Steve: I'd like to talk today about what I did on the weekend. That's always a good subject of discussion. Maybe I should begin by asking Jill what she did on the weekend.
Jill: Uh, this weekend I didn't do much actually. I was lazy and watched TV and went out for dinner and for breakfast and didn't do very much else, actually. Steve: You went out for dinner and you went out for breakfast? That sounded like a pretty nice weekend. Mark, what did you do?
Mark: Well, uh, actually I posted on the subject on my blog, on The Linguist community blog also, but I spent my Saturday at the coach's clinic for kid's hockey which was largely a waste of time, but effectively killed my Saturday. Steve: Well, I think I am the person who was the most constructive on the weekend. I went out to Ikea and bought myself a desk that actually adjusts to different heights because I have a bit of a sore back and if I sit too long in one position my back gets sore. And when I was in Sweden recently, I saw that a number of people had these desks that you could adjust so that you could spend part of the day standing, or sitting on a high stool, and then your stool can drop down and you can sit at a lower level. So I went out to Ikea and I bought this desk for seven hundred dollars. I don't know how I got it into my car. I managed to drive home without everything in my car flying out the back window and then I spent most of Sunday assembling the desk.
Mark: Now isn't there some British parliamentarian or Victorian era politician that used to stand at his desk so that when he fell asleep it would wake him up so that he could keep working longer. Was there not Palmerston or one of those guys?
Steve: I have not heard that story. [Laughter] But, it is said though that if you want to make sure that meetings are effective then you don't provide chairs so that everyone has to stand. The meetings go a lot faster and people don't talk about useless subjects. Mark: That didn't hold true when I was in Japan. [Laughing} When our hockey team would have meetings and our president would be asleep standing up during our meetings.
Steve: Anyway, getting back to my desk. You know I went out to Ikea and it really is a very efficient store and I didn't have any kids to leave in the kiddies' area, but there were kids busy playing with all the little balls and so forth. And, uh, the one difficulty there sometimes is finding someone to answer your question because they're quite busy. But you kind of flow through and so even though I was only going there to buy a desk and I knew what I wanted, you kind of are forced to walk past a whole bunch of other stuff and you're often tempted to buy stuff that you hadn't even thought about buying before you got there. But when I did get a hold of a person, she was very helpful and showed me, you know, what they had and even recommended that I get a chair. I mean, I had the idea that I was just going to stand, and she said that was not such a good idea and that I should get a chair that adjusts to the height of the desk. So I did all that, got it home and assembled it. And most of it went together pretty well. The most annoying things in those is when the screw holes don't line up and you've got to somehow get your screw, and the screw is all of one centimeter long, and you've somehow got to get it started so that you can, you know, screw it in. But, so I struggled with some of it and I'm not particularly skilled, so all of those things were working against me but, nevertheless low and behold I got it assembled and it works. It goes up and it comes down and now I am just as happy as can be working at my desk. But I don't want to introduce that, I use that at home in my home office. I don't want to bring it into the office here because then everybody else would want one. [Laughter] How about you Jill, do you have a sore back?
Jill: I think it would be great to have the option of standing up because I do get up a lot of times throughout the day just to walk for a couple of seconds to stretch out and definitely my lower back gets sore, so I think that's a great idea actually and I think you should purchase a desk for everyone of us here. Steve: I don't mind buying a few more but I'm not going to assemble them. Somebody else is going to have to do that. You know it is interesting, as I was assembling the desk, I couldn't help thinking about the similarity between Ikea and The Linguist. Because Ikea relies on the consumer to put their effort and energy into creating this object and at least I find it a bit of a challenge, maybe it's more of a challenge for me than most people, but there's also a sense of achievement when you finally manage to get it all to fit and it works and hopefully you haven't assembled it wrong so that you have to unscrew everything and put it back together again. But this time I was lucky and there were no extra pieces left lying on the floor either, so that was good. And so now I am very happy with my desk and I am doubly happy because I did it myself. And of course it's very inexpensive. I paid seven or eight hundred dollars for this hydraulic adjustable desk which is really quite reasonable.
