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[business lunacy] cautionary tales [3]

Ikea’s Increasingly Incredible Actions

The first and most immediate question is what I was doing in an Ikea café in the first place, rather than enjoying a business lunch at the pricey Pyramid restaurant in the centre.

Well I do go on to the Pyramid, actually, to meet a lady for late lunch but on Thursday mornings the drive into the countryside with my mate and with JJ Cale’s low-down road music warbling from the quadraphonic - it fills a niche in the weekly schedule.

At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Out on the edge of town, some years back, there were acres of beautiful camomile fields, across the road from enormous new housing estates. It seemed a good idea at the time so Ikea bought the land up and put in a giant warehouse, as was their wont, in the middle of a sea of giant carparks.

Joni Mitchell.

Once the brouhaha had died away and the grand opening had come and gone, my friend here decided to try the place out with his daughter. Not bad. Not bad at all. Clean, friendly atmosphere, competitively priced delicacies in the café and get this – 12 rouble bottomless coffee with food!

The two of them were hooked.

Ikea had a Swedish manager and the place was buzzing. Didn’t matter that they’d misread people’s taste in furniture over here and that the place resembled an empty barn – the restaurant was rocking. Ridiculously priced smoked salmon, quiches, meat dishes and so on – it was the only place to visit and now we did, every Thursday until the current day.

Well, we’ve seen some changes. As expected, once it became apparent that people weren’t buying the requisite furniture, the coffee shop assumed more and more importance and the deals became even better, if one could ignore their promotional deals like 5 year mugs. If you visited Ikea clutching your mug, you’d get free coffee for 5 years.

The first day of the offer there was no way to drive anywhere near the place. The road in from the main drag was lined with people clutching mugs, a line of bedraggled refugees. No one was buying furniture. Then the raison d’etre disappeared, as they made the coffee free anyway.

They also began to build a Mega complex of stores and boutiques enclosing Ikea itself. Boarding went up, blocking the view, the sound of drilling and sawing filled the air and the pleasure was halved. Still we went for the food and the coffee. Viktor enjoyed his ‘project’, as he called it – a plate of salmon, ham, bread slices, egg and lots of other goodies he’d carefully construct into sandwiches whilst I’d hoe into the lo-sos’ salmon or fricadel’niki meat balls and veg.

Space in time, it was.

Trouble in high places saw a change in managers, the Swede went home and changes became noticeable. The price of the food shot up to reasonable levels, which was still OK by us, as we still had our place by the door, flirted with the same ladies and generally had a good time.

Next week the spongy, baked-on-the-premises chocolate-chip cup cakes had disappeared, plus the usual dishes, plus the soup plus our wholemeal rolls. Viktor tried one of the rolls and his worst suspicions were confirmed. A few rapid words with the girl and yep – the supplier had been changed.

Our great favourite – creamy Russian buckwheat porridge – had gone by the time we got there and we couldn’t get there any earlier. Well, all right, we still made do. The girls and young chaps behind the bain-marie were chirpy and helpful and all was well.

Then they changed managers in the restaurant. Plus they rushed the opening of Mega. Woefully behind schedule, floors were hastily laid, roofs put up, shop facades rush-decorated and still it wasn’t ready for Open Day.

We gave what had become a quasi-religious Thursday pilgrimage away for one week and it took a lot to do that. Next week our table had been shifted and some free-standing advertising billboard wedged up against it. When I went to shift the billboard, the girl guarding it went ballistic and ordered it returned the 18cm to its original place.

The dishes were missing from the shelves, only a fraction of the bain-marie tubs had food in them but if we’d wait fifteen minutes? We waited. And waited. When the ‘project’ eventually came out, the bread slices had increased in number but had diminished in size, the cheese and ham were each now one slice less and the fish portion had halved in size. My smoked salmon was the same size but had doubled in price.

There were no teaspoons. The coffee dispensing tables had sugar and milk spills over them. There were only glazed, processed sweetmeats to be had with the coffee. There was no porridge and only the one soup.

