Ikea descends on Sacramento. Run for your life.

Editor’s Note: Local Sacramento blogger Plumwin was kind enough to submit this report to the Sac Rag on her recent visit to the new Ikea store in West Sacramento. For more commentary on Ikea, please to visit John’s post over at Uneasy Rhetoric which is simply gold.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you should be aware that there is a new IKEA opening up in West Sacramento (Bee article, registration required) on March 1st. Last Saturday I had the opportunity to participate in their pre-opening “Friends & Family” event and decided I’d give it a shot. I didn’t know how many of these golden tickets were given out but I assumed it wasn’t half of the city. I was wrong. The event was from 2pm – 5pm and we arrived about 2:30 and proceeded to crawl from the freeway exit to the entrance for a good hour. That wasn’t going to deter us and we soldiered onward…

If you like to walk, IKEA is the place to go. The overflow parking was about a ½ mile from the entrance but what greeted us at the front doors made it all worthwhile. There was a tent city of people actually living there waiting for the March 1st opening. I was a little fearful that they might resent us for being able to go in early but they were very kind. Most of the inhabitants were out of their tents, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, waving to us and wishing us luck on our journey. Luck? It’s a furniture store. I wish I had listened to that advice and I also wish I would have just gone back to the car.

I’ve lived in cities that had IKEA stores before so this wasn’t my first venture and I know how the system works. There are a lot of ‘rules’ at IKEA and you have to pay attention to get in, pick out your wares, and get out successfully. This just wasn’t possible from what I saw. When you enter there is an escalator and the idea is to go upstairs, look through the rooms and pick large items and then when you come back down, you get a cart and put your small goods. People were trying to push the carts up the escalator and the employees were scolding them over and over. Upstairs was no better. Imagine thousands of Sacramento residents with kids in tow navigating through a store that has clearly marked arrows on the floor showing you which direction to go but still going the opposite direction? They were loitering all over the place, backing up the flow of customers, and basically couldn’t get with the program. We picked out a few things and proceeded downstairs. Chaos. More of these people blocking the aisles and letting their kids climb on everything (one woman was changing her baby’s diaper in one of the display cribs) and making the whole experience more tiring. Finally, an hour and a half into our journey we decided to call it quits. We grabbed a catalog and will order online.

My advice for now is to avoid this place at all costs unless you’re willing to spend half a day and wade through thousands of idiots just to get a $2 vase. The only saving grace is that I bet Target will be pretty empty come March 1st, which is good for me.