At IKEA, you are made to help keep prices low!
I am writing this with some trepidation, afraid of what the lady downstairs would say when she gets this material. Is she going to go hysterical and send all the invectives in her mind my way? Or is she going to feel a huge or little sense of relief knowing that I have finally sent in something to give life to her Business Life? There could be different confusions about how to approach the situation I now find myself – at 7:30pm, I am just trying to put something down for the lady downstairs!
I am not going to blame it on the rain or make the bold claim that it wasn’t me! It’s me. It’s my fault and I am owning up for messing things up. That’s what happens when you go away on holiday and still want to keep up a personal column. Maybe it’s about time we gave it up on Starters?
Let’s just go on the main course. Or what do you faithful indulgees think? OK! That’s giving you guys something to chew on. After all, what’s in a Starters course if there isn’t at least something with which to give yourself a chin wag? Don’t get confused yet, take chin wag for lower and upper jaw exercise and you’ll be just fine. And all this, really, has been because the weather has been great here in the UK and I have had some time to do the walks that I always loved to do by the River Mersey. Since the weather has been great, it means garden work is still fashionable around this time of the year. I’ve therefore been fancying my chances at mowing the grass in the back garden. It’s one of the reasons I’m feverishly counting the seconds on the clock as they tick away, trying very hard to ensure that at 8pm I am still able to send in something; because right now on production day, a Wednesday, it’s 7:40pm. Which is really awful, I tell you, and I am seriously ashamed of myself.
Some of you will think I have probably been having a great time and I have forgotten to observe the world for the benefit of diligent indulgees who take pride in lapping up their Starters every Friday. To that I can confidently say there is nothing further from the truth. I am sure that mischievous ones among us will ask the exact distance you need to place something away from the truth to support the assertion that they are further apart. You will ask that question and then laugh at yourself knowing that you are really mocking about, nothing more than that! But I tell you, I have been really looking around, though.
There are some comedians around Nigeria who are popular for being too engrossed in some old, sometimes sick jokes! I could recall one about some bloke who wanted to take a lady out on a date in order to impress her, and chose to go to an expensive restaurant hoping that the lady’s demand would be modest. He then found in the end that he couldn’t offset the bill. He immediately volunteered to render some plate-washing duty in return for what they had consumed. Of course, that joke has rubbed off on some really clever urchins who, knowing that they do not have money, ‘carry’ themselves to some ‘mama put’ places where customers are allowed to pay after eating, only to show their true colour (apologies to Lagbaja) – declaring themselves bankrupt and unable to pay for what they had consumed. That’s the story as we know it!
But it now seems, as I have been finding out in the last couple of days, that big retail businesses here have borrowed a leaf or two from this joke that we have known back home in Nigeria for many years. What do you make of what the Scandinavian furnishing company, IKEA, has just decided to tell its customers? Don’t be in any hurry, you will get to know shortly.
IKEA, by the way, is a specialist do-it-yourself household furnishing company with a great reputation for low prices. If you are thinking of getting something fanciful that will last you for a short time before you are able to get on your feet to walk to John Lewis, and at a cheap price, you are welcome to live an IKEA life. It’s not that it is all that bad!
Some of what the company puts out have their usefulness and you can’t beat them in terms of effort to create something pretty for less. There are certain stuffs you wouldn’t mind taking home, even if you have loads of cash to burn. That’s why you are likely to fall into either of two groups of viewpoints – those who love IKEA and those who loath IKEA. I have been around some shops in Lagos, though, where those IKEA trademark goods have been on display at prices several times higher than what they reasonably should have been!
The leaf that IKEA seems to have craftily borrowed, refined and is now offering customers (if you belong to the group referred to in that popular joke I just talked about) is that it is creating an opportunity for you to work so as to be able to afford whatever your date eats in the store. Or what do you indulgees make of the following notice at the restaurant wing of an IKEA store in Ashton-under-Lyme in Great Manchester?
You find that after climbing four to five shopping floors just looking around for a bargain, you come to the restaurant floor where you fully inhale culinary odour oozing out of the restaurant. God help you if you are really hungry at that time. You sure will drop off. When you do, get your tray, make a selection of some starters and then make your order for the main course. Following payment at the checkout (of course, no room for pay after eating, I’m afraid!), you proceed to take your seat at the table and settle for your meal. You take several bites and have a drink in-between. All this you do with a certain level of concentration until your stomach recognises that something has indeed gone in to calm your frayed nerves!
Feeling a bit relaxed, you then decide to take in a good view of your surroundings to see other IKEA customers who had dropped by instead of going home to fix for themselves something homely to eat. It’s at this point it hits you – the large notice in front of you, demanding that you work for that cheap food you are eating. It just hits your eyes! You may count yourself lucky stopping by at an IKEA restaurant to find that food was cheap – you had taken a good amount of meat balls, potatoes and some vegetable and for 50 pence you had been allowed to have a drink buffet, where you could repeatedly return for more cups of what they offered as cold and hot drink.
Here is the notice, fellow indulgees, and judge for yourselves: “At IKEA clearing your own table at the end of your meal is one of the reasons you paid less at the start. By taking your tray to a tray station we can continue to keep our prices low. It also means our staff have more time to serve you and cook. It’s a piece of cake!”
There is a moral to every story. You are left to make up your own moral from this notice! It’s 9:13pm, and I am not sure if the lady downstairs will publish this. If she doesn’t, then just take it that I am on holiday and I can’t be bothered!
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