If you thought the confusion one confronts when assembling IKEA furniture was because the instructions are Swedish, this story should reassure you that they are just as baffling to Swedes as to the rest of the world. A family in Strömstad, Sweden, on the country's western coast, was assembling furniture at 1AM. The banging, or possibly the swearing, woke their baby, who began screaming. The neighbors, alarmed at the commotion, called the local police.
When officers arrived on the scene, they found the couple was engaged in that most Swedish of activities, assembling Ikea furniture, and that the crying did indeed come from an infant child. It remains unclear if the baby was simply crying in need of attention, or whether it too was frustrated by the complexity of the Ikea instructions.
The police understood completely. -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Susanna Wolff and Caldwell Tanner)
In fact, I've often toyed with the idea of standing by the side of the road with a cardboard sign that reads:
"WILL ASSEMBLE IKEA FURNITURE... FOR FUN!"