My daughter needed a new desk so yesterday we headed out shopping. It all felt like a remarkably normal experience, apart from having a squirt of hand sanitizer on arrival, and everyone having to dance around each other in the shop to try to avoid getting too close. Warehouse stationery were very low on home office supplies, and wouldn’t let us buy an already made up desk, so it was flat pack and self assembly for us. How hard could it be, after successfully putting together the Swedish composter last month?
The box insinuated that it would take two people 50 minutes to assemble, but the little stick figures must have represented quite experienced punters, because it took us considerably longer. There were no written instructions this time, just a series of diagrams.
The daughter got the ball rolling while I was at work, so I was just there from half time to provide some experience, moral support and elbow grease. It was just like a giant 3D jigsaw puzzle, but with a phillips screwdriver and an allen key. Fun and challenging. The incentive was to get it done before Simon got home and would want to “help” or at least supervise.
There were twelve steps in the instructions, but we treated them as more of a loose suggestion rather than a rigid timeline. For example, at certain times we went backwards through some steps to revisit certain sections, prompted for example, by such comments as “how come we don’t have piece 6, but instead have this other similar looking piece that’s labeled 1?” and “why do we have these six little bits of doweling left?”. It did mean that we were much more familiar with the steps by the end, having done most of them more than once, so that if we ever have to build another desk we will be like those stick figures at the start, and get it done in double quick time.
The last step was literally “stand back and admire your new desk” (as far as we could tell) so it was very nice to get there with our mother/daughter relationship intact and minimal blood loss (an earring wasn’t a winner on the day – don’t ask). Very satisfying.
