedrooms. Happy happy we will be. Skoll to that.

The first sign that the Swedish dream may be just that, a dream, comes with Mariah Carey screaming through our ear drums on arrival at Rhodes.  We persevere.  Two hours later we reach the final counter at IKEA, breeze through the checkout feeling very satisfied with a list of some $2000 of furniture to be delivered to our home. We present to the smiling youth at Kings Removals service desk, hand over our list and it's all downhill from here....

"Hello! Here's our order list, how much to deliver to our home?"

"$80."

"Great, when can you deliver?"

"Deliver what?"

"The items on my list."

"Errrr, you have to get them and then we'll put them out the back."

So let me see, I have a 6 year old child with me starting to emit distress signals and turning greener by the second, Mariah Carey is still grinding her stiletto into my eardrum and it dawns on me that if I want my happy colourful furniture I have to physically remove it all from the warehouse myself and walk it through the checkout so that this smiling youth can charge me $80 to deliver it to my home.

"Ok," say I "is it possible to get some help to lift a couch, 3 wardrobes, 3 beds, 3 chairs and the entire ABBA community onto my trolley so I can present them to you?" "Please?"

At this, smiling and helpful Benny who has been watching with aloof detachment strolls over to join my incredulous exchange with Bjorn (or was that Shane I can't be sure) and tells me "this is a self service store you know."

I resist the urge to help Benny pop his pimples with his name badge pin and dumbly accept that my 3 hour round trip to IKEA will result in a packet of paper napkins, a box of Anna's ginger cookies and a headache.  I have lost 3 hours of my life that I can never get back since it is an absolute physical impossibility to load all of that furniture onto the trolley myself.  I've since discovered that there is rumoured to be an information desk at which you can ask for help from a willing and strong person before you hand over your $80 or more for delivery but I have yet to hear of anyone that has successfully found anyone staffing it. 

In final comment, I understand the disaggregated supply chain model and how 'we can keep costs down by removing the non essentials,' bravo to that, but for crying out loud IKEA,  if your target market is young families at least make it easy for them to access and pay for the parts of the supply chain they are physically unable to fulfil themselves.  

For those of you who were wondering what happened to my 6 year old son, he spent the rest of the day in bed with a bucket by his side. Mariah has a lot to answer for.