IKEA: Swedish for "someone is going to end up in tears"

Recently, I found myself at IKEA and compulsively purchased a new bed and two night tables for my guest room. It is really irrelevant that in the year that we have lived here, no one has slept over. I saw it and NEEDED it, viscerally, It is a white “fake wrought iron” bed frame with two little night tables. Itty, bitty beautiful night tables.

They sat in all their little boxes for about a month. I was afraid of what would happen when I opened the boxes. In the distant past, when we were first married, we had purchased furniture from IKEA-like stores and the instructions were..um…SKETCHY.

Step 1: Assemble bed frame

Step 2: Insert Mattress

There would be 4000 screws and parts but shockingly little instruction.

With more than a little trepidation, I opened the bed frame box. I must admit that the instructions have become more sophisticated over the years, the diagrams of the parts are actually recognizable. I removed the bed and box spring from the existing CRAPPY, Not Cute bed frame and leaned them up against the wall. Bed assembly had commenced.

I should have paid more careful heed to the first instruction that had a picture of a guy with an “X” through him (this did not mean no men allowed) and a picture of TWO guys assembling the frame, with big smiles on their faces. They were trying to tell me that two humans were required for this task. Yeah, whatever, How Hard Can It Be? What do they know, they have only been providing furniture in this format since the BEGINNING OF TIME.

Oh God. It was hard. I was battling the mattress/box spring combo against the wall. I was battling the old night table and various and sundry CRAP on the floor that I neglected to move before I started this GODFORSAKEN project. With horror, I realized halfway through the ordeal that I had put the frame together backwards, so the head was where I wanted the feet to be and vice versa. It was screwed and Allen keyed to within an inch of it’s life, so there was no “undoing” what I had started. I decided to turn the bed frame around, assembled. It looked easy enough.

I got myself twisted into such a knot trying to turn the bed around, I thought I would never recover. I was making mincing little turns (similar to the 3-point turn whilst driving but infinitely more points…the 1000-point turn) trying to shuffle the bed around. The mattress/box spring had subsequently fallen over, the cat thought this was a very good time to come and check out what was going on and I felt tears pricking the corners of my eyes. Don’t cry. This is only furniture assembly. It isn’t rocket science (but I do hear that NASA scientists avoid IKEA).

I finally got the GODDAMNED bed turned around and proceeded to install the slats that go along the bottom, which were purchased separately. They promptly fell through onto the floor. I tried again and they AGAIN did not fit any better. I dragged Rick out of bed to IMMEDIATELY come and tell me what I was doing wrong. He saw nothing. I asked my sister, an engineer and she also concurred that the design was flawed.

Oh No. This meant only one thing…I needed to go back to the store and return the slats. The slats were out of their packaging and were all akimbo. I cautiously approached the desk and proceeded to tell the customer service person my problem. He said I didn’t need them if I had a box spring. I tried to explain that they didn’t fit at all. He repeated that I didn’t need them. I wanted to scream DON’T YOU GIVE A RAT’S ASS ABOUT ALL THE CUSTOMERS THAT WILL BUY THIS AND HAVE IT NOT FIT??? I am not just here to return the product. I am here to help improve the plight of the hapless IKEA consumers that may stumble upon this problem in their own homes. This is a public service. OK, just give me my money back.

The bed and tables are assembled and it all looks lovely. The same way that women have more than one child after the hell of childbirth, I found myself staring at a new set of IKEA instructions last night, ready to start all over with a new project. With two people involved. It wasn’t any better, we could have really used that guy with the “X” through him to help us.