United Nations of IKEA

In my dealings at IKEA, I've worked with people of all different backgrounds, ethnicities, and nationalities. I like to think of myself as an ambassador to the United Nations of IKEA, a peacemaker, if you will, among the many peoples that fulfill their home furnishing needs within my place of business. To that end, I find myself working with speakers of many different languages. Generally, people speak some amount of English, at least enough to work their way through making a purchase at the store. But occasionally, I run across people who literally do not speak a word of English. It's rare, but obviously a reality of living in a major metropolitan area. So, every now and then, I have to find creative ways to assist customers with little to no knowledge of the English language.

Today was a particularly "multicultural" day at the store, with customer interactions illustrating the full range of fluency in English. Early in the morning, I was approached by an African couple, asking the price of an item. Now you know how I feel about customers asking prices...if you don't know, the answer is I don't like it. There is not a single item in the store that isn't tagged with explicit clarity. Nevertheless, I spend most of my day reading price tags to people who are either too lazy to read it themselves, or just don't understand. This particular situation turned out to be a combination of both. I walked over the the bed in question, where the couple asked me how much it cost. I pointed at the price tag on the bed, and informed them it cost $300. Then they asked how much the whole thing cost, gesturing to the mattress, boxspring, etc. I informed them that I wasn't a calculator, and that I'd have to get something to add up the separate pieces. (Truth be told, I'm fairly good with numbers, but it bothers me so much when people just use me to add up prices. So I always try to act as annoyed as possible.) So I trapsed over to my desk, got a pen and paper, and added up the prices of the bed, the mattress, and the box spring. $1300, which is a large number, but for a solid wood bed, a box spring, and a really nice mattress, it's really not so bad. They were not having it, though. They kept asking, "how much for just the bed?" and I kept repeating "I told you, it's $300." They kept asking "no, the bed, how much is the bed?" I didn't know what to say, so I finally walked over, grabbed the headboard, and said "THIS BED COSTS $300. THE SIGN IS RIGHT HERE." Well it turns out that they were asking how much the mattress cost, but didn't know the difference between a "bed" and a "mattress." Once we got that worked out, it was smooth sailing and I sent them on their way. I suppose it's fairly common vernacular to interchange bed and mattress, but I assume that most adults, when it really comes down to it, know the difference. But I'm continually surprised by people who really don't know the difference between the words. I'll give this particular couple a little leeway, though, since English was clearly not their native language.

Situation number two arose when two women, mother and daughter, about 40 and 75, waved to get my attention. I went over, and was greeted with "Como estas?" I replied "I'm fine," in order to politely indicate that I preferred English. They, however, continued in Spanish. Now, I do speak a minimal amount of Spanish, just enough to get by, so I took this as a cue that they didn't speak English, and I continued in my high-school-level broken Spanish. They were extremely relieved, and from what I could understand, they told me they were so glad I spoke Spanish. They said I must have been a good boy in school, because when their teachers tried to teach them English, it went in one ear and out the other. I laughed nervously. (I basically laughed nervously the whole time since I was only about 85% certain that I understood what they were saying, but I figured it was better to err on the side of vapid, rather than stoic, thus I laughed.) I responded, in Spanish, that I was sure I was probably butchering the Spanish, but they assured me I was doing well enough. We talked a little more, the older woman kept making jokes and winking at me, I laughed and winked back, and we had a nice chat, sort of. Eventually, through snippets of Spanish and a lot of pointing, I helped them pick a mattress and printed out an order for them. They asked me which way they should go, and I told them they had to go downstairs, at which point the older woman grabbed my hand and started walking with me towards the stairs. Her daughter took her other hand, and off we went. We had a little bit of a walk to get to the elevator, so we carried on a little bit more, in Spanish of course, so I did a lot of "si, si" and giggled at everything they said, which I think made me sort of a novelty to them, because they seemed so delighted with me. The older woman asked me my name, and told me her name was Antonia. I told her it was nice to meet her, and she batted her eyelashes and giggled. I put them on the elevator, gave them directions to the warehouse, and sent them on their way. I wish more of my language barrier experiences would be like that...

Situation number three involved a deaf guy who wanted to buy a dresser. It really wasn't an issue because he brought a friend to translate into sign language for him, so I basically just communicated through her, but I bring it up because it reminded me of another couple that comes into the store every couple months. It's a French couple, both deaf. The husband understands no English whatsoever, the wife understands enough, but has to be looking at you to understand. Whenever they come into the store, they're always shopping for a wardrobe, which is literally the most complicated thing we sell, since there are so many small, interchangeable pieces. The first time they came in, I was relatively new and didn't know all that much about wardrobes, so it took us about an hour and half, but through countless blueprints, drawings, and a healthy amount of pointing and counting on fingers, we planned out a massive wardrobe. The woman has always been very sweet and grateful for my patience, but the husband was initially pretty impatient. He used to get really worked up when I didn't understand what he wanted, but after their first visit, we had worked out a way to understand each other more efficiently, and he eventually calmed down. The last time they came in, I'm pretty sure we planned out a wardrobe in less than 15 minutes, which is pretty incredible considering we didn't really use words at all.

There have been other experiences with people of all different cultures, but one way or another, we figure out ways to communicate. But for every non-English-speaking customer who works out ways to communicate with me, there's some idiot who speaks perfectly good English but won't listen to anything but the sound if their own voice. To those customers, I say good luck, because no matter how much pointing and gesturing I do, I just can't communicate with Stupid.