Ikea and thinking.

An Ikea room from the 2011 catalogue

I went to Ikea today. Since moving to Melbourne I haven't been as regular a visitor to Ikea as I was in Adelaide. Not sure why. Certainly I live much further away than our last house, (It's pretty hard to get closer than across the road!) but it's probably not further than the house before that. Some people assert that I have been to Ikea far too many times already and therefore extra visits are not only not required, but superfluous. This is possibly because they have been to my house. On admittance to my house some think they have somehow travelled through a wormhole into Ikea. Yes, some claim that it looks like an Ikea showroom. I like it. And I guess that proves that I like Ikea.

So today I went to Ikea. I had a list of items I needed and I was ready to spend! Unfortunately, most of the items were not there. (Despite my Bradley being told last week that the most important one would be there this week.) This is where the interesting thought I had today comes in. In Adelaide they have a system of placing a card on the shelf telling you when the out of stock item is expected in. Now I am sure they don't do this for every out of stock item, but I have seen it many times there. I thought, "If only they did that in Melbourne!" I decided to line up to enquire about my desired items, but gave up after 15 minutes of fruitless waiting. (I'm not very good at queueing, or waiting.) I had places to be you know. As I drove off I pondered on what a great store Adelaide is and how frustrating Melbourne's Ikea is. And then it dawned on me. All I was doing was championing the familiar. I think this is a thoroughly human trait and all the great advances in science and thinking that we have had have only come from people who were brave enough to step away from the familiar. For some of us the phrase "Familiarity breeds contempt" is incorrect and should read, "Familiarity makes us really comfy".

The moral of this story? We should all try to be as unprejudiced as possible and take each new experience on it's own terms, rather than comparing it to what may have happened before. Oh. And Melbourne Ikea should really put some notes up as to when out of stock items are expected in.