One of the things I hate about IKEA is all the virtue-signalling they're always doing recently - including a lot of bullshit about not encouraging over-consumption and all the usual 'planet-care' stuff - and yet excellent articles like this lay bare the lie.

I've worked on some IKEA advertising campaigns myself in the past, and have had colleagues and friends who work there, so I've heard enough 'back-story' to have other reasons to not like the company [0] but when caught in the seemingly endless labyrinth, I've behaved in exactly the way described in the article. Particularly annoying is how much extra stuff I buy just to avoid needing to come back some indeterminate time in the future.

[0] one example was their ruthless negotiating when encouraging developing countries to open production-factories in poor areas, so that local or national government would contribute large sums to the setup costs in return for an IKEA contract, which they would then just use until the contract expired and move on to the next desperate place.