It must have been at least 3 years ago, I had a good laugh. And at myself! You know the kind, when you can't stop for a good while and your whole body relaxes afterwards? It's the best. Laughing at oneself, I think, is a great sign of knowing oneself truly with a healthy dose of self-distance. Here is what happened:
I've just started a moving process into an apartment that I sublet from the Swedish social security office in the Stockholm area, since they are some kind of control-freaks and I have a student loan debt at our state collectors. So, part of the deal was getting it furnished with IKEA and pay an extra 50 USD per month for that. After exchanging most of the furniture to the colors and the style I prefer, within the same budget, I set out to assemble my two book cases. If you ever have bought something at IKEA, you probably know that part of why they became so affordable and successful, is indeed the fact that you receive flat boxes and have to assemble everything yourself. There is an instruction guide of course, including an illustrated cute fellow encouraging to call instead of banging on the furniture, would one have any questions. But, on the end of my white book cases, not mentioned or showed anywhere, there was a plastic patterned tape to protect the lacquer. Except, that I couldn't remove it as much as I tried. I became convinced that it had been lacquered on top.
Oh, no! What if I had to go back with both of them and all these pieces, which boxes I had already taken down to the recycle room? Immediately, I e-mailed their business customer service. What was I going to do?
Then I tried one more time.
And it went off, of course!
I e-mailed back to IKEA business customer service, who simply were happy it worked out. Then I finished assembling my tow book cases, with a little banging on them to fit the shelves together. It did take an extra hour to remove all the tape. But I had a really good laugh!