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[A recent email exchange about a planned visit to the local Ikea store...]
-----Original Message-----
>From: Alexandra
>Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 2:49 PM
>To: Andy
>Subject: RE: meetin'
we know exactly what we need to pick up at Ikea... so we will not, I refuse to be, there more than 20 minutes... so yes... dinner sounds doable...
-----Original Message-----
>From: Gray
>Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 3:21 PM
>To: Alexandra
>Subject: RE: meetin'
A 20 minute Ikea run? Is such a thing possible? I'm skeptical. This would turn the whole shopping community upside-down.
Not to be confused with the OSH Certain Uncertainty factor, where OSH is guaranteed to be out of stock of at least one item on your list, so if you go there looking for one thing you'll come away empty-handed.
In Ikea's case, breaking the 20-minute barrier appears possible if you overlook the Ikea Moron-Density (IMD) factor. Now, the IMD is an average, and there certainly are concentrations of higher and lower IMD throughout the store. Success depends on interacting with as few people as possible, though it should be noted that this merely increases the variance (V) and puts you at the mercy of the specific IMD of the areas where you have to interact.
If you know exactly where your item is, are quick on your feet, and manage to avoid floor staff interaction entirely, you could reduce your interactions to just the checkout area.
Suprisingly, the general floor staff's very low coefficient of Helpfulness (cH) may actually work in your favor. Normally, attempting to interact with floor staff would leave you more confused than when you started, because of the low cH. But since customer avoidance seems to go hand-in-hand with low cH, this may result in you being able to eliminate the effect of the IMD of the floor area.
Thus limiting your IMD exposure to just the checkout area. But here's where nature pulls its dirty trick. You inevitably must factor in two IMD figures -- staff Moron Density (sMD) and customer Moron Density (cMD). This can often be minimized by choosing the shortest line--but again this merely reduces the variance (V) and does not guarantee you won't be stuck behind someone who left their brain in their sunday pants.
A word of warning: If you have to deal with Customer Service, where the time-dilation approaches Andrea's Constant (a) and cH approaches singularity, then IMD can effectively no longer be treated as an average but must be assumed at 1.00, then, well let's just say "bring a sandwich."
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