A SAR-ry story: Not for I-KEAs

Some Assembly Required — the lies of Ikea and beyond: "Some Assembly Required, it says.
This is one of those horrible euphemisms of modern life. Some Assembly Required is like Minor Side Effects Include: Drowsiness, Dizziness, Sudden Tendency To Start Sleep-Eating and Sleep-Operating Machinery and Sleep-Driving, Death. It’s not an oxymoron like Facebook Privacy or an outright lie like Fun Size, but it comes close. Some Assembly Required packs all the devious You Are Not Getting The Fun You Expected of “Baggage Carousel” into three devious words.
There was a time, I realize, when not only did we have to build all furniture ourselves, but we had to do so without any instructions. But usually you could get out of having to assemble any furniture by quietly dying of smallpox. That was a time when your furniture was assembled by a guy called a cabinetmaker, a guy whose entire trade was to assemble beautiful furniture. "