Ikea Is Destroying Everyone's Dreams By Banning In-Store Hide-And-Seek

Budget furniture chain Ikea would like customers to realize it's a store, not a playground.

Ikea's management banned a series of organized hide-and-seek games scheduled to take place in several stores across the Netherlands, reaching out to organizers and asking them to find different venues.

According to a Huffington Post report, the stores' full-size mock-ups of living spaces and kitchens have become popular spots for amateur hide-and-seek competitions.

Thanks to a plethora of assembled furniture and nooks perfect for hiding, Dutch residents by the thousands planned to play in Ikea stores located in cities like Amsterdam and Eindhoven.

The Eindhoven store has put a stop to a planned May event with more than 30,000 RSVPs. Ikea management also took the same steps with an event scheduled for April in Amsterdam.

Ikea spokeswoman Martina Smedberg told Bloomberg News the games make for an unsafe customer environment, explaining,

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... It's hard to control.

ABC News reports the playground-like trend gained a new wave of followers this past summer, when blogger Elise De Rijck and her friends played a game of hide-and-seek in Ikea's Wilrijk, Belgium store as part of a bucket list to be completed before the woman's 30th birthday.

A spokeswoman from Ikea Belgium called the match "an exclusive, one-off thing."

Sorry, hide-and-seekers, but you'll have to find a different locale in which to play. Ikea staffers aren't just selling affordable futons, they're keeping an eye out for potential hiders.

Citations: Ikea Crushes The Dreams Of Thousands Of Hide-And-Seek Enthusiasts (Huffington Post)