"some assembly required," and other euphemisms Pt. 1

I've bought these FIRA chests from IKEA before. I already have two of them and I like them OK. I went to get another one yesterday afternoon. One significant change has been implemented into the whole FIRA ideology since I was last at IKEA though: they're flat-packed now, which is another way of saying...



[Not that anything flat-packed is impossible; I'm normally a flat-packed-wizard. But stay with me.]

The steps shown in the following photo, 13 and 14, are deceptive. "Put in a few nails! Flip the drawer around! It's fun!" is the approximate message the illustration conveys about steps 13 and 14.



This is a LIE. What this step actually means is, "each of the 5 drawers in this unit is assembled with 8 tiny nails! That's 40 nails altogether! It's really hard to nail them! Pre-drilled holes, with screws, would have worked a lot better, except we're IKEA and we're too CHEAP! So instead, you can spend 2 hours alternately nailing and swearing, not including the 15 minutes you will spent whimpering after you hit the flesh of one of your fingers with your hammer!" [No picture of this, mainly because the finger does not look nearly convincingly injured enough, even though it still REALLY HURTS] "Oh, and then when you finally DO get all the nails in, including 4 nails of your own because we won't give you enough nails to include the 8 that will get bent while you are nailing them, the drawers won't even go in smoothly because the design has failed to account for the added width of the nail-heads sticking out of the sides of each drawer!"

"Oh, and also, the little drawers of the NEW FIRA, unlike the old FIRA, have little holes on both sides so you can't use them for the project you thought you could use them for!"

This whole instruction booklet, in fact, could be summarized with

To: Jocelyn
From: IKEA

You just paid us $17 so we could SCREW YOU OVER