Yesterday, five large department stores in the towns of Lindsay and Whitby, Ontario, Canada had to temporarily stop ringing up customers because every item scanned at the register showed up as Mr. Potato Head.

"A point of sale downloading error caused item names to appear incorrectly," said Cathy Kurzbock, manager of external communications for department store chain Canadian Tire. "It has since been corrected and the stores are operating normally."

Apparently, they don't suspect this was a prank but, well, I wouldn't be so sure.

(MyKwartha.com) Read the rest

In the 1990s, Marc Newsom designed the Apple retail store concept as imagined in this presentation video by Me Company. Read the rest

In Richmond Heights, Missouri, a woman says she visited a mattress store to test out the beds, finding one so comfortable that she fell asleep. As she snoozed apparently unnoticed, the employees closed the shop for the night. Police were called in the morning. From the St Louis Post-Dispatch:

"That's honestly the best mattress endorsement we've ever heard," the police department posted on social media Friday.

The store did not want to press charges for trespassing so officers escorted the well-rested customer out of the business, which police declined to name.

image: "Shifman Mattress and Boxspring set" by Yahquinn (CC BY-SA 3.0) Read the rest

This weekend, police were called to an Ikea store in Glasgow, Scotland when employees learned that thousands of people had signed up on Facebook to play an unauthorized game of hide-and-seek in the maze-like building. According to The Scotsman, "groups of youths who looked like they were only there for the game were turned away from the shop.
" From The Scotsman:

The trend for using Ikea’s giant warehouses for games began in Europe a few years ago - and has seen people hiding in fridges, under beds and in the firm’s big blue shopping bags.

..

However in 2015, IKEA was forced to impose a ban because the events were getting out of control.



Citing health and safety a spokesman explained: ‘We need to make sure people are safe, and that’s hard if we don’t know where they are.’



Rob Cooper, IKEA Glasgow Store Manager said: “The safety of our customers and co-workers is always our highest priority. We were aware of an unofficial Hide and Seek Facebook event being organised to take place at our store today and have been working with the local police for support.



“While we appreciate playing games in one of our stores may be appealing to some, we do not allow this kind of activity to take place to ensure we are offering a safe environment and relaxed shopping experience for our customers.”

"Police called to Scottish IKEA after thousands sign up for hide and seek" (The Scotsman)

image: Google Maps Read the rest

At Medium, Robin Sloan writes an appreciation of Nerdhaven, the archetypal shop in Everytown "catering to comic book readers, the D&D players, the gatherers-of-Magic." Read the rest