FINALLY!
With the line cutting girl out of my face and coast clear in front of me… I checked-out and once I got the cart moving again Grayson started to chill.
Hurray!
However, when I reached the sliding doors separating the main lobby from the parking garage I froze in horror. Someone had opened the flood gates… there was an endlessly steady stream of people entering the store from the garage. I just stood there, assuming the masses would yield to a parent with a small child burdened by three large boxes, just like they did at the check--- Never mind.
As always, I was wrong. The IKEA whistle was still blaring in the ears of everyone but me. The masses had lost their minds!
In situations like this, my normal tactic is to make eye contact with people. You see, in the real world, people would recognize the need behind my eyes and yield, step aside, hold the door open, and maybe even lend a hand. But at IKEA… the land that reason forgot, I received quite the opposite reaction.
Every time I made eye contact with a person entering the store with my sad eyes and sideways smile I was greeted with a look of fear. And this happened on more than one occasion during the 10 minutes it took me to exit the store.
Literally, I would make eye contact, see a look of fear and then the person would start walking faster. One woman even started jogging. I’m not kidding!
Apparently, the thought of letting someone enter (or exit) IKEA before them was so horrifying that all common courtesies had been abandoned. When I had enough of their childish displays… I looked at Grayson and said, “Are you ready to man up.”
Grayson: “You know it pop’s.”
We did our secret father/son handshake… and I started pushing our cart towards the door.
Seeing us make our move caused the flow of people entering the store to speed up. Their looks of fear grew when they saw the length of one of my boxes balanced across my cart… it was almost the same length as the opening of the door. The flow continued relentlessly… but I continued to push forward without hesitation… refusing to chicken out. Just like James Dean.
Finally I reached the door… and literally, people started diving and squeezing through the small openings between the ends of my boxes and the doors. Even after I made it into the door way… essentially blocking all access to the store people still tried to push through. One woman, probably my mom’s age, tried a last minute attack which ultimately failed when she ran into my boxes… realizing she wasn’t going to make it she sulked off wafting a great deal of attitude in my direction… and just as I crossed through, moving away from the door, unclogging IKEA’s main artery… everyone lost their mind again… pushing and shoving to get past me and into the store… Grayson and I were so tussled that all of our boxes were knocked off the cart before we had completely exited the flow of traffic.
Not one person, I repeat… NOT ONE PERSON offered to help… everyone just walked around us, over us, and give us looks of disgust for being so incontinently in their way.
And folks, I think it is important to understand that this did not take place over a holiday weekend… this did not happen on a weekend at all. There were no crazy sales… it was just a normal Monday morning.
I was livid by the whole experience. I couldn’t believe it. All that for a chair. A chair! Errrr… a chair. At that moment I swore never to visit an IKEA every again.
*****
The Underground train groaned to a stop. The doors opened. Costello and I disembarked. The last leg of our trip would be above ground. On the IKEA shuttle bus.
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