I was spending a slow afternoon at IKEA today. Had to pick up a few items and landed up at lunchtime to devour the favorite Swedish meatballs.
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After lunch I venture into the store. Its fairly empty and I think the weather this weekend is to blame. Get some of the items I want and put them in the yellow IKEA bag along with my saturday copy of the NYT.
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 Once on the lower level transfer all of the stuff to a cart. I continue walking around the store slowly moving towards the checkout. The last stop I needed to make was at the shelving area, to pick up some shelves. Put my cart out of people’s way and get busy measuring different shelves to get the correct ones.
And then pick up the correct ones and turn back to the cart to put them in and go to checkout. And lo and behold ! There is no cart.
At first I check around to see if someone pushed it out of their way. But its nowhere to be found. Spot the IKEA personnel in charge of that area and she hasn’t moved my cart or seen it. She offers to call security and I take up that offer. Security shows up in 5 min and ask me a few questions etc. Luckily besides my NYT copy, I did not leave anything in the cart of personal value.
However by this time I was pretty pissed to go back thru the store to pick up what had now wandered away. Will go back another day for it.
However its really scary to think about how someone can either intentionally or unknowingly walk off with the cart. When we go shopping Shirrin seldom leaves her purse in the cart, and I always leave my bag. Perhaps this is a good and inexpensive lesson, and henceforth I will be wary of leaving personal stuff in the cart.Â
As for Cart Thief, damn you.
Or as one comic said, perhaps someone had the exact same shopping list as you did.
Last Thursday evening, just at base of stairs to the Brooklyn (Beard Street), New York IKEA,
someone pushed my cart away with my bag, took everything, and managed to
get out of the store without ANYONE in IKEA making any attempt to
assist me.
The reason I write this story is that I was SHOCKED by the lethargic and incompetent response by the store employees.
It
began when we saw the cart was gone and told the nearest employee, who
basically said, “oh it happens here all the time, everyday”, and then he
proceeded to stand there while we ran frantically to look for the cart
which had entirely been pushed out of our sight.
My
husband found the cart and ran back to the spot, and since there were a
few items we had intended to buy, we told the employee to bring it with
us to the waiting security police in another area of the store to show
them what it would look like in the camera shots. The employee was so
rude and told us that “we could not bring the cart, because it had
unpaid items in it (a couple of plate sets and one set of glasses)!! We
insisted, at which point the employee pushed the cart through the doors
at the Marketplace, and said annoyed, “FINE! go through that way” and
then he shut the door behind us and did not even accompany us.
I
was faint with shock, could barely stand. The employee at the event
was pathetically untrained to deal with the issue. It was shocking that
at IKEA such poor training has been left to this degree. We
proceeded to goto the employee area behind the cafeteria, where a
highly inexperienced young girl was ‘in charge’ of the cameras.
Essentially, till the police came, she insisted there were ‘really no
cameras at all in the marketplace and that we could NOT view the cameras
at all… then, when the NYPD arrived (NYC police), my husband was
finally allowed, if only to show the police where we were and perhaps to
catch some glimmer of what had occurred.We
ended up leaving that evening without anything. Your staff made the
terrible event even more horrible, but what was SHOCKING was the total
acceptance on the part of the IKEA staff that there was nothing to do,
that the thefts in the same area of the Marketplace were a pattern
EVERYDAY (they said this: your employees!) and that NO security detail
who could really understand the cameras or how they worked were on duty,
or were willing to offer some support EVEN TO THE POLICE when they
arrived.I
am shocked and disappointed with IKEA, and in all the years at all the
stores around the USA, I have NEVER encountered such a poorly trained,
lethargic and impolite bunch of IKEA staff members. My
losses that evening totaled over $1000. IKEA’s ‘staff’s refusal to even
try to assist speedily made a difference, and probably made it even
harder for the police to successfully identify any screen shots of the
people that do crime at IKEA each and open day at that location !! There
is a shocking display of poor management and training at the IKEA
Brooklyn, but the very worst part is the manner with which your
employees acted towards us RIGHT after we were robbed on IKEA premises.