Diversity & equality in business
NotebookIkea
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Forget Westminster for social democracy. Head for Ikea
Amid the flatpacks, the furniture giant somehow unites old and young, rich and poor, black and white, in a love of Swedish design. And meatballs
'You accept that sometimes there will be glitches, but nothing that can't be solved with a bit of Scandinavian calm.' Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters
Tue 23 Aug 2016 02.30 EDT
Last modified on Sat 2 Dec 2017 12.56 EST
When some people hear the word "Ikea", their hearts don't sing. They think of queues. They think of diagrams. They think of holes the wrong size for the screws. A friend of mine once got so stressed in the car park that when a man tried to steal his spot, he whopped him in the face and got charged with GBH. I have never mentioned Billy bookcases to him since.
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It once took me five phone calls and three trips to a store to replace one broken bracket. It turned out that the bracket, which used to be called Endel, was now called Antonius, which was certainly one way of keeping everyone on their toes. It also seemed like quite a lot of trouble for something that cost £1.50.
I've been going to Ikea since I was a baby, first to the original store in Smaland, on the way to visit our Swedish relatives, and later to the one in Gothenburg, on the way to the ferry home. We would set off to Sweden in a car jam-packed with cans of Vesta beef curry and packets of cornflakes, and go home to England perched on the flat-pack furniture my parents had bought. Ikea meatballs were our one meal out. They are my Proustian madeleine, the taste of a childhood treat.
These days I nip up to the branch in Tottenham, north London, often on the flimsiest of excuses. On Sunday, it was to look at boxes. Yup, I spent a chunk of my weekend looking at cardboard boxes. As always, I had meatballs. As always, I had coffee and cake. And, as always, I felt the rush of joy I always feel when I see people from an incredibly wide range of social and ethnic backgrounds gazing at lovely Swedish design and eating lovely Swedish cakes.
Ikea cuts across the social classes. If the people in the store on Sunday are anything to go by, it brings together old and young, Muslims and Haredi Jews, Somalis and tattooed white Brits in a love of Klippan sofas and clean lines. Sure, you have to clear your food away. You have to get the right screws into the right holes. But what you get is nice stuff at a pretty damn good price.
You could call it a kind of social democracy, the kind where you accept that sometimes – in the warehouse, in the car park, and in the weird-and-changeable-names-for-brilliant-stuff department – there will be glitches, but nothing that can't be solved with a bit of Scandinavian calm. And now that our own hopes of social democracy in government seem to be waning, it's nice to know that you can still get a taste of it at the retail park on the edge of town.
How to rid booze of its fizz
Last year, I wrote a column about a new study on the dangers of drink. The headline, which slightly shocked my mother, was "Middle-class drinking? It's one of my favourite things". The trouble is, it was true. You can't really beat a nice bottle of Vermentino with friends, or perhaps an Aperol spritz. So I was pleased to see that the government will be announcing new guidelines telling adults that they can now "enjoy" a drink.
This, it's true, is meant to be within a recommended weekly limit of 14 units – which, as far as I can tell, is about a thimble a day. But it's surely a good idea to talk to adults as if they are adults and to acknowledge that the reason they/we drink is because it's absolutely delicious. And that forbidden fruit is nectar of the gods. Finally, then, a canny strategy. Perhaps "enjoying" your government-endorsed drink will soon be as much fun as paying your tax.
Ticking all the wrong boxes
A few weeks ago, when I was setting off to Morrisons to do some shopping, I opened my handbag and couldn't find my purse. When I called the bank to cancel my cards, it turned out that the thief had got to Morrisons first. He or she then had a relaxing afternoon in McDonald's. I, on the other hand, have spent days trying to replace the stuff I lost.
Trying to get a duplicate driving licence, I clicked on a link and paid 90p. A week later, I saw that £49 had been taken from my bank account by the company I had unwittingly commissioned to help me replace my licence. I called my bank again and was told that this was legal. I must have seen a box about "terms and conditions" and ticked "yes". Like most people in the 21st century, I tick these boxes several times a day. We all just keep ticking the boxes, signing common sense, and perhaps our souls, away.