How to shop at IKEA

You can get great deals on modern furniture at IKEA stores, but it can be a hassle. Having been through the New Haven, CT, store three times, I have some suggestions:

1. Get there early, when they open.
2. Go through the upstairs showroom and select all the items you want which are yellow-tagged, which means IKEA staff pick the items for you from the off-limits part of the warehouse. You can jot down the aisle and bin numbers for red-tagged "self-service" items, but don't pick up anything.
3. You must talk to a sales rep in the department where the yellow-tag item is to get a printout with the items on it. He will seem competent as he clicks around on the computer, but at least one item will be wrong, so you may as well check it right there.
4. When you're done having the errors fixed, go all the way through the store and take these printouts to the cashier. No browsing!
5. Pay for the items, then go to the furniture pickup area with your paperwork. They'll give you a number. Now you can sit in the comfortably modern waiting area with the other schumucks for between 30 minutes to two hours (I'm not kidding), or, and they don't tell you this, you can leave!
6. Browse the store and do the rest of your shopping! Go have lunch upstairs! Relax in a Varnamo sofa! Spin around on the Traktor seat! Sit at a Vika Glasholm desk and look busy and important! Take a nap on a Morkedal bed! Take a walk or sightsee the city!
7. Once you've picked up everything else you wanted, including red-tag items, go through the cashiers again, then head for the furniture pickup waiting area.
8. Is your number on the TV monitor?
   1. No: You didn't waste enough time - go back to step 6.
   2. Yes: Hooray! Take the stuff you're carrying to your car and bring it to the pick up spaces.

Now this is the part where the pickup clerk will explain to you that you can't have one of your items because it's conveniently stored on an upper rack in the public section, so they can't drop it until after closing, but you can come back to pick it up tomorrow. The time that we waited two hours, we heard this scenario at least ten times. After you have adequately described your feelings regarding this idiotic system and explained that you live X-hundred miles away, the unfortunate clerk sends you to the returns desk.

You are now expecting them to give you your money back, but will be pleasantly suprised when the returns clerk says, "Oh, you can't pick it up? OK, we'll ship it to you for free." So you conclude that the pickup clerk is a masochist not to volunteer this option, and you whistle as you load your quality European furniture into your vehicle.

Happy shopping!