The honeymoon is officially over! I mean, I still love it here, don’t get me wrong. But after our first week of fun and tourism, it was time to snap back into reality. I have to say, work wasn’t even half bad. I freelanced and Josh got back into the swing of things in his new office. What did us in wasn’t work at all, nor was it more issues with cable and Internet and everything else. It was Ikea! That place has it out for us. And after our second weekend in a row wasted in its blue and yellow vortex, I now refer to it as Dante’s Middle Rung of Hell. Dramatic, you say? I think not!
It was a brisk Saturday morning and after a relaxing yoga class, Josh and I ate lunch while watching one too many episodes of Super Nanny USA. Feeling energized and well rested, we decided to venture back to Ikea to collect all the furniture we didn’t get the Sunday before. The previous trip turned out to be such headache that we left with nothing more than a sheet, blanket and two pillows. Ikea had beaten us once, but this time we were ready for war.
I dressed for a recon mission. No heeled boots, no skinny jeans, no complicated jewelry. I laced up my new running sneakers, pulled on a sweatshirt and tied back my hair. This was no time for frills and makeup. I was determined to enjoy my Saturday night, which meant we needed to be ready for action.
Josh and I are usually the first to defend London’s transportation system. The tube comes nearly every minute and lists the estimated wait times on a digital board above the track. There’s typically a map of all the stops posted in multiple locations, so you’re not stuck asking random people if you’re in the right place and boarding the right train. While Londoners and New Yorkers alike warned us that we would soon experience its wrath, we fluffed off their concerns.
I immediately knew something was wrong when I saw how many people were waiting for the tube at Liverpool Street Station. If the tube was running on or close to schedule, there wouldn’t be so many people loitering around the platform on a Sunday. We soon learned that someone had left a suitcase unattended at the following station, so the line was temporarily closed. Which makes me wonder about these people who keep leaving luggage all over the place, causing bomb scares and dismantling transit systems. Anyway, we ended up on a bus to Oxford Circus to catch our transfer train. The bus clearly stated it was stopping at Oxford Circus, but somewhere along the way the route changed and we had to get onto another bus.
When we finally made it on the Bakerloo line to Stonebridge Park, we pulled out our books and settled in for the nice long ride. Fooled again, we were informed that the train to Stonebridge Park wasn’t stopping at Stonebridge Park. It instead terminated at Queen’s Park, where the train conductor told us the next tube would be arriving in seventeen minutes. We took those seventeen minutes to verbally bash the London transportation system and admitted that everyone was right and we were wrong and it was horrible!
At last our train arrived in the Promised Land, otherwise known as Stonebridge Park. After standing alongside a highway, sucking fumes for twenty minutes, the Ikea shuttle bus brought us to the massive warehouse. We finalized our list at Olympic speed, raced to the self-serve section and collected our items. We then waited on line for the one item not available in the self-service section. It started to feel like we were on an episode of Super Market Sweep, running around with our shopping carts like our lives—and the big prize money—depended on it. With hope that the end was near, we queued up on the Assembly and Delivery Line at 8pm. By this ungodly hour we would’ve traded our souls for a car ride home and a hot meal. As if hearing our pleas, a member of the Ikea staff approached us with an offer we couldn’t refuse. He waved us over and informed us that for just 60 pounds a delivery person would take our furniture and us home immediately. No more lines, no more torture. It was as if we’d met the Wizard of Oz!
Unfortunately, as the adage goes, if something is too good to be true, it probably is. For starters, our driver looked nothing like a deliveryman. He was dressed in a suit with leather loafers and wreaked of cologne. My commonsense edged its way out and I wondered if this was actually a legit Ikea service or a side business the guy on the Delivery and Assembly line had conjured up. But just as quickly as it appeared, my commonsense slipped away too tired to fight the good fight, and on we went with the so-called Ikea “deliveryman”. I won’t even go into the shouting/horn-honking match he got into with another driver, which nearly lead to a street fight. I’ll just skip to the part where he dropped us off in front of our building and sped away, leaving us to carry nine boxes up two flights of stairs.
Long story short, we treated ourselves to the steak-for-two dinner at Luxe. As for our stuff, an Ikea assemblyman came to put it together on Tuesday. Josh had already assembled the chairs and it still somehow took this trained professional four and a half hours to put together the remaining four pieces of furniture. When he mercifully left the apartment somewhere around lunchtime, I went for a walk. I inhaled a breathe of fresh air, glad to have the ordeal behind me… until it reappeared at my side. “Mrs.,” called the Assemblyman who’d just left. “Yes?” I asked through grit teeth, annoyed by the mere sight of him and his association with Ikea. “I forgot to put these screws in your coffee table. Can I come back up?” All that time and you forgot to put all the screws in?, I wanted to scream. He must’ve noticed the red in my eyes, because he just as quickly said we could probably do it ourselves, dumped the screws into my hands and dashed back to his truck. A wise move on his part!
A week later, I can look back on this laugh. And I must say, the new furniture really has made our house a home. Dare I say, "thanks, Ikea"? Nah!
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