On November 7, police in Sweden were called by neighbors to the suspected scene of a domestic incident at about 1 AM. The neighbors had reported banging, yelling of a man and woman, and a crying child.
Anyone who has ever assembled an Ikea piece can relate to this. It's the instructions. To be world-wide friendly there are no words. Incorrectly translated directions can run the gamut from amusing to completely unhelpful, but Ikea's no words is the greatest source of frustration. Once you decipher the steps it is easy, but you need a special college course just to decipher them.
One of my funniest interactions with do-it-yourself furniture was going to a friend's home for dinner. He had all the pieces laid out, and was drilling a hole. I stopped him, pointing out that the holes were pre-drilled. "But it wouldn't go together." I replied, "Then you're doing it wrong." He went to cook, and I put the bookcase unit together. I was done before he was.
When my husband and I moved into our house shortly after we were married, we bought two pantry cabinets from Canadian Tire. There was a major snow storm outside so we were completely house bound. I think that the first cabinet almost caused a divorce. After he got fed up and walked away to shovel the driveway and cool down, I built most of the 2nd cabinet myself. He returned to help me stand cabinet #2 up. Those projects are bad for a marriage. I won't even tell you how it went when we put up a new handrail for the basement steps. OY!!! Suffice to say whenever there is work to be done on the house we now call in the professionals.
ReplyDeleteI normally take care of this sort of building. The biggest hurdle is spending the first hour just deciphering the pictures.
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