Are you as handy with privacy certs as you are with a screwdriver? Ikea has the perfect vacancy Scandi furniture emporium Ikea is seeking privacy specialists to join its office in Malmö, Sweden. The company – which famously outsources collection, delivery, assembly and disposal of its products to customers – is calling for applicants who want to "join us on a journey where the road is truly more important than the …
I'd love to apply, but I am in the middle of a study of the tribes formed by previously lost Ikea shoppers and I have credible evidence that the shelving department have advanced as far as the development of Slood*. They should get to GDPR some time around the middle of next Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest, at which point there may be several promising candidates.
*Slood for the uneducated: https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Slood
there should be an international bullshitter standard, say, in Paris, and a yearly World's Bullshitter Award, ceremony, say, in Stockhold (yeah, I know, but close enough). Ladies & Gentlemen, I present you this year's first contender, IKEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA....
From observation the newbies who might make the junior role will be impressed. Those who've been round the block enough times to wualify for the senior role will know the warning signs when they see them. However, it's very considerate of IKEA to put up the "Danger, Wanker Management" signs so obviously.
I work there and in that office. It's a PIA right now due to the growing pains. The digital dept is recruiting new staff left right and centre. They're looking to expand to two new office locations nearby to relieve pressure. There's also offices in Helsingborg and, of course, Älmhult.
Before the latest reorg, the Malmö office was really pleasant space to work in. These days, it's stuffed to the gills and every available space has been turned in to desk areas. And no, we don't assemble the office furniture ourselves. The facility staff handle that. ;)
That said, I enjoy my work there and the support employment in Sweden offers. It's a diverse group of persons and exciting challenges to work on.
I recently spent 14 months working for them in Helsingborg and loved every minute. The biggest problem with them at the moment is that they have too much money so their project control is very slack.
I'm hoping to be working for them again, probably after April 2020 when HMRC crushes contracting in the UK. It'll probably be in Malmo, an even easier commute than Helsingborg.
I recall an organisation who set up shop in Malmö in an old, rather grand building, and asked a contractor to make a door opening in a wall so a room had two exits instead of one.
Contractor made a test drilling, and quoted for a few days work. Which turned out to be somewhat of an underestimate.
The building in question was a former bank, and it turned out that the one-entry room had been a safe room before. The aforementioned contractor had managed to do his test drilling in a spot where all the fun stuff in the wall wasn't conspiring to keep him out, and boy, did the poor guy discover that when he tried to make that doorway. He managed, though - it just took a LOT longer..
Anyway, I tend to have an eye for architecture but the Turning Torso tower in Malmö is one of the most headache inducing constructions I've ever looked at, and I spent quite some time trying to get to grips with the angles in it. Trust me, it's a swine to make sense of - as soon as you think you have found a grip on it you move but a centimeter and it's gone. Maddening, but thus also quite amusing.
"The building in question was a former bank"
I had to run a short cable in a district (minor) court building that used to be a bank. Nobody told me it used to be a bank. I ruined 1, 2, 3, 4 drill bits then burned out my electric hand drill. We were a council though and had heavy equipment. We got in two guys with a drill up to my chest, and they couldn't get through it either.
Then it occurred to me we could just run the cable under the door against regulations, and we went that way.
I have so much respect for bank burglars. If you can get through an armoured wall without explosives then you kind of deserve whatever is behind it. That is a serious engineering challenge requiring specialist equipment.
You'd like the Hatton Garden guys then. That was quite impressive given first of all the path they had to follow to get access AND get the diamond drill in place.
What's more, 3 of the 4 were of pensionable age if such existed in the world of spectacular heists. They even got themselves a "forensics for dummies" book.
Still, they were caught which I found even more impressive.
The instructions for the last thing I assembled from IKEA had a very stern picture of an electric screwdriver with a cross through it. Some of those apparently solid slabs have been value-engineered to the point at which they can no longer tolerate a bit of extra torque.
I suspect that’s more for stupid people who have the thing at full speed and don’t turn the torque down... in the Ikea near me the staff use them for assembling the display furniture.
Easier to draw a picture saying no electric tools than translate “use at low speed and torque” into 20+ languages
The last things I assembled from IKEA - two identical corner desks for the grandkids - both had a component with half the holes drilled 180° out of alignment with the other half, presumably either a half turn missed in the programming or an extra one inserted. One duff desk might have been an accident, two suggests a whole batch were out. That's the thing about consistency based quality - you swap the occasional rogue error for a job-lot of junk.
"The last things I assembled from IKEA - two identical corner desks for the grandkids - both had a component with half the holes drilled 180° out of alignment with the other half, presumably either a half turn missed in the programming or an extra one inserted. One duff desk might have been an accident, two suggests a whole batch were out. That's the thing about consistency based quality - you swap the occasional rogue error for a job-lot of junk."
I will say that my one experience with a bad IKEA kit was saved by excellent customer service. I drove the 70 miles each way to and from the closest IKEA (Schaumburg, IL, USA) and began assembly when I found that the base of this display cabinet had holes drilled that did not match up, and could not be assembled. I put the half-assembled kit in the back of my pickup truck and drove back down there. intending to unload my irritation on the first person available. Customer Service person came out to the truck, verified that the piece was incorrectly made, hauled it into the store, exchanged for a new kit, which we part assembled to verify that it was made correctly, AND gave me a gift certificate equal in price to a full tank of gas for the old truck, for my pains. Loaded the now mostly-assembled case into the truck, and took it back to my store in Wisconsin, where it held up very well for years, until I was moving store and sold it for what I had paid for it. Yes, I still buy from them.
Sometimes it's the easiest way to set up in a new place. Have a look at the place and take some measurements, and then take a van to the nearest one and load up. Last time I did it I dragged some 250kg worth of materials out of there.
I'm OK with putting it together, as a kid I used to play with Lego™ and this is just the adult version of it. You have a look at the instructions and figure out the logic and sequence of assembly (I found that there are sometimes more efficient or easier ways than IKEA prescribes) and especially in volume it's then more a matter of making sure you have enough space and some trays to hold the small parts. And have hex as well as pozi bits for the electric screwdriver..
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