Kafka's Ikea

Ikea seems like a good idea until you’re actually there. It’s Friday night, the end of a long week, and you’re looking for some shelves and a TV stand.

You wander through the displays and take mental measurements and decide which colors would look better. You try to focus past the yelps of excited kids echoing off the warehouse walls, exasperating their mother. You write down inventory numbers and add up prices. On a couch, a customer naps, unconcerned with common courtesy. You wish you could do the same at home.

The store is closing in 15 minutes so you rush through the showroom’s maze, through kitchens and kids’ beds and weird lamps and finally find the self-serve area.

But there are none of the larger carts to be found. All of them seem to be either abandoned at the end of the aisle by customers who thought better of their purchases or they are piled with merchandise for the staff to return to the shelves. Then one of the pieces isn’t in the aisle where Ikea said it would be. Somebody announces the store is closed.

You finally find the piece you need but it won’t fit in the small cart you settled for. Down the aisle is a larger cart, seemingly abandoned. You dump the boxes on it and race it back to your purchase, then run to checkout.

Somehow it all fits in the car. The back seats have to go down and your husband’s knees are jammed into the dashboard but it fits. You drive home, gingerly but quickly, unload the packages at the new house and collapse at the old one.