Miss Elsie Jefferson had an absolute knack for assembling IKEA furniture. Everything she assembled turned out wrong. When she bought a bed and put it together in her room, it somehow ended up taller than it was long and sloping at a rather uncomfortable angle. She bought a large bookcase, but when she was finished she had managed to put together three CD racks.

Even though the furniture never worked out, the prices were right, so she always came back. She purchased a set of kitchen drawers and wound up with a birdhouse, a mailbox, and a matryoshka doll of increasingly small Swedes. All with a simple Allen wrench.

The simpler the construction, the wilder her results. When she brought home a coathook, by the time she was finished screwing it into the wall it was a television. She bought a simple chair — just four screws! — and assembled it in the driveway, hoping for a car. She wound up with a chrome engine, pumping out energy with no discernible fuel.

The Department of Defense came and took it away. Then they came back and took Elsie away. A week later, the DoD placed a standing