The Tool User

I have mostly the greatest admiration for IKEA.  Their furniture is top notch quality; they retain good people on staff; they must be doing a terrific business, as the young woman (who has been at the store since its opening maybe three years ago) watching us plop from bed to bed confided that they get four to six semi's in every night, restocking.  The business model of selling only constructible furniture that can be shipped in flat boxes is genius.  So why must their assembly instructions be so perverse?

Sure, the little guys in the wordless drawings all have beaming smiles, except when they're showing the wrong way to do things, in which case they have big, sad grimaces, the scene's implicit horror punctuated by a giant black X over it.

I'm almost certain that in a small, presumably windowless room in Delft, a squinty eyed sadist oversees the step-by-step instructions and cries "Huzzah!" when he finds the most insidious place to subtly blur the distinction between two integral interior structural members of whatever She's brought home and I have spread across the bedroom. 

I get the thing assembled to the point where I'm down to the last seventy some steps, and realize, Oh My God, I've put every single drawer together inside out. 

That Netherlands corksoaker.

Just to gild the frame around the picture, while I'm assembling, disassembling, and reassembling, She's on her computer over there in the corner, working on some PTO brochures at breakneck speed, making her keyboard sound like a snare drum.  I shriek, mortally injured, bleeding profusely   - blood dripping       -  ok, some blood evident on my finger.  "Look!  Look!"  She glances, no discernible slowing in the typing.  "You remember where the bandages are?" 

"Jesus Mary and Joseph, I'm bleeding over here!"

"This would be a good time to check your blood sugar, you don't even have to prick your finger" she offers, slowing slightly now, whether to change fonts or due to real concern, I leave it to you, Gentle Reader, to discern.