On a recent visit to Tours to visit a friend in hospital we made a point of using the trip to do a bit of shopping which included a trip to Ikea. It is reported that the store in the city proved to be the most difficult to get approval for in all the company's development plans. The resistance to the store is said to be strong within France but anytime we have visited there certainly has been no lack of cars in the carpark - even their 'meatball lunches' seem very popular!
Our shopping trip meant we also choose to visit the 'BUT' store which has, perhaps not surprisingly, taken on the Ikea format of leading you around the store with arrows on the floor with no means of 'escape' other than going through all of their departments before exiting at the cash desks.
Now Jim has always tried to 'short cut' the system in the Ikea store by starting at the end and going 'backwards' or cutting through displays so as to miss items we don't need to see and we managed a shortcut within the BUT store.
We have had many 'Midnight Express' moments in Ikea, with customers looking at us blankly as if to say 'You are going the wrong way!!'
Good fun though!!!
ReplyDelete