So, we’re at IKEA, and my daughter is asking about their Playroom. We used to use this playroom as incentive for her to learn to go on the potty. “You have to know how to go on the potty to go in there,” we’d tell her.
She’s gotten pretty good at using the potty. Telling us she needs to go…? That’s a different story.
“We’re gonna head down and look at the playroom,” I told Ms. Kaz as we finished up lunch. “Okay, but we have to leave soon,” she reminds me. So, down the elevator we go.
My daughter peers through the glass at the kids running, playing in the ball pit, climbing, sliding and drawing. “I wanna go in there!”
I try the “You aren’t tall enough tactic”, but, checking the You Must Be This Tall sign, well… she’s pretty close. “We have to wait for mommy,” I tell her, “but if we go in, you have to do two things, okay? You have to go potty before and, if you feel like you need to go potty, you have to let someone know, okay? Okay?” She agrees.
As we’re waiting for mommy, one of the people at the desk looks at my daughter and says, “You have to take off your shoes if you want to go in!”
And that statement right there is why I am mad at IKEA…So, mommy comes down and I try to tell her on the idea, “She did sleep in today… maybe just a few minutes?”
We decide to let her play for a few minutes. We convince her to go on the potty, we head back to the playroom, we get her socks on and put her shoes in one of the bins and get to the desk.
That’s when we hear, “Ooohhh… I’m not sure she’s tall enough.” Turns out there’s a line on a post behind us that is the Official Measuring Thingy. My daughter stands against it. Well… close…
“She looked tall enough against the other one..?” I try.
The Big Meanie at the desk informs us that “kids hang on that all the time” so it isn’t accurate.
That’s great. Why have it up at all, then? I guess it would be way too much work just to take it down, or, you know, move it up an inch or so. They can assemble 100 fake rooms, but adjust the sign? Too much trouble.
The Desk Person comes out with a clipboard, placing it on my daughters head, angling it backwards so the measurement is even more inaccurate, then states again, “Sorry, she’s not tall enough”
Off go the socks, on go the shoes, and out come the tears.
It really ticks me off when someone makes my little girl cry. Okay, maybe it was a bit my fault for building up her hopes, but why did that person have to act like it was okay for her to come right in? I was mad at IKEA. Mad that they made my little girl cry.
So mad that we immediately, uh, went and got an ice cream cone and sat and ate it. But THEN we walked right out of there. But we won’t be back! At least not for a couple weeks.
Hopefully, my daughter will have grown a couple inches by then.
I Hate Snaps 
Bad IKEA, no biscuit. Bad design on a few counts: they should have anticipated kids hanging on the measuring thingie, so they should have made it too stout to be bent; they should take into account that kids will be measuring themselves in their shoes and adjust the height of the thingie accordingly; they shouldn’t hire dorks who make your little girl cry. OK technically, that last one isn’t a design flaw, but, dude, it’s bad form.