There is, somewhere in the IKEA customer service universe, a very important note about me.

I know this because I was assured that my note had been “prioritized.”

What I did not have was a bed.

Let me explain.

I flew to Miami to help my son settle into his new apartment. Like many parents dropping a kid off at a new place, I had mentally mapped out the few days I would be there. We would unpack. We would build furniture. We would make multiple trips to stores because we would inevitably forget things. And somewhere in between, I would sleep.

The sleeping part depended on a queen-sized bed and frame we had ordered from IKEA, along with a dresser.

The order totaled more than $800.

My son had arranged to sleep elsewhere while I was visiting, and I would use his new bed. We would build it together after I arrived. It was a perfectly reasonable plan.

It even accounted for the fact that we would be traveling on delivery day.

When placing the order, IKEA offered an option that said:

“Leave order at doorstep if I am not home.”

We selected it.

IKEA’s explanation of that option was even more specific. The delivery provider would unload the items and leave them in a safe place outside the home or building. If you lived in an apartment or condo with a front desk, IKEA explained, the items would be dropped off there.

My son lives in an apartment building.

It has a front desk.

Excellent.

We got on our plane.

Shortly before 3 PM, while my son was somewhere in the sky, the delivery person called him to ask for his apartment number.

He didn’t answer.

Again, airplane.

So the delivery person left.

With the bed.

This is where my relationship with IKEA customer service began.

When we landed, I called almost immediately. The first explanation I received was that someone needed to sign for the furniture.

I explained that this couldn’t possibly be the reason, because IKEA had specifically given us the option to have the furniture delivered when we weren’t home.

Then came other explanations.

We weren’t home.

We didn’t answer the phone.

It was IKEA policy.

I kept returning to what seemed like a fairly obvious question.

If IKEA requires me to be home, answer my phone or sign for my furniture, why did IKEA offer me a delivery option called “Leave order at doorstep if I am not home”?

I could not get a meaningful answer.

What I did get was empty tongue-in-cheek apology after apology.

Eventually I reached another representative and explained the situation again. I explained that I had flown to Miami for three nights. I explained that the bed was supposed to be delivered that day. I explained that I was planning to sleep on said bed.

There was an extraordinarily simple solution to my problem.

Deliver the bed.

Instead, the conversation became increasingly surreal.

The representative laughed several times during our call. I wasn’t quite sure what was funny. I was frustrated, certainly, but I wasn’t cursing at him or behaving abusively. I was trying to understand how IKEA could sell me one delivery arrangement and then blame me for relying on it.

At one point, he offered me a $100 IKEA credit.

I didn’t need $100 worth of future IKEA.

I needed my current IKEA.

Specifically, I needed approximately one bed’s worth of it.

I asked to speak with someone above him. He refused.

I continued trying to find some way to get the furniture delivered. He continued explaining why the situation was our fault.

Eventually, he hung up on me.

So I called IKEA again.

By now, I had entered that special dimension of customer service in which you are no longer entirely sure how long you have been on the phone or why you continue to believe that the next person will possess a magical button labeled SOLVE PROBLEM.

The connection on my next call was so poor that communicating was difficult. There were many apologies. There was sympathy. There was, once again, no bed.

And then came the solution.

My note would be prioritized, but not the bed delivery.

I remember thinking: What note?

Where is this note?

Who is waiting for it?

What exactly happens when an IKEA note becomes a priority?

Does it move to the top of a digital pile? Does someone receive an alert? Is there a special department in Sweden filled with people urgently reading prioritized notes?

Most importantly, how does the note become a bed?

I had now spent roughly an hour and a half dealing with customer service.

I had been blamed, laughed at, transferred, apologized to, offered store credit, hung up on and finally bestowed with the honor of Priority Note Status.

Still no bed.

Because IKEA couldn’t arrange another delivery that day, and apparently couldn’t guarantee one the next day either, I was now looking at paying for a hotel room for at least part of a three-night trip during which I had already arranged a perfectly good place to sleep.

Then we got to the apartment.

And the story somehow became even more absurd.

My son’s roommate’s parents were there.

They had been there during the delivery window.

The doorman had known where my son’s apartment was.

Even better, the other parents had IKEA furniture being delivered too. They told us that they had been willing to accept my son’s IKEA delivery and sign for it.

In other words, people were upstairs.

There was a doorman downstairs.

There was a front desk.

There were people willing to accept the furniture.

And IKEA’s own order form explicitly said the furniture could be left when we weren’t home.

Yet the bed had been driven away because a passenger on an airplane didn’t answer his phone.

This is the part of the story that has stayed with me, especially as an entrepreneur.

Businesses make mistakes. Delivery people make mistakes. Websites contain imperfect instructions. Employees misunderstand policies. Things go sideways.

I don’t expect a company the size of IKEA to execute every transaction perfectly.

What I do expect is for customer service to mean something once the transaction goes wrong.

That was what surprised me most about this experience. I kept reaching people whose job was ostensibly customer service, yet nobody seemed capable of providing the one thing I actually needed: a solution.

There is a strange kind of corporate customer service that substitutes process for judgment.

The representative has apologized.

The complaint has been documented.

The customer has been offered a credit.

The note has been prioritized.

The boxes have been checked.

From the company’s perspective, something has happened.

From the customer’s perspective, nothing has.

I still didn’t have the thing I bought.

Running my own businesses has taught me that the moment when something goes wrong may be one of the most important interactions you’ll ever have with a customer.

People can be remarkably forgiving of mistakes when they feel that someone genuinely cares about fixing them.

What makes people furious is helplessness.

It’s explaining the same problem again and again while each person tells you why nothing can be done. It’s discovering that the people assigned to help customers have no apparent authority to actually help them. It’s being told that a policy says something different from the language sitting directly in front of you on the company’s own website.

And it’s especially infuriating when the company begins explaining why the problem it created is actually your fault.

There’s a lesson in here that I’m taking back to my own work.

When someone comes to me with a legitimate problem, I don’t want my first instinct to be: How do I explain our policy?

I want it to be: Is there a reasonable way I can fix this?

Sometimes there won’t be.

But sometimes the customer isn’t asking for anything complicated.

Sometimes she just wants the bed she ordered.

And no matter how highly you prioritize her note, she’s probably going to notice if she still doesn’t have it.