How to unscramble eggs (and say WTF in Swedish): Peter Goers’s guide to Ikea

Ikea is apparently unable to source perfectly good, perfectly accredited eggs from perfectly free-ranged SA, writes Peter Goers.

You can’t unscramble an egg, but let’s try. This is scramble egg gate at Ikea.

I try and avoid Ikea because I always get hopelessly lost upstairs and I find the Swedish names for everything hilariously funny. Storken!

I went in search of a cupboard, found it and I’m confused as to why Ikea cupboards have to be attached to walls.

I bought two candles and discovered to my horror that all Ikean check-outs are now self-serve. At the car, I realised in a panic that I’d left my phone somewhere in the store.

I hastily retraced my steps, got lost again, frantically encouraged other lost shoppers to call my number to see if I could hear my phone but thank God (tack Gud in Swedish) some kind person had handed my phone into lost property.

Vad i helvete happened to my äggröra? Picture: Ikea

Amid this trauma, I’d espied a $5 breakfast advertised in store. The Ikea breakfast with pork sausages is scrambled eggs, a hash brown, a fried tomato and pork sausages which, the advertisement informs us, contain pork. Tack Gud again.

I returned to Ikea just to have this breakfast. I lined up with my tray only to be told they had no scrambled eggs (äggröra) as there was a shortage of eggs.

The Swedish for WTF is WTF or vad i helvete. I summoned the very helpful and apologetic restaurant manager who repeated the corporate line of an egg shortage apparent to no-one else in SA but Ikea.

He explained that since the Ikea horse meat (häskött) crisis of 2013 when horse meat was discovered in Ikea’s famous meatballs in Czechoslovakia, Ikea has been much more stringent with food suppliers so, yes, we have no eggs.

But the elusive scrambled eggs are still advertised in store and online.

I was so hungry I could’ve eaten a horse. I returned home and made my own scrambled eggs. Later, I called Ikea Adelaide on an 08 number only to get a call centre in Sydney and to be told I couldn’t be connected to anyone in Ikea Adelaide.

I was given an email address and days later, Ikea PR Leader Emma Losco informed me that there is a shortage of Ikea scrambled eggs which are pre-made somewhere in Australia and shipped to Ikea Adelaide in plastic bags. OMG or Herre Gud!

If you are going to Ikea for breakfast take your own scrambled eggs.

My brain is scrambled, unlike the missing Ikean eggs. Are you as baffled as I am with modern life?

It’s become either impossible to speak to anyone in most large businesses or you have to endure long waits to do so.

Ikea in Adelaide, which is a long, long way for Ikea’s Aussie egg supplier. Picture: Keryn Stevens

You have to listen to awful music while being told how important your call is (but not important enough to be answered), to be thanked for your patience and whenever you call it’s always when there is a higher than usual volume of calls. Our time and inconvenience is worthless.

Banks post billions of dollars in profit by not employing people to answer the phone.

We call businesses and are told we should contact them online. So we sit waiting, desperate to hear the dulcet tones of a person, generally in India or the Philippines.

Call a government department? Are you crazy? Don’t even think about it.

Why is life so complicated? I used to be able to pay my monthly Telstra bill via PayPal in seconds on my phone. Now it’s agony. You have to be registered with Telstra and you have to know your user name and password and I can’t retrieve these and I’m rejected. All of this is for security but if anyone wants to hack my phone in order to pay my Telstra bill, go ahead – make my day.

I’m sorry, but if I’m going to Ikea to get lost and buy a cupboard I have to assemble myself, worry that it may fall over if not screwed to a wall and stagger through a self-service checkout with it, I deserve scrambled eggs as advertised with breakfast. That’s too much to ask.

Ikea is apparently unable to source perfectly good, perfectly accredited eggs from perfectly free-ranged South Australian chooks and Ikean chefs are unable to scramble those eggs or run up an omelette.

Given the proliferation of umlauts in Swedish, it’d be a two egg umlaut.