IKEA - the standards are slipping

My previous employer, Nortel, was once a great global telecoms company. It hired smart, conscientious people; it 'did what it said it would do'; and it had high ethical standards. It embodied Canadian virtues.

In the few years after 2000, it destroyed itself by recruiting a bunch of greedy, self-serving senior executives to cash in on that Internet thing.

We used to keep our cash with the RBS, a stalwart Scottish bank which was a byword for probity and straight, efficient dealing; it was destroyed by a culture of greed and psychopathy orchestrated by CEO Fred Goodwin.

There may be a great deal of ruin in a country, but a company can be brought down in just a few years. Which is why, if it were possible to sell shares in IKEA, I'd say let them go now.

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Our mattress. Ordered from IKEA with additional payment for home delivery and removal of the old one. I was a little surprised by the two delivery guys, one of whom spoke not-brilliant English and wore his baseball cap the wrong way round. Neither seemed that bright, though they had, perhaps, a roguish charm.

There were minor alarm bells as the baseball-capped one rolled the mattress, by himself, up our drive, end-over-end. Hmm.

And when they left, all that cardboard and plastic sheeting was just left littering our drive. Customer service in action.

The mattress disposal people didn't come. IKEA customer support were not helpful; I was told I could have my £20 refunded. Excuse me?

"I have a mattress blocking my hall. I'd like you to remove it as you contracted to."

Apparently, the delivery people should have picked up the old one and taken it with them. Ooops.

We are rescheduled for Sunday.

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This is very sloppy. When a company takes its eye off the ball, hires lazy and non-conscientious staff and when challenged, tries to evade the problem, it's a pretty good diagnostic that something's wrong with the internal culture.

I know this is an N = 1 sample, but IKEA, you have a great brand - don't blow it all away!

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Update Sunday: They came: the  mattresses are gone.

The two guys who arrived to collect it stared glumly at the items-to-go. "They should be wrapped in plastic sheeting," the one in charge said, "It's company policy - before we can touch them."

This was the first I had heard of this new rule. IKEA was making heavy weather of what - at point of sale - had been a single tick-box item.

I sort of understand that IKEA subcontractors should not be expected to deal with the fleas, bed bugs and other mattress-denizens of IKEA customers - but surely we should be warned in advance and perhaps provided with the means to shrink-wrap our cast-offs?

With much ill-grace, the two men rejected my offer to carry the mattresses down the drive myself, and duly departed with them.

Much thanks for that.

Thoughts on an IKEA visit

Never let it be said that quantum mechanics is not risqué.

In Book 3 of the Open University course you learn about molecular orbitals: crudely, the probability distribution of electrons around the nuclei of atoms bound together as molecules. The simplest case is two protons sharing one electron - H₂⁺, the hydrogen molecule ion.

Lowest energy orbital for the hydrogen molecule ion

A pleasing shape, wouldn't you say?

The distribution of body weight on our double bed has a similar density function. This is not simply because we naturally prefer to sleep on our own sides, it's more that our mattress is in fact two single mattresses zipped together. The central hard ridge repels each of us off to the side.

To solve this problem, Clare and myself visited IKEA Bristol yesterday to purchase a super kingsize mattress. We both lay on the store bed, exploring mattress possibilities, to the general hilarity - some verbally expressed - of passing fellow-shoppers.

It should be delivered next Thursday, after which our bedtime molecular orbital may look more like the additive combination below:

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We also bought a small flat-pack chest of drawers which took me almost three hours to assemble. I am astonishingly inept at manipulating physical reality and therefore had to work extra hard at being systematic, laying everything out in the right orientation, and checking every diagram three times.

Success!

It's an IQ test, and I googled "minimum IQ to assemble IKEA flat-pack" but there were no relevant hits. I recommend this as a research project.

But upon reflection, I figured that anyone who could afford IKEA prices would either have a high-enough IQ to do the assembly correctly already or would be rich enough to hire a handyman, so I doubt it's a problem IKEA lose any sleep over.