1.You'll promise to skip the showroom and go straight to the market hall for that cheap, essential thing you came for.
2.You'll wonder how you ended up in the showroom suddenly. Oops, this wasn't meant to happen.
3.You will feel relaxed when you first arrive, with a warm glow of anticipation. This will give way to backache by the sofa section, and full-blown panic by the office chairs.
4.You will get lost in the showroom.
5.You will buy multiple quantities of something you don't need or possibly even want.
6.You will buy a paper lampshade even though you already have a rejected one in the cupboard at home.
7.You will buy a Billy bookcase in full knowledge that literally thousands of them are available on Freecycle or in skips all over the country.
8.You will laugh childishly at the funny names.
9.You will need the loo but not be able to find it.
10.You will try out at least three office chairs even though you’re not looking for a new office chair.
11.You will eat meatballs.
12.You will stare into the middle distance while eating meatballs in Ikea on Friday night and wonder at which precise point your life took such a wrong turn.
13.You will have an argument with whoever you came to Ikea with.
14.You will accost literally anyone wearing yellow to ask for help in the vain hope they are staff.
15.You will completely lose the plot at some point in the market hall.
16.You will leave with 23 things even though you only went in for one.
17.There will be no trolleys left in the warehouse, except for an apparently abandoned one full of stuff.
18.You will wander the aisles in the warehouse in a state of exasperation looking for the apparently mythical location 23–6.
19.The staff won't know when they'll be getting any more in.
20.You will race sweating back to the showroom in a desperate attempt to locate the item that you've now realised you simply cannot live without.
21.You'll officially go into a shopping frenzy.
22.You'll get stuck behind this woman in the queue:
23.You will spend £££ even though everything was only like £1 each.
24.Your teeth will cry.
Your belly will cackle like an evil madman.
25.You will leave with several new pencils that will add to the clutter in "the drawer where everything lives" in your kitchen.
26.You'll marvel at the fact that you made it out of Ikea alive, and swear never to return.
27.You'll renege on that promise immediately and admit the truth: that you bloody love Ikea and always will.