Mark: I was just going to make the point [laughing] that, which you don't want to have happen, is that at the end of your Ikea project you have a hand full of extras. That's never a good sign, but you, that has happened to you? Jill: Well, one time a friend of mine, was, she was, she bought some Ikea furniture and was trying to put it together, I can't even remember what it was, and I'm useless with stuff like that. She's pretty good so she was pretty much doing it and I was just watching but, at the end, I mean it took us forever, and then at the end there were tons of screws leftover so I think she actually just left it and didn't [laughing] bother disassembling it and just hoped that it would hold up. Steve: You know, the instructions they provide are actually quite good. Of course, they're multi-lingual because there's no text at all, there's just pictures. But I have realized having done this before, that the key is to count the number of screws. Like if they show you a particular type of screw 2x, two times, you better find them and figure out where they belong and don't confuse them with these other bolts that look similar but in fact are not the same. Don't put them in the wrong place. So, I mean, the basic element is those bolts and screws. Make sure you've accounted for them all before you get everything cinched so tight you can't unscrew it. Mark: Another key is very often when you are putting furniture together there is the side that is supposed to show and the side that is supposed to be on the inside. And the piece more or less could go either way and a lot of the time you don't realize until you've got it all together that whoops, the side with the lamination, the laminate on it is facing in. Then you've got to take it all apart and redo it. Jill: I was just going to say that yes, Ikea is very reasonable and they've got some great items, but often I think that's why people, the reason we've been talking about, is why people don't always buy from there. Because they don't want the hassle of having to assemble things themselves, they would rather pay a little bit more and have something that's already assembled or that people will come and assemble for them and um, I know a lot of people like that who would rather pay a little bit extra. But often you pay a lot more. So, I think you said seven hundred dollars for your desk and I think desks often, just regular desks, can be well over a thousand dollars. So, to have one that adjusts like that would probably be a couple of thousand dollars anyway at most places, so that's a substantial difference. Steve: Apparently, I think Ikea does allow you to pay for someone to assemble the desk. So, or you can simply contract with someone a little more skilled than myself to come in and do it but, the advantage again, it is so tremendously convenient that you can look it up on the web, I phoned them, I said have you got this product in stock, they said yes, I just jumped in my car, went down there, I could throw it, I happen to have a Saab, you know, hatchback. I was able to throw everything in the back of my hatchback, I had to leave it open, you know, so everything's just tied down with twine. But I had it. I wanted it, I had it. It was done. And yes you can go and buy fancier furniture, but in any market you can't possibly supply the needs and tastes of one hundred percent of the market, but judging by their success and the size of their stores here and all over the world, they are successful and I think their design is a main reason. It's not necessarily the durability of their product, but it's the design and the cost and the convenience which is tremendously attractive. Mark: Yeah, I was going to say the same that, you know, for a reasonable amount of money you get something that looks good, looks, you know, current and attractive and um, you furnish your place from Ikea, the cost, it's uh, keep the cost down and your place looks great. You may not be buying for durability. Getting back to one other thing that you said earlier about their store and you end up with a whole bunch of stuff you didn't intend on buying in the first place, I mean, they definitely have it worked out. I mean, you walk in there, there's this one path that everybody takes so that you pass everything and then you go by the little stuff on the way out as it just pads your cart a little bit. Jill: Yeah, and that, what Mark was saying about the style that you know, the furniture being modern and up to date and not too expensive. I know that very often people buy stuff from Ikea thinking that it doesn't really matter if it doesn't last a long time because it wasn't that expensive to begin with. And I know people who like to change their décor like every couple of years, they get bored very quickly. So, I think for those kind of people it's a really good idea because you can afford to change your furniture frequently if you're not paying very much for it to begin with and you can, you know, each year or two years or five years when styles change or your tastes change you can afford to get new stuff. But if you spend ten thousand dollars on a couch, you're probably going to want to keep that couch for a long time.
