I believe that a large part of the system that allows corporations to be completely inhuman is the public, along with the people who are supposed to represent them, giving up on holding them accountable.

Being mad at some foreign countries for the hypocrisy and dishonesty of our OWN business system is not something I’m comfortable doing. I have enough reasons to resent SA without blaming them for the ills of our runaway capitalist system. I can’t in good faith expect Saudi Arabia to utterly change their system while we stare idly at our own messes.

The company holds no values other than its primary fiduciary duty.

Why should they do otherwise when they have people like you to act as apologists for them?

Don’t get me wrong – I hate that. It’s inhuman. Capitalism sucks. But for heaven’s sake, whatever you do don’t delude yourself that promises of good behaviour count for anything in capitalism or politics.

I refuse to hate the corporations. I hate the system that makes them all fundamentally the same.

Keep in mind that no country is perfect. In most modern democracies people under the age of 18 aren’t allowed to vote. In most places gay people aren’t allowed to marry and get the same benefits as straight folks. US has never had an openly atheist president, or a woman president for that matter.

The point is that SA society has its rules and Ikea conforms to those rules. That’s not a Saudi idea, that’s a worldwide rule for businesses. In China you don’t speak about Tiananmen Square, in US you don’t show tits or say that it’s not the best country in the world, in SA you don’t show feet or women’s skin, in Poland you don’t desecrate a cross, in Italy you don’t say bad things about the president, in Germany you don’t show any Nazi-related imagery. None of those limitations are Ikea’s fault.

I just wish we could get back to buying furniture and eating sandwiches without having to research the companies’ opinions on different political topics…

Lots of people do that. It’s called skating on privilege.

(BTW, I’m not denying that choosing where we spend our money is a complex topic or that you may have actual objections to IKEA’s aesthetic, I just hear a lot of ‘Product X is rubbish because the company has a poor policy on Y’)

Oh yeah? I see a lot of principles and standards here:

http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_CA/the_ikea_story/people_and_the_environment/women_change_the_world.html

http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_GB/about_ikea/our_responsibility/partnerships/index.html

http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/about_ikea/the_ikea_way/swedish_heritage/index.html

If a company goes out of its way to shine sunlight up my ass, the least I’m going to do is hold them to their word. Standards DO exist. Even corporations aren’t supposed to misrepresent their products or ethos (even though most do) just to make a sale.

BTW, I am already angry at Saudi Arabia, but that’s completely beside the point: I fail to remember a single assurance from Saudi Arabia that they would treat their citizens as human beings. IKEA on the other hand (see links above)…

As others have suggested, if you want to be mad, be mad at Saudi culture.

 would have solved everything, just leave out the free world’s section when you send it to places like that “Nope, no oogling American women’s faces, this aint the Sear’s bra and panties sale!”

Me, I’m an interesting mix of left and right, but Romney is the biggest red flag i have seen since Palin, further evidence that the republican party is loosing its marbles (or just refusing to take this seriously at all.)

I’d vote for Obama every day of the week and twice on Sundays (I’ve got nothing else to do on Sundays.)

 Frankly, joking or not, my politics should have no bearing on the fact that people are whining and complaining about Ikea’s actions when the focus here should be on Saudi Arabia’s actions. Joking or not, I’m insulted.

Continuing this doesn’t fix anything, and makes the struggle for women in Saudi Arabia look trivial or comical.

You cannot vilify a company for doing what they can to attract customers. You can vilify a country for being evil.

Look at it this way: Ikea didn’t give money to anti-gay organizations in the USA. There’s something to be outraged about.

(Updating the post with pictures since I first read it honestly makes this even more comical. Its funny. Haha. now you’ve turned a serious human rights issue into a photoshop joke.)

To everyone that’s replied: Yes, they handled it poorly. Now let that be something to spark more debate, contact someone in your government, make this into a big thing about Saudi Arabia, pressure the UN to pressure them. But lay off Ikea.

Heck, it wasn’t even the main company, the Saudi Arabia branch is a franchisee that might have just done it without consulting the people upstairs.

Sheesh, I don’t even like their furniture.

Kind of like how American Indians aren’t actually from India.

To be fair, I’m also not a fan of Ikea’s corporate practices in other areas. You left out that they also got burned over the whole “sustainable wood” thing–if you recall, they got caught using non-rainforest-safe wood for a bunch of items and they blamed “downstream providers.”  Come to think of it, that’s sort of the same excuse that Ikea is using now.  Ditto for all of their toys being “safe” and pimping the whole “if it’s in a Swedish store it must be up to Swedish standards” thing.  Living case in point:  My Mom picked up some blocks there, meant for children under 2.  When she got home with them, they were made in Thailand and had been painted with who-knows-what; no notices on the package RE lead-free paint, etc.  A few days later, the “Ikea toy story” broke on the news, much to our non-surprise.  FWIW, she kept the blocks to use as props for her science class but they didn’t go to the original kiddies as intended.

Thanks for the backup.  I never worked anyplace–or worked WITH anyplace–that didn’t adhere to a style guideline book like it was religion.  Everything from colors to spelling to font size.

On a sidenote, if you want to see a perfect working example of this, work on a Sesame-Street related project.  You never knew just how many regulations there are around Big Bird alone…