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German IKEA trip fracas assembles over trolley right of way
Rumours of meatball-based escalation unfounded
Weekend shoppers can now add trolley rage to the list of reasons to avoid their local IKEA store after an altercation in southeastern Germany ended up with a visit to hospital.
The fracas in Eching, on the outskirts of Munich, reported in Bavarian local papers Echinger Zeitung and Merkur began with an argument over which trolley had right of way and ended with police being called from nearby Neufahrn.
Two women, one aged 49 and another 18, began shouting and, allegedly, shoving each other, presumably after one failed to follow the arrows painted on the floor to the satisfaction of the other.
According to reports, which quoted Neufahrn police, the father of the 18-year-old then allegedly got involved. The older woman reportedly fell into a nearby shelf and is said to have injured her head.
With each party blaming the other for the incident, Bavarian cops are appealing for witnesses. One individual who apparently saw the whole sorry affair had scarpered before the fuzz arrived, leaving coppers unsure which version of events to believe.
Thankfully, it appears that the options of getting stabby with IKEA's stubby pencils or lobbing meatballs in a menacing fashion were not taken up during the Teutonic tantrum.
IKEA is infamous for being the place where relationships go to die, with stressed customers using the choice of finish on a Billy bookcase as a metaphor for everything that is wrong with their lives.
With a glorious future beckoning where robots will assemble the flatpack wonders, one can but hope those same robots might be pressed into doing the actual shopping as well, saving customers from the risk of being on the wrong end of an angry German trolley pusher. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