The staff were obviously becoming used to irascible customers complaining, simply shrugged their shoulders and said there was food coming soon. We took a few inferior items and a banana and made do.

Still no one bought any furniture.

This week, today, we arrived with that ‘hope springs eternal’ attitude and immediately saw a deep emptiness everywhere that one could reasonably expect to find vestiges of food, such as at the serving counter. To our enquiries, there was the turned shoulder.

When we finally forced one of the yobs to listen, he just shrugged in the true jobsworth spirit and referred it to a large girl in a chef’s hat who simply stared at us in Buddha silence until we prised one or two words out of her with a carving knife.

We ended up with a soggy concoction which I believe was supposed to be hash browns with salmon between them but was really salmon and sawdust compote and it was awful.

Brilliant idea, like all Russian ideas - pity it didn’t work, due to the finer details having been overlooked, such as the deeply annoying habit of customers of having finely tuned palates, which they tend to do over here.

Viktor kept muttering things, best left unstated, about Russian managers and I protested that it really is not the case that once you let a Russian at a viable concern you can sit back and watch it go downhill.

But it was to no avail – we were both far from being gruntled, as PGW would have said.

The doors were blocked. The exit doors. Apparently, they’d ripped up the concourse tiled floor outside and had had to redo the foundations and re-lay everything again after the Opening debacle.

We glanced back as we departed via the circuitous detour, shook our heads and possibly left forever. As we left, we noticed no one was buying any furniture but the check out girls were having an animated discussion over some local issue or other.

[the smarties egg] the real issue in life

Now this is more in my line. I did the power and passion stuff of Easter in the last few posts [and regret not one word] but now it's time to get down to the real issue:

The Smarties Egg

Doctor Vee, always with his finger on the pulse, writes:

For the Smarties egg. This is brilliant.

You get loads of different spin-off mini chocolate eggs these days. Most of them can’t hold a candle to the original Creme Eggs. But the Smarties egg is just brilliant. It’s got a really nice inside that’s a bit like how a Milky Way used to be before they were white on the inside. And then, inside that creamy mush, sits a cluster of little Smarties.

Much better than the normal ‘let’s stick some gunk in a chocolate egg and see how many suckers buy it’ nonsense.

Then the Good Doc goes further and tackles a serious matter - boycotts, on which my view nearly coincides with the learned gentleman:

I eat all Nestlé products I can get my hands on to annoy People and Planet.

Seriously though, I have written about this boycott before but I can’t find it. In short, I am massively ambivalent about it because for one I don’t do boycotts because of the job losses involved and for another the issue isn’t nearly as simple as the busybodying pressure groups make out (the transmission of HIV via breast milk is the huge elephant in the room they somehow never manage to tackle).

I can add one more thing. I've been to the moccasin coloured stone Vevey, via ferry from Thonon-les-Bains and these were some of my happiest moments on the planet. I love that nook of the world and so Nestle, to me, cannot be the monster it's portrayed.

I know that's illogical but there it is. I'm only logical on Christianity [he smiles]. For another take on this vital issue, the Thunderdragon has posted here. [Pity he misses the point of Easter itself though, which actually says more than Christmas.]

[old poll down] new one up

If your fairy godmother were to allow you only one of these, which would it be?

Sacks of cash...32%
Good health...32%
Great friends...16%
A healthy baby...5%
Fame...0%
Long life...5%
Leave comment below...11%

19 votes total

________________________________________
Posted by JayAnt on April 6, 2007
Faith, Hope, Charity
________________________________________
Posted by Dave Petterson on April 3, 2007
I'm cursed by dark magic to fill these out and try every quiz I see yet ignore memes. I always have great difficulty with ones like this. They are not exclusive. I could live to be 1000 but have the IQ and moral backbone of a politician or be really really healthy for the last 10 minutes of my life.
________________________________________
Posted by James in reply to Dave Petterson on April 3, 2007
Yep, Dave, that's so. I had great trouble deciding between health and friends, opting for friends in the end. But you'd expect that of an Aquarian.
________________________________________

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[midnight vigil] the long road out of town

There's a gi-normous Russian church on the Moscow road which was rebuilt after communism was swept away and it's gone from strength to strength.

