Ikea has banned people from playing hide and seek in its stores, citing yawnsome health-and-safety issues. Thousands of Dutch fun lovers had come together on Facebook to organise playing their favourite game in local Ikea stores. This would have had the bonus of subverting the retail giant’s business model, which, as you know, is to use flatpack furniture to add to global misery levels.
Alas, the plans were foiled by middle management. “We need to make sure people are safe in our stores,” said Ikea group spokeswoman Martina Smedberg. “That’s hard to do if we don’t even know where they are.”
Oh, come on, Martina! This is unacceptable. What, apart from hide-and-seek marathons, shopping-trolley races, meatball juggling in the cafe and driving the staff nuts by insisting on speaking only in Swedish, is the maze-like hell of Ikea for? Shopping for furniture? Now who’s being silly?
Wouldn’t you rather be doing any of the following instead of issuing sensible statements to media drones?
1. Lie very still at the bottom of Ikea’s ball pit wearing the face mask of a famous Swede (Kurt Wallander, Ingmar or Ingrid Bergman, any of Abba or my favourite, Detective Saga Norén from The Bridge). Then, just when you think everyone’s forgotten you’re hiding and you’re about to suffocate, leap up and shout: “Overraskning!” Which is Swedish for “Surprise!”
2. Spend Saturday afternoon in the cavity of the Lugnvik sofa bed, freaking out couples who sit on it by saying: “Jag pratar väldigt lite svenska.” (“I only speak very little Swedish.”) They’ll think it’s the sofa talking. Result!
3. Collect all the world’s Allen keys and hide them in a hole where no one will ever be able to find them again. That’ll be your gift to humanity.
4. Climb into a couple’s shopping trolley while they aren’t looking, cover yourself with an Ofelia throw and a Vårärt duvet cover and pillow case set, and only get found out when they try to pack you into their Volvo. Bonus points for talking your way back to their place for tea.
5. Curl up inside a Metod kitchen corner unit for a Minecraft marathon on your iPad while listening to the sound of sniffer dogs and your parents gently sobbing outside.
6. Hide in the Breim wardrobe until staff have gone home, then unzip the flap (it doesn’t, as you know, have doors) and greet the cleaners with a cheery: “God kväll, Wembley!”
7. Realise at 3am one Monday that the best place to hide in Ikea is on top of the cistern of the third cubicle of the gents’ loos.
8. Pack as many small children as possible behind the books on shelves in the store’s Billy book cases. The world record I established at the Wednesbury branch in 2012 is 56, and most of them survived. You could beat it. Sure, you’ll face pretty searching questions from detectives later, but – you know what? – it’ll be worth it.
