Sorry, Swedes

I don't have anything in particular against the Swedes. I spent 10 months living among them during my junior year of high school. I studied their culture, a surprising amount of which revolved around pickled herring and cheese sandwiches. They are a fine, sturdy people who possess many admirable qualities, not least the ability to live in a country that is dark for a good seven-ninths of the day during the winter. Trust me, Sweden is a good place to own a franchise on a flashlight shop.
Sweden has also produced many things that are of great benefit to the world as a whole. I am a big fan of their meatballs, their red gummy candies and their bikini teams.
So please, believe me when I say I have no quarrel with the Nordic peoples as a whole. But I worry that if I have to shop at their furniture store one more time I'm liable to punch someone in the head.
Fortunately, given my marked lack of upper body strength, that is unlikely to do any significant damage. It sure would make me feel better, though.
IKEA, that massive marketer of hex wrench-assembled furniture, caused a big stir when it opened several years ago in Bloomington, it's gigantic blue-and-yellow building proclaiming its overwhelming Swedishness to anyone driving by. People lined up for days for the chance to be the first to buy attractively priced knickknacks with whimsical, pseudo-Swedish names.
I have been to IKEA precisely three times since that day, and I believe a little piece of my soul died each time.
The crowds are part of what drive me crazy about IKEA. For someone whose job involves talking to other people I have remarkably little patience for humanity as a whole.
Actually, I'm generally OK with individuals. It's when you gather a bunch of people as a group, cram them into a confined space and wave bargain-priced glassware in their faces my eyelid really starts to twitch. This is why my rare trips to the Mall of America are typically followed by me locking myself in a dark room for about a week.
It's the design of the store that bugs me most, though. If you've never been, basically you enter through one door, go up an elevator and, with the exception of a few shortcuts, are forced to wander through acre after acre of competitively priced sofas and bed frames. There's only one way in. There's only one way out.
Walking through the store I imagine I understand how cattle feel as they're herded down a long chute toward the slaughterhouse. Only instead of a guy with a hacksaw there's a cash register and a plastic bucket of ginger cookies waiting for me at the end of the line. I think I'm getting a better deal than the cows, but not by much.
I imagine it didn't help that the first time I visited IKEA, ignorant of the unidirectional traffic pattern, I circled the store in reverse, like a salmon swimming upstream. By the time I'd made it halfway I was hoping a bear would come along and put me out of my misery.
Still, when a store's got what you need it's got what you need. And since I needed more cabinet and counter space in my new kitchen I girded my loins, put in my favorite ABBA CD and made the short drive to Bloomington. I got my counter. Now I just need to put it together.
Is anyone good with pictographs?