Went shopping yesterday for a new mirror to  complete the renovation project my wife was doing to the upstairs bathroom. After we exhausted all our options (you won’t believe how hard it is to find a mirror the size/shape you want at the price you’re willing to pay), we ended up at the Ikea store in Burlington Ontario. BTW, have you ever paid attention to how you’re herded like livestock through one of these stores? Do you follow the arrows on the floor? YUP! Thought so. Do we really need to be shown what path  to travel in a store?

Back to my story about shopping for a mirror. Finally, not only did we find the exact mirror for the space, we also found the perfect little glass shelf to place below it when it gets installed in our bathroom. As we followed the arrows through the store to the area where you go pick-up the items you want to purchase we had to walk through the lighting (lamps -  all shapes and sizes, plus different bulbs etc) section. Our 13yr old pointed out “How come every light in this section is turned on?”.

Here we are in a heatwave in Southern Ontario for the past 3-4 weeks, where we’re being asked to conserve energy and the “BIG BOYS” at Ikea refuses to take off the freaking million-and-one lights they have on in their lighting department! Not only do they have to power all these lights, I’m sure it also means having to run their air-conditioning at a lower temp to cool down all the heat produced by these lights.

Maybe they didn’t get the memo to save on energy?

Only 30 minutes later we were at the Canadian Tire on Upper James in Hamilton and were VERY PLEASED to see, not only were all their lights and ceiling fans off in their lighting section, they also dimmed some of the lights in the store! WELL DONE! Ikea could learn from the great example you’re set!