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Hej!

IKEA Southampton, UK is due to open on Thursday, February 12th – the first UK IKEA built in a city centre and the Swedish furniture giant’s 254th store worldwide.  IKEA anticipates the Southampton IKEA being an important testing ground logistically due to the location in the center of an urban area. 

City officials, police and IKEA top level managers have been working together to ensure no repeat of the riot that took place when the IKEA in North London was opened in 2005. A man was stabbed and others injured in the crush that took place at the door on Grand Opening Day. IKEA was forced to shut its doors only 30 minutes after opening.  

Says IKEA Southampton Store Manager, Allesandra Taffe, 

Of course we want people to come on the opening day, it is quite exciting and there will be some offers which will be quite good for customers, but not crazy. 

It’s not in anybody’s interest to have mass chaos, certainly not ours,we want the shopping experience to be a good one.

Taffe previously managed the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania US IKEA store for 4 1/2 years, and will manage 500 co-workers at the new IKEA Southampton.  These local co-workers will be joined by over 100 IKEA co-workers from around the world who will help prepare and launch the store.  

Staff will be on hand at the entrance to help “IKEA virgins” find what they are after and there will be a crèche where parents can dump their children to shop in relative peace.

Don’t forget to buy the kiddies a frozen yogurt after ‘dumping’ them off!  

[Image via The Daily Echo]

Four mothers in the UK were ejected from the IKEA cafeteria in Bletchley and later received an official apology from both from IKEA management in Sweden and the local store manager.  Why?  Perhaps because not everyone understands homeschooling.

The four homeschooling families have been in the habit of meeting every Monday in the IKEA cafeteria for coffee and a quiet play session, consisting of board and card games and other quiet activities. Recently 6 IKEA co-workers confronted the group and they were ejected from the store for reasons varying from taking up too much room (the cafeteria was 1/2 empty) to bringing outside food (two moms brought food for their babies) and even the highly dubious statement that the kids games were “gambling” and against store rules. One of the co-workers said:  ”I don’t see much education going on.”

One of the mom’s involved, Shoshana Toothill, started an email campaign urging other homeschoolers to boycott IKEA as well as emailing IKEA representatives in Almhult.  Last week the mothers involved were invited back to meet with the store manager: ”He was very, very nice. He apologised and was very positive and encouraging. He said mums and children were core Ikea customers and we were welcome any time.”

So.

The irony? The co-worker that didn’t see “much education going on” was in FACT teaching a very important lesson at that very moment: People sometimes make mistakes, simply because of their perspective at the moment that they make a decision.

IKEA has a very deeply entrenched policy of being a family friendly store, but despite that, the co-workers involved saw a group monopolizing tables and not buying much.  I’m willing to bet that the store manager saw a group of 4 mothers that make a habit of coming into his store every week, which is exactly what any manager would want.

In any case as fellow homeschoolers, we’d like to say kudos to Shoshana of Galley Hill! And thanks to Sally Murrer and the Milton Keynes Citizen for the original article: Play ban lifted, on the orders of Ikea’s big boss