I went to IKEA recently with a friend for some cheap Scandinavian furniture. It was my first experience at this behemoth and I was overcome with lust for the TYLÖSAND series modular couches, the GRUNDTAL kitchen wall organizers, and the MALM headboard/shelf & matching platform bed. I feel like the organizer of the layout has taken classes in “temptational seduction” as I wanted to buy everything I saw.

Anyway, the point of this post is not the alluring things strewn throughout the store… but the philosophy of personal responsibility found in the restaurant section of the store (yes, the Swedish meatballs are delicious). In the middle of the cafeteria there were two walled-in sections containing shelves for you to bus your empty trays and throw away your trash. On the side of these stations was IKEA’s reasoning for not hiring busboys and gals…

Why should I clear my own table?
At IKEA, clearing your own table at the end of your meal is one of the reasons you paid less at the start! By taking your tray to a tray station we can continue to keep our prices low. It also means our staff has more time to serve you and to cook.

It’s a piece of cake!

IKEA is genius. They give you reasons to buy their stuff throughout the experience, allowing you to browse and customize to your taste, while also making you do the heavy work of loading and carrying the things you have purchased. They have stated their expectations of you, the customer, while also defining their role as a designer of furniture and not a high-end boutique. This is the IKEA way.

What am I taking away from this experience… besides a BARNSLIG FLODHÄST and a BARNSLIG PARK for my niece and nephew, respectively… I am seeing the importance in defining personal responsibility and not letting my clients play an eternal guessing game of what their responsibility is or is not. When you tell them what you expect, they will gladly do what it takes to get the job done.

What have you learned from IKEA?