James A.
Yelp
This is a review of the IKEA cafeteria.
On Friday April 5, 2024 my wife and I, and our two kids, visited the IKEA in Midtown Atlanta to get some lunch and look for a desk. We reached the cafeteria area at noon sharp. There were 8-10 people in line in front of us.
There was a single woman serving customers their lunch plates. She was working very diligently and with a smile, and did not hesitate once to take care of customers. She quickly ran to and from the ovens to replenish the food she was serving. This lady was a rock star, but she could not keep up with the onslaught of hungry customers alone.
Meanwhile, we watched another woman moving sloth-like in back, slowly preparing salads that they didn't need at the moment (there were already several salads in the self-serve counter), while 2-3 other women were standing around the stations where you return dirty dishes and silverware, acting like they were off duty. And a single cashier sat idle at the register, waiting for customers to come away from the serving counter to pay for their meals. Still another woman walked back and forth from one of the return stations to the cashier--not to help, but to make social calls.
It took us more than twenty minutes to get our food, and when we reached the silverware counter there were no forks. I got the attention of the woman making salads and told her we needed forks. She responded, slothlike, "well we gon get someone to get some more." And then she went back to making her salads, slothlike. So I got the attention of another woman, who went behind the counter and told one of the men working there, and he got forks and put out on the silverware counter.
We sat down and ate our meals. I had their signature meatball plate, my wife had their salmon plate, and our kids also had salmon and salad. The meatballs were room temperature and "slimy", and my wife's salmon was dry and overcooked. The vegetables were bland, as were the mashed potatoes. Only the salads were acceptable.
We watched as people lined up for lunch and the line grew, extending farther and farther into the store, while that sole woman at the serving counter continued to serve customers diligently and the 6-8 other people "working" in the area sat idle or did their tasks instead of coming to help that person.
When we put our dirty dishes in the return station we saw that there were already dozens of trays and plates sitting there. The sloths standing by the stations earlier weren't doing a thing to move these items back to the kitchen, and keep the area clean and moving to ensure clean plates and silverware for new customers.
Earlier when we were paying for our meals, the worker who came to make social calls to our cashier said that their manager was in a meeting. At noon, on a Friday.
Since COVID we've all seen places short-handed and in many cases this is a real problem. That is NOT the problem here. The problem here is one of management and leadership, and hiring people who have no respect for leadership, for customers, for anyone besides their self. If I were the manager of the cafeteria here I would fire everyone there but the one woman who actually did her job, hire a new group of people and set the expectation that EVERYONE owns the success of the cafeteria, and sitting around at your station while another people is working themselves to death just because it's "not my job" is a reason for termination.