I have to confess I haven't been there in years but all reports say that it gets a huge number of visitors. One turns off the main highway and follows the lead in road some kilometres, from memory and there it is - stuck out on its own, with little around it.

Of course, Russian churches are never one building. There are a number of them plus outhouses, accommodation for the monks and so on and the cupolas are their distinctive feature. Inside, the golden framed icons on the walls are also pretty stunning.

You can imagine last evening how many cars would have left the city just before midnight and here's the thing - many of them are nominally Muslim people. It's just that everyone knows the experience is a great one, the midnight vigil, the candles, the long, long service, the buzz.

I know this because my girlfriend described it to me and she's anything but religious. Why don't I go, if I'm so religious? I'm not and I hate crowds. I'm too much of a curmudgeon and I wouldn't have understood the biblical Russian anyway. I was there in spirit.

Today we have snow, can you believe? My friend just now, on the phone, said it was a present for us and there's certainly an atmosphere about for sure.

Just phoned a grandmother I know and had a long conversation in Russian. This is always enjoyable because those more my age or younger make allowances for my Russian and can speak English anyway.

But this lady is of the old school and only knows Russian so I have to be 'on song', paying particular attention to accent, otherwise we wouldn't understand one another. She also cooks Russian of the 'all day to prepare' variety and her cuisine is out of this world.

Now the sun's just broken out. Have a good day, all of you out there.

[passion] not a bad rush last evening

I confess I don't understand atheism. At least I know it is denial and that's a very human reaction but it's all so pointless. Plus it suits a certain personage's book very nicely. I have no beef with that but I can also see the frustration of those who have been through the experience of last night and want others to share it.

I can fully appreciate Mutterings and Meanderings, who wished none of these so-called Christians to shove it down her throat and she has no argument from me. I'm no evangelist but that doesn't prevent me from writing of what I know.

When you've experienced the renewal which was last night, there is this human tendency to want to lay it on everyone else but 'everyone else' is not ready to receive it. And that's the thing.

There has to be a willingness to receive or else all argument is in vain. You need to want to know. I know because I went through it but that's as far as it can go. It's a bit like old men's tales of the war, I suppose. How could those who came after truly understand what it was like?

What was it like? Or rather, what was it about?

It was about power, pure and simple. Enormous, blinding power which passed closeby, then hovered all around and you only had to reach out and bathe in it. The power to dispel gloom, despair and darkness in the soul.

You know when you go to a certain hamburger chain and stuff yourself with burgers, fries, icecream and so on and yet you're not filled? Then hours later you go home and have soup, a large steak and vegetables, washed down with wine and water, followed by desert and tea or coffee?

That's what this thing was about. About fulfilment, about being satisfied. That's why Christians are so intolerable and even intolerant, the serene pack of bstds, as Douglas Adams would say.

Trying to find an analogy, maybe this is not such a good one, it being a holy day and all that but sex is as good as any. You put it about with this female or other [or vice-versa for the other gender] and there's a mechanical high and a hunger for more and more with more and more variety.

Or alternatively, you finally break through with the one you've been nuts over for some time and she finally accepts you and it surpasses all words. The mechanical is only one component of the whole thing, woven into a fabric of passion and oneness.

But it's more, like a cross between 2001, Doctor Who and Hitchhiker's Guide - the enormity of the universe, of creation and so on. Ian has only just written of this and he felt it. At least he felt the edge of it, through celluloid. He's skirting around the general area and I'm observing with interest the road he's on.

That's the closest I can get to describing it. And you know it's right. You know it because amazing power radiates outwards and it's as good as any acid rush or maudlin drunken peace with the world. Actually, it's better.

That's it. You want it, it's there. Why can't you? It's all in your mind.

Footnote: Do you realize that this year, the Roman and Orthodox Easters came together for the first time in a very long while? Significant.