The IVAR chair

When we drove to Houston a couple weeks ago, we did so with one goal in mind: to buy cheapo IKEA chairs for our dining room table. We found some on the IKEA website for $19. Yes please!

They weren’t the prettiest chairs in the world but we could stain them to match the table and they’d hold our tushies during a nice dinner so that’s all that mattered. I thought that for that price, we could just buy them and ship them here. No go. They aren’t available online. Next best: drive to Austin’s IKEA and get them. No go. They aren’t available in Round Rock. Next best: drive to Houston with a 5 month old. Of course, I knew it was risky to drive that far for 6 chairs…especially at that price. There was a very good chance that they would be out of them. Luckily, the IKEA website has a little “counter” that shows you exactly how many are in stock. I stalked that website for weeks—the inventory would dwindle, then go back up, then dwindle, then go back up. I knew that our big risk was the weekend before: if, after the weekend, there were still 10ish chairs left, we would be good. The weekend before? Inventory said 12 chairs. The day we left? 12 chairs. The day we planned to go to IKEA? 9 chairs. As we were WALKING INTO IKEA? 9 chairs. We only needed 6. This was grand! We walked through the displays and found the chairs. What the heck? $24? That’s $5 more per chair…which is $30 total more. Psha! That’s a whole chair. Oh well. At least we liked them. For that price, we were expecting to sit on them and have them collapse. But no! We loved those little Ivar cuties. And surely there were enough because the floor displays were stupid with them. Ivar chairs everywhere! There were probably 30 just on the floor for display purposes. We walked around the store with everyone complimenting our adorable son in his old man hat and proceeded to the checkout. Lane 15, Aisle 16. I’d memorized it. But just to be sure, I pulled up the iphone. Still 9 chairs left! But wait. Why were there only three sitting on the slab? What the hey can I do with three chairs? Surely there was a mistake. My phone inventory even says there are 9 here! We asked someone and he confirmed: yes, there are 9 chairs in this store. We walked around looking at people’s carts and nothing. Those darned chairs were nowhere to be found. We checked out with our measly 3 chairs thinking, “well, I guess we’ll get them when we return to Houston.” I checked the iphone inventory. 6 chairs left at IKEA. But apparently they were invisible. So basically, we drove to Houston to buy THREE chairs.  Which we haven’t set up because 3 chairs around a giant table look even stupider than no chairs. A few days later, just to torture myself, I looked again: 14 chairs in inventory. So I thought, “Well I’ll just call and see if they will ship them to me. I will even pay for the shipping! But come on! Give me a break! Your inventory lied to me because someone apparently hid my flippin’ chairs!” So I called IKEA. And I was on hold. For an hour. On a Friday night. FINALLY someone answered. And promptly hung up. Fantastic customer service.

In case anyone was wondering, I just looked online: 9 chairs in inventory. Ha. Nine chairs my ask.