Ikea Outlaws Hide-and-Seek In Its Stores

If you were planning on a game of hide-and-seek at Ikea this weekend, you might have to rethink your plans. Ikea has now banned thousands of people in the Netherlands from playing hide-and-seek in its stores.

Thanks to the powers of social media, 32,000 people had signed up for a massive hide-and-seek event in Ikea stores across Eindhoven, Amsterdam and Utrecht.

The company had previously given permission for the game in the summer of 2014 where over 500 patrons took part. One such patron recounted the day with fond memories: “We played hide-and-seek the whole day. It was really exhausting, but so much fun.”

People hid inside of fridges, under the blue and yellow shopping bags and in the clever storage space underneath beds.

But the store is not keen to host another such event. An Ikea spokesperson states, “It’s hard to control. We need to make sure people are safe in our stores and that’s hard to do if we don’t even know where they are.”

Okay, maybe Ikea doesn’t want 32,000 drunken people running around and hiding in their cabinets, but when was the last time anyone ever went to Ikea and didn’t buy anything?