Today's Fun with British Culture Moment

The title alone with probably bring both people who read this to go "snotty Yank, who are you to talk about the Brits?" Relax, I love the Brits - wonderful sense of irony and all that. But I especially love their quirky culture that is modern and convenient on the surface, but if you scratch a bit you find everyone just really wants to go back to life in the castle on the wold where you had to churn your own butter. Having come from NYC, where I was born and raised in that uniquely American/New Yorker vantage point of having absolutely anything you want delivered right to your doorstep in the wee hours of the morning, I am the first to acknowledge that my sense of the term "convenient" is a tad skewed. But the Brits do seem to tak eit a higher level, where not only is convenience not always assured but occasionally logic gives one the slip as well. Case in point: today, I am in Ikea trying to put my life together with cheap pine and brightly colored carpet. I need a bed but am not sure if I want just a mattress on the floor (ooh, how Zen of me) or a proper bed. I finally settle on a bed that's less than ideal (Ikea's fault, not Britain's) and is also more than I wanted to spend for a less-than-ideal bed. Oh well, I need a place to sleep. As I continue to walk through the store, I turn a corner and there it is - the bare-bones bed stand with room for storage underneath and hey, it's 25 quid! So if I hate it after I week, I can donate it and not feel too bad and buy something else. So I get in the queue and wait. And wait. And wait. Finally I get to the front of the line, show the guy the mattress I have already picked out and ask him to order me the frame. He orders it for me, and I'm in such a good mood about it that I throw in an overpriced mattress pad, just for fun. After the entire transaction is completed, the guy stops and goes "oh, but one thing."

"What? You're going to send someone to set it up for me?"
"No, but I just realized that I forgot to tell you that the mattress frame is 120cm, while your mattress is 140cm, so the mattress will hang over the frame."
"oh, that's no trouble, just swap out the mattress I selected for one that is 120cm."
"well, we don't make that size."
"ok. so who does? I'll just get it somewhere else."
"it's not actually made by anyone, it's not a standard size. I don't actually know any store that makes it."
"so...what are my options here?"
"well, other people buy the single mattress, which is 90cm, so you could do that."
"but what on earth do they do with the extra 30cm?"

And of course he had no answer, and that's the crux of it - you think you've found a workaround, a free lunch, an easier way of doing things, and then what really unfolds is something so bizarre and illogical that you have to just laugh and go "it's okay, I have no idea why I even asked."