I have to say I have a soft spot for Ikea. Several years ago I visited one in very northern France (can’t remember exactly where), but it was on a day trip from Belgium.
I did the usual thing, wandered around the two miles of furniture, bounced up and down on a couple of chairs and beds, bought a towel rack or something equally useless and left. Back in my car I realised that my phone was missing from my back pocket..... I rushed back into the store and hurriedly retraced my steps, all two miles of them, but nothing.
On the way out I spied a customer service desk and thought, “what the hell, I’ve got nothing to lose” and approached the nice young people standing there.
I said, struggling with 45 year old O level French, “j’ai perdu un err,, telephone”
“Ah oui Monsieur, une mobile! Rouge, un Motorola?”
It turned out that in my enthusiastic jumping on beds and chairs, my phone had escaped my pocket, but had been picked up by an honest Frenchman. To his eternal credit he hadn’t nicked it (as sadly most people, both English and French, might have done) but had gone through my address book, avoided the tarts and ladyboys, and called my mum, who doesn’t speak a single word of French. She almost wet herself with fear thinking he was a French copper and I was currently bleeding out at a Gallic RTA, but eventually got the picture, but couldn’t, because of the language barrier give an address or anything.
Anyway, Monsieur LeDecentChap then did the only thing left to a truly honest fellow and handed the phone into the Customer Services Counter, from where I collected it. Unfortunately he didn’t leave any forwarding details so I was unable in any way to thank him.
But I’m grateful, and it somehow, in some small way, made up for the fact that I had recently been robbed in France of 300 euros, then 500 euros and then finally 7000 euros. And I wasn’t an easy target, always chaining things down in cars and coaches.
After the last and biggest theft, I went back to the same area, with a loaded rucksack, primed with something that
@dingerr might recognise, waited hidden, and came within minutes of causing mayhem in a little white Clio 6023ZH59. I did however report them to the police who were next to useless, but who left the front office long enough for me to dash around the counter a get the registered address of that car.
I was at the address (in Lille) the same afternoon.
But I’ve probably been offthread long enough.