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| Best IKEA couch EVER |
You thought IKEA was just the perfect spot for a new desk, 99 cent breakfast, and endless refills of Lingonberry juice? Au contraire.
Apparently it's now the hotspot for single seniors in Shanghai. While they shop in fake kitchens for their HONGSPKLARS and FIGNRKENSCHLAUGENS, they might spot true love across the way.
So what's so appealing about IKEA? Other than it's non-threatening atmosphere, there's FREE COFFEE. IKEA gives free coffee to anyone with a Family membership card.
Really? That's IT? Free COFFEE? Then what makes IKEA more appealing than Al-Anon and the mingling hour at Protestant churches?
The seniors head to IKEA in droves - I'm talking anywhere between 70 and SEVEN HUNDRED people.
Crowd control has proven difficult, as reported in The Wall Street Journal:
They sit for hours in the cafeteria, leaving behind orange peels and egg shells they have picked off boiled eggs brought from home. Occasionally, security guards intervene to try to keep order.
... Policing the freeloaders and the unruly isn't so easy. Attempting to tell a rowdy crowd of seniors to lower their voices recently, 24-year-old security guard Li Ya says he encountered resistance. An older man who didn't enjoy being hushed by someone 40 years his junior, says Mr. Li, once splashed scalding coffee on him. "They always argue that they have the right to do what they want here," says Mr. Li.
Hmmmm.... so these seniors are not only cheap - doing anything they can for a free cup of coffee - but they're also messy and unruly? Not the most appealing crowd of singles, eh?
2 comments:
I will keep this in mind for when I am single and 70...only 34 years to go! Since my town doesn't have IKEA, I'll have to settle for the local coffee shops and/or furniture stores for now!
They gave out free coffee and other snacks at the Living Spaces furniture store I went to here in CA. Plenty of people loitering but the senior singles hadn't caught on yet!
However, in a park in Beijing that I would visit, the parents of single adults would meet and gather with posters of their children, listing their age, job, often with a photo. They would exchange phone numbers, trying to hook their children up with each other.
Only in China.
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