As perhaps the biggest lefty here, I don't quite agree with you or Steiner. Somewhere in the middle. You can certainly call the customers fools or idiots, and while this appears correct, its a superficial analysis. I hold with the leftist position that people that people are moldable and stupidity is produced, so there are causal reasons behind people's behavior which caused the Ikea rampage. That said, Steiner is also being superficial, believing the causal factors to be the store itself. That's improbable. One needs to looks at a larger temporality than that.
The belief that physical enviroment is destiny is not leftist. Some people are just more affected by their physical enviroment than others. It is unsuprising that one of these people ends-up editor of the home and garden section of a newspaper.
Her inablity or lack of desire to think through the economics of the situation does seem characteristic of a certain type of leftist. The fact that Ikea's furniture is inexpensive and they have poor customer service isn't some kind of coincidence.
I am not sure I agree with any of the analysis so far offered. But I do know this: the Center is so far right in the United States that the lefties you know may in fact, be lefties only because they are left of the center--in a sort of a Socialist a la Clinton (Was Clinton to the left of anything?). But, whether they are true leftist (as in believing in the principles of Socialism and such... I am not sure there are many around here in the US.
He was to the left of the 1990s Republican Party, I suppose, but he was absolutely on the rightmost fringe of the Democratic Party. That the right wing holds up either Clinton as some sort of liberal avatar only proves that they are so far to the right now that they have lost all sense of perspective when it comes to any reasonable political spectrum.
Hell, they keep holding up Chirac as a leftist, which would make a Frenchman of any political stripe spray Bordeaux through his nose.
This discussion looks ripe to be diverted to the age-old question: Why does everyone think Attila the Hun was right-wing? I mean, they say "slightly right wing of Attila the Hun," but is there any real reason to think that Attila was more conservative than, say, Genghis Khan?
This is a cultural thing, and it is not the author who's culture differs from ours. No, the stores differ from ours.
I was lucky enough to live in England for about six months about 10 years ago, about 100 miles from London.
We have absolutely no idea how *wonderful* our 'shopping experience' is here and how totally CRAPPY it is there.
I coulda slugged somebody more than once.
For example, everybody shops on Saturday because the shops are closed evenings and Sunday. The grocery store is always packed like it is Thanksgiving. You can't get down the aisles because they are jammed with carts, called trolleys, that have all four wheels swiveled so you can't hardly steer the darn thing. NOBODY on the staff will show you where anything is. None of this "follow me to the milk" stuff.
You then wait in a huge line to checkout, and when you get there some bitter old crone is sitting there scowling. All the checkers were bitter old crones. I'm not sure what English teenagers do, but they sure don't work retail. You bag your own stuff.
One Saturday my wife wanted a pair of shoes. We drove to a department store where there was no parking, so I drove around the block while she ran in to get some. I waitied for two hours. When she came out she was fuming. She had to take a number, wait two hours and then find out they didn't have the shoes she wanted in her size, and they had no idea if they would ever get them in. She couldn't order them and pick them up later. They couldn't check around to other stores in the chain.
There is a reason Brits are willing to fly for 12 hours, spend three days shopping at the Mall of America, and then fly back and pay duty on their purchases.
No, I think it is. I have gotten to meet quite a few hard core southern conservatives, and also read their opinions in my school newspaper. So, while I won't claim that this is the intellectualist conservative position, there are many college conservatives who subscribe to a philosophy of near-total personal responsibility. They somehow square this with also complaining about a corrupt society. It seems they think that a morally corrupt neighborhood or whatever is undesirably, yet not really a mitigating factor on responsibility. They always seem to think there are outs or options for someone born into a morally corrupt place.
I remember a similar incident at Walmart a couple of years ago right around the holidays. If I remember correctly, Walmart was selling a DVD for some ridiculously low price, a rather large crowd had lined up at the door before the store opened and some woman literally got stampeded over when they opened and had to be taken to the hospital.
I have to agree with Ogged on this one. The people who rioted were a bunch of idiots in this case. I think it's a rather sad statement on the level of personal accountability that we hold people to nowadays when arguments like that are made. It's the same mentality that allows people to sue McDonalds for making them fat.
Which raises the most important question of all: when people sue McDonald's, how do they prove that they've been eating there? Subpeona the cashiers? Produce all the receipts they've kept? I'm kind of serious.
D, you remember version 1 correctly. When the news started looking into the woman who got trampled and sued, they discovered she had quite a long history of getting trampled at Wal-Mart and suing.
Ogged, c'mon, there have been millions of store openings, few have resulted in violence.
