Opin Opas

Would you risk your life for a sofa?

I remember quite well, when the new IKEA in Edmonton opened, which is now our local store. I heard about all the adverts about the new IKEA, and that it was opening in February 2005, with lots of big bargains in its opening sale. I had school that week, and I knew I couldn’t be out at midnight to catch a sale, so I thought I’d go after school, check out some bargains, look for a few designer bathroom accessories. So on the morning after the opening of IKEA, you can imagine my shock when I put on GMTV (we like to watch it in the mornings) and there’s a news report of chaos at the IKEA store where 6000 people were out in the middle of the night shopping for bargains, causing madness in the store, with mad shoppers running around, grabbing uber cheap furniture, and all the running, punching, kicking, it was like something out of a cartoon!

Apparantly sofas were £45 and £30 for a bed, but seriously, it went so bad, police had to be called for the sake of a few sofas and tables. This deserves a serious rant, despite occuring over five years ago.

Don’t get me wrong, I love IKEA and they have fabulous products, I go regularly muself, in fact, you could easily grab a sofa for £45 now if you look hard enough in the bargains corner, and haggle with the sales assistants. However, does that warrant such bad behaviour in a store? Yes the store is massive, and could hold a lot more than 6,000 people, but 6,000 people fought with each other, people got injured, it was lucky no-one got killed. Would you risk your life for a sofa? I know I wouldn’t, I’d sooner pay the full price for my own safety. But I’ll bet at least half of those people would grab bargains as low as it even if IKEA was on fire and burning to the ground.