Meltdowns, affairs and lots of blood: People are sharing their worst IKEA horror stories.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that IKEA brings out the worst in people.

My own mother hardly puts a toe inside IKEA before she starts yelling incoherently about nothing in particular. She feels overwhelmed. There are too many choices. And she knows, deep in her soul, that she is going to get horribly lost inside a maze of desks and curtains, and there’s nothing she can do to prevent it.

A Reddit thread titled, ‘Employees of IKEA, what are some of the worst family meltdowns you have seen?‘ is going viral, after having attracted more than 11,000 comments.

Here are some of our favourite responses:

The metaphor of the IKEA bed

“This was my IKEA family meltdown. My then boyfriend and I were getting our own place just after college. Until then, we had both been using twin beds thanks to student living spaces and sharing a single twin was proving uncomfortable for two adult humans subjected to California summer temperatures. To fix this issue, off to IKEA we went.

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Things start off okay. We start with lunch, admire the living room couches, move into kitchen wares. All so far enjoyable fantasy. And then we reach our destination, bedrooms. A sea of beds in a variety of price points greet us with brightly coloured duvets. An experienced furniture purchaser I start scanning the price tags to narrow the options. I bring him to an attractive affordable model I think matches some of our bookcases. And this is where the trouble starts.

See up until now, I didn’t realize exactly how bad this man’s fear of decision making was. He stares at the bed incomprehensibly for literal minutes, refusing to talk about it. Eventually it is discovered that buying a bed means committing to delaying graduate school, never moving to the east coast, and having children with me. I don’t understand that logic and request explanation which is slowly and tearfully given.

We spent three hours in that IKEA and left with nothing. About a month later we went back and again after several hours bought that exact bed. He never went to grad school or moved to the east coast. We also did not have children and broke up a few years later. He took the bed.”

IMeanIDontEvenKnow

Lots of bleeding children

“I was in the Vancouver IKEA, and they have a children’s play area that was packed. There must have been 100 kids in there, some being watched from outside and some completely unattended.

Without warning, the power went out. There were emergency lights but the play area was still quite dark. The kids all started shrieking and crying and running around in the darkness.

The power probably only out for 2 minutes, but the chaos was spectacular. When the lights came back on, it looked like a battleground. Some kids were bruised and bloodied, some had the 1000-yard stare of a war veteran. There were a few who had bonded together in the tunnels and refused to leave. Some were missing entirely – they must have escaped in the shadows into the well-furnished maze that is IKEA.

The meatballs were good too. Overall 10/10, but the bar was set high and no future visits could compare to that eventful day.”

BananApocalypse

“There is NO we”

“My boyfriend and I overheard while browsing in IKEA a couple having some sort of miscommunication in their “relationship”.

I guess they were deciding on things to buy. The girl says “we should get that rug” in which the guy replies to her super fucking loud “there is NO we, you don’t live with me!”

I didn’t catch the rest of it as we had to walk away so they wouldn’t hear us laughing so hard.”

Krunut

Fights in the bedroom department

“I was once shopping at Ikea and noticed a couple with the guy just having the complete look of apathy and distraction while being berated by his wife.

The volume was fairly low until they got to the bedroom department and she specifically said ‘I’m thinking of buying new sheets but I might as well not cause I don’t wanna buy sheets just so you can fuck that HR bitch in them. I hope you realise I’m just staying with your cheating ass until the kids are grown up.’

I was so distraught I went for Köttbullar to calm myself.”

luckyvb