It has now been two months since retail juggernaut IKEA opened up in Winnipeg. What transcendental changes has this veritable Godzilla of consumerist porn brought to the Heart of the Continent? Well, none that I can see, except that my Facebook page has been regularly blown up by vestigial “Friends” (in quotes because I am not really sure why these people are my friends. They asked, and I accepted, I guess) with photos of their purchases or with how excited they are now that Winnipeg has international importance due to a 300,000 square foot blue box springing up in an area I refer to as Winnipeg’s ode to buying useless shit.
The other thing I have noticed is that I no longer commute along Route 90, not because traffic has increased in the area – though it did briefly, for the two weeks right after IKEA opened – but because I am filled with an uncharitable rage whenever I see that giant blue and yellow sign looming over me.
Let me put this into context. While I am a generally well-adjusted and mentally healthy human being, I do suffer from a form of social anxiety when it comes to large crowded places dedicated to commerce. Mostly this anxiety revolves around being able to hear the inane conversations that people have when looking at crap they don’t really need but really, really want. I get frustrated and unreasonably angry when I hear a mother-daughter tandem discussing the comparative merits of different colour schemes, or whether their bottoms are attractively adorned in x, y, or z pair of pants. I classify this as an anxiety because I have been known, as a grown man, to thrown small tantrums in malls and stalk out of stores to wait and pout while my long suffering, ever patient wife selects clothing for ME to wear.
It has gotten to the point where she often just goes out and buys clothing for me, which I happily wear because a) I did not have to experience the mall to get them, and b) I could care less about fashion and how my ass looks in pants (anyone who has seen my ass knows that it can’t be seen unless I wear spandex). All this is my way of letting you know how monumental a task it was to get me to IKEA twice since it opened, and the following will perhaps help you understand how I view big box stores through the lens of IKEA.
There are actually a lot of items there that I would buy, and actually acquired more things than my mission plan initially stated. This may not be surprising to most people, and certainly not to anyone who is familiar with the giant retail chain. The whole place is designed to show you what you don’t have and how your life could be better if you only had a few more alan wrench constructed junk. As I moved through the store and my anxiety built I felt compelled to accumulate more and more items to buy, perhaps as a way to refocus my mind on something other than the young couple arguing about whether they needed a couch or a futon.
This store, though huge, is impossibly crammed both with people and things. Traffic corridors are too narrow for me to walk down without bumping into people or stepping on children and the elderly. It forces you to weave your way through areas with things you had no intention of looking at, leading to the phenomenon of the previous paragraph.
The much-hyped meatballs are more like super-bouncy balls and taste more like sawdust than advertised by those who recommended the cafeteria as a good place to eat. I like meatballs and meatloaf and pretty much anything in the ground meat department. I don’t like to eat something that clearly has little relation to anything one might find in real life. Of course I am the type of person who likes to process his own food, and firmly believes that if one keeps a pet it should be considered a part of the menu.
IKEA seems to be predominantly frequented by single elderly people and moms with small children. I get this – the IKEA environment is friendly to all demographic types. For the Winnipeg elderly, the coffee is cheap and they can linger as long as they want. Also, the cafeteria is designed with parents in mind – multi-tray carts, free baby food, etc. As someone who has recently become a father I can sympathize with parents coming to IKEA for entertainment, because it is easy to do so with a child. Still, the surreal mix of the recently born and the practically deceased makes me think more of “Children of the Corn” than retail juggernaut.
Customers are snooty when you walk against the arrows in the Market Hell/Hall area of the store. F you, hipster dork. I will walk wherever I like. And because of the way that traffic is ushered through the building I was continually confronted by the same people over and over. Remember the couple arguing over the futon/couch? Yeah, those two pissed me off over and over again as they cooed over kitchen crap, rugs, lamps, containers, shoe racks and whatever else was on display.
The carts have 4 wheel steering – smart, because some corners are very narrow, and you can basically “drift” the cart around said corners at a velocity not normally appropriate for a crowded store. This was not helpful in endearing me to other customers. Some people do not appreciate when you make car noises to yourself and run as fast as possible through crowded areas.
Perhaps the most telling, IKEA is apparently only for honky tonk white folks, not minorities. Not to say that IKEA would not welcome people with darker skin tones, just that I did not see any. Not one person of African, Asian, Latino, or Aboriginal descent. It’s like Stepford Wives meets Bonfire of the Vanities, maybe with a little Valley of the Dolls thrown in because I felt like I needed drugs just to cope with the homogeneity of it all.
My nightmare was not exclusively kept inside the store. Traffic outside on Route 90 as previously stated seems no different than before, proving that Marcy Markusa doesn’t have a clue (a long held suspicion of mine anyway). This was disappointing, after months of listening to CBC spout off about how insane it was going to be to navigate the area after the Most Monumental Retail Event In Winnipeg History, or as I like to say, the opening of another big-box store in Winnipeg’s cultural wasteland.
In true Winnipeg style, drivers have absolutely no awareness of how to navigate the parking lot appropriately – similar to our denseness regarding the stupidly controversial Traffic Calming Circles. After parking, the hits kept coming. I found getting into the building stupidly difficult as people attempt to crowd one chamber of the massive revolving door, continually setting off the motion sensor which stops it from rotating and running over those at the back. Those at the front insist on pushing on the “Do Not Push” sign, slowing the process further.
I suppose the bottom line for me is that while IKEA carries many affordable, practical items it remains a hellhole. A hellhole that I am sure to frequent again, since it was marginally more bearable than Wal-Mart. I am nothing if not a product of my upbringing and at my core I like good deals, like any good Winnipeg boy. I just have to wade through a sea of self-loathing in order to get them.
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Brett Geisel is a writer and a burgeoning columnist for Spectator Tribune.