D, I'm not sure what's the relationship between a mob frenzy and suing McDonald's for money, but the point I'm making is that if someone does something stupid, or, even better, when a lot of people do the same stupid thing, you can say, "they just should know better!!" which isn't very helpful and won't go anywhere towards preventing a repeat performance, or you can admit we're not all hyper-intelligent rational actors possessing all the prequisite knowledge we need to make good decisions, and, further, we imitate each other. If you take that line, which involves at least mitigating a finger-pointing attitude, you can work towards an understanding of what makes people act in certain ways.
Have you ever shopped in Germany? The customer is the enemy because he or she may shuffle the items in the displays, inviting the ire of clerks who seem to be there only to guard the geometric perfection with which the merchandise is arranged. Just try asking where something is, and see if anyone even acknowledges your presence. And don't even try joking with the cashier - their scowl will flip from mere disdain to active hostility.
To be fair, I did get decent service in the Galleries Lafayette in Berlin and in a store in Munich where they actually honored the price on the tag when it rang up higher at the register (an amazing thing to get a German cashier to admit the computer is wrong).
I had the misfortune of being in the main shopping district of Cologne on what they called the "longest Saturday" - the day when the stores stayed open latest all year (10 PM I think) and they were all having sales. It was like the crowded planet on Star Trek, only with sausages, Turkish Gyros (usually called Doener Kebab), and little cylindrical glasses of the local (delectable) beer called Koelsch. I didn't see any rioting, though. I think they save that for political events.
While I agree with you that the rioting itself may have deeper underlying causes than the rioter's "idiocy", I thought that the point of the article was about accountability, i.e, should IKEA be the ones held responsible for the rioting instead of the rioters themselves. In other words, was IKEA's environment such that it inevitably forced people into a riot. The fact that, as you say, "there have been millions of store openings," that haven't resulted in violence would indicate that's just not true. My point then, is that the people who rioted are ultimately responsible for their behavior and not simply victims of their environment. Or, to put it another way, they are influenced but not ultimately determined by their environment.
Larry, in fact I've been in that very market in Cologne, but I didn't try to buy anything. I suspect, however, that it wouldn't have gone well, on any day.
Thanks for backing me up about the general awfulness of some European shopping.
And would only an idiot show up at IKEA on opening day?
Or at Wal-Mart when a special sale is on?
How sneeringly lovely it is to degrade the idiots or perhaps the lower classes (dare I say the colored?) who are idiotic enough to show up at a special sale so they might get their kid a DVD for Christmas.
Why, all of us have the good sense to earn enough money so we can stay home and shop later, far from the hoi polloi. Rather.
Damn. I was hoping no one would bring up the fact that they had a massive sale on the first day. That's a bit of a problem for the "idiots" line, I admit. (Though I don't think "colored" has anything to do with it, honestly.) But, I didn't grow up in a household where money was never a problem, and I still find myself sneering--class is how you act, no? So cheap DVD player or no, you might not be hoi polloi before you get in line, but once you do, well...
They opened the store at midnight, and had been advertising on the radio the whole day that there would be really big bargains available from midnight to 3 a.m.
Although it was a huge store there was nowhere near enough parking for those who turned up.
Er, did I say it opened at midnight, Saturday night? Just after the pubs shut.
There has been no information linking the knifing (London is a city where if someone gets knifed at 2 in the morning on a Sunday it makes the news) to the shop.
The paper said that the staff and security people disappeared - before the opening.
Sure the "rioters" were idiots, but the law and common sense demands that stuff be idiot-proof, and this wasn't.
As perhaps the biggest lefty here, I don't quite agree with you or Steiner. Somewhere in the middle. You can certainly call the customers fools or idiots, and while this appears correct, its a superficial analysis. I hold with the leftist position that people that people are moldable and stupidity is produced, so there are causal reasons behind people's behavior which caused the Ikea rampage. That said, Steiner is also being superficial, believing the causal factors to be the store itself. That's improbable. One needs to looks at a larger temporality than that.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 11:13 AM
The belief that physical enviroment is destiny is not leftist. Some people are just more affected by their physical enviroment than others. It is unsuprising that one of these people ends-up editor of the home and garden section of a newspaper.
Her inablity or lack of desire to think through the economics of the situation does seem characteristic of a certain type of leftist. The fact that Ikea's furniture is inexpensive and they have poor customer service isn't some kind of coincidence.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 12:04 PM
I am not sure I agree with any of the analysis so far offered. But I do know this: the Center is so far right in the United States that the lefties you know may in fact, be lefties only because they are left of the center--in a sort of a Socialist a la Clinton (Was Clinton to the left of anything?). But, whether they are true leftist (as in believing in the principles of Socialism and such... I am not sure there are many around here in the US.
Posted by Fuel | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 12:34 PM
Was Clinton to the left of anything?
He was to the left of the 1990s Republican Party, I suppose, but he was absolutely on the rightmost fringe of the Democratic Party. That the right wing holds up either Clinton as some sort of liberal avatar only proves that they are so far to the right now that they have lost all sense of perspective when it comes to any reasonable political spectrum.
Hell, they keep holding up Chirac as a leftist, which would make a Frenchman of any political stripe spray Bordeaux through his nose.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 12:53 PM
This discussion looks ripe to be diverted to the age-old question: Why does everyone think Attila the Hun was right-wing? I mean, they say "slightly right wing of Attila the Hun," but is there any real reason to think that Attila was more conservative than, say, Genghis Khan?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 12:56 PM
This is a cultural thing, and it is not the author who's culture differs from ours. No, the stores differ from ours.
I was lucky enough to live in England for about six months about 10 years ago, about 100 miles from London.
We have absolutely no idea how *wonderful* our 'shopping experience' is here and how totally CRAPPY it is there.
I coulda slugged somebody more than once.
For example, everybody shops on Saturday because the shops are closed evenings and Sunday. The grocery store is always packed like it is Thanksgiving. You can't get down the aisles because they are jammed with carts, called trolleys, that have all four wheels swiveled so you can't hardly steer the darn thing. NOBODY on the staff will show you where anything is. None of this "follow me to the milk" stuff.
You then wait in a huge line to checkout, and when you get there some bitter old crone is sitting there scowling. All the checkers were bitter old crones. I'm not sure what English teenagers do, but they sure don't work retail. You bag your own stuff.
One Saturday my wife wanted a pair of shoes. We drove to a department store where there was no parking, so I drove around the block while she ran in to get some. I waitied for two hours. When she came out she was fuming. She had to take a number, wait two hours and then find out they didn't have the shoes she wanted in her size, and they had no idea if they would ever get them in. She couldn't order them and pick them up later. They couldn't check around to other stores in the chain.
There is a reason Brits are willing to fly for 12 hours, spend three days shopping at the Mall of America, and then fly back and pay duty on their purchases.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 1:02 PM
No, I think it is. I have gotten to meet quite a few hard core southern conservatives, and also read their opinions in my school newspaper. So, while I won't claim that this is the intellectualist conservative position, there are many college conservatives who subscribe to a philosophy of near-total personal responsibility. They somehow square this with also complaining about a corrupt society. It seems they think that a morally corrupt neighborhood or whatever is undesirably, yet not really a mitigating factor on responsibility. They always seem to think there are outs or options for someone born into a morally corrupt place.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 1:05 PM
This should have been quoted above my post:
The belief that physical enviroment is destiny is not leftist.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 1:05 PM
Sounds like arsenal wasn't playing that night and the lads got dragged to the store instead.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 1:09 PM
I remember a similar incident at Walmart a couple of years ago right around the holidays. If I remember correctly, Walmart was selling a DVD for some ridiculously low price, a rather large crowd had lined up at the door before the store opened and some woman literally got stampeded over when they opened and had to be taken to the hospital.
I have to agree with Ogged on this one. The people who rioted were a bunch of idiots in this case. I think it's a rather sad statement on the level of personal accountability that we hold people to nowadays when arguments like that are made. It's the same mentality that allows people to sue McDonalds for making them fat.
Posted by D | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 2:15 PM
Which raises the most important question of all: when people sue McDonald's, how do they prove that they've been eating there? Subpeona the cashiers? Produce all the receipts they've kept? I'm kind of serious.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 2:19 PM
D, you remember version 1 correctly. When the news started looking into the woman who got trampled and sued, they discovered she had quite a long history of getting trampled at Wal-Mart and suing.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 2:26 PM
Ahem.
Only a fool would think Mob Psychology affects only idiots.
I know it makes us all feel smug and superior and everything but we all have the potential.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 2:44 PM
Only a fool would think Mob Psychology affects only idiots.
Oh, I agree with you there, Tripp, but only a fool would show up at IKEA on the day it opens.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 2:49 PM
Apostropher,
Wow. Talk about bad luck. The odds of that happening must be....
Tripp,
True enough but only a fool would not hold them responsible for rioting.
Ogged,
I would look for evidence of MickeyD's special sauce on their clothing.
Posted by D | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 4:15 PM
Apostropher,
How funny would it be if she wasn't scamming Walmart and those were all legitimate claims?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 4:18 PM
Ogged, c'mon, there have been millions of store openings, few have resulted in violence.
D, I'm not sure what's the relationship between a mob frenzy and suing McDonald's for money, but the point I'm making is that if someone does something stupid, or, even better, when a lot of people do the same stupid thing, you can say, "they just should know better!!" which isn't very helpful and won't go anywhere towards preventing a repeat performance, or you can admit we're not all hyper-intelligent rational actors possessing all the prequisite knowledge we need to make good decisions, and, further, we imitate each other. If you take that line, which involves at least mitigating a finger-pointing attitude, you can work towards an understanding of what makes people act in certain ways.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 4:20 PM
Well, I guess it would be kinda funny, Ogged. But not really "ha ha" funny.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 4:38 PM
Hey, I didn't say it!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 4:40 PM
Wow. My brain stuck an entire non-existent word in the 'posted by' slot there. Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop shooting heroin.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 5:26 PM
When it comes to stopping shooting heroin, isn't any day the wrong day?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 5:59 PM
Didn't Emile Zola write a book about this kind of shopping, back in those supposedly innocent days before society degenerated?
Posted by aj | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 8:55 PM
Have you ever shopped in Germany? The customer is the enemy because he or she may shuffle the items in the displays, inviting the ire of clerks who seem to be there only to guard the geometric perfection with which the merchandise is arranged. Just try asking where something is, and see if anyone even acknowledges your presence. And don't even try joking with the cashier - their scowl will flip from mere disdain to active hostility.
To be fair, I did get decent service in the Galleries Lafayette in Berlin and in a store in Munich where they actually honored the price on the tag when it rang up higher at the register (an amazing thing to get a German cashier to admit the computer is wrong).
I had the misfortune of being in the main shopping district of Cologne on what they called the "longest Saturday" - the day when the stores stayed open latest all year (10 PM I think) and they were all having sales. It was like the crowded planet on Star Trek, only with sausages, Turkish Gyros (usually called Doener Kebab), and little cylindrical glasses of the local (delectable) beer called Koelsch. I didn't see any rioting, though. I think they save that for political events.
Posted by LarryB | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 10:01 PM
Michael,
While I agree with you that the rioting itself may have deeper underlying causes than the rioter's "idiocy", I thought that the point of the article was about accountability, i.e, should IKEA be the ones held responsible for the rioting instead of the rioters themselves. In other words, was IKEA's environment such that it inevitably forced people into a riot. The fact that, as you say, "there have been millions of store openings," that haven't resulted in violence would indicate that's just not true. My point then, is that the people who rioted are ultimately responsible for their behavior and not simply victims of their environment. Or, to put it another way, they are influenced but not ultimately determined by their environment.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 10:40 PM
Ooops forgot to reference myself in the above comment.
Posted by D | Link to this comment | 02-10-05 10:40 PM
D,
Certainly I don't think Ikea is accountable, so we're in agreement there!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-11-05 12:48 AM
Larry, in fact I've been in that very market in Cologne, but I didn't try to buy anything. I suspect, however, that it wouldn't have gone well, on any day.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 02-11-05 2:00 AM
LarryB,
Thanks for backing me up about the general awfulness of some European shopping.
And would only an idiot show up at IKEA on opening day?
Or at Wal-Mart when a special sale is on?
How sneeringly lovely it is to degrade the idiots or perhaps the lower classes (dare I say the colored?) who are idiotic enough to show up at a special sale so they might get their kid a DVD for Christmas.
Why, all of us have the good sense to earn enough money so we can stay home and shop later, far from the hoi polloi. Rather.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 02-11-05 8:18 AM
Damn. I was hoping no one would bring up the fact that they had a massive sale on the first day. That's a bit of a problem for the "idiots" line, I admit. (Though I don't think "colored" has anything to do with it, honestly.) But, I didn't grow up in a household where money was never a problem, and I still find myself sneering--class is how you act, no? So cheap DVD player or no, you might not be hoi polloi before you get in line, but once you do, well...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 02-11-05 8:54 AM
I'd never even heard of IKEA until I saw Fight Club (where it's held up as the prototype of sheep-ish consumerism).
I had a real crisis of conscience when I finally went to one and loved it...
Posted by rufus | Link to this comment | 02-11-05 3:25 PM
It's a Spurs area, not Arsenal.
They opened the store at midnight, and had been advertising on the radio the whole day that there would be really big bargains available from midnight to 3 a.m.
Although it was a huge store there was nowhere near enough parking for those who turned up.
Er, did I say it opened at midnight, Saturday night? Just after the pubs shut.
There has been no information linking the knifing (London is a city where if someone gets knifed at 2 in the morning on a Sunday it makes the news) to the shop.
The paper said that the staff and security people disappeared - before the opening.
Sure the "rioters" were idiots, but the law and common sense demands that stuff be idiot-proof, and this wasn't.
Posted by dave heasman | Link to this comment | 02-14-05 9:47 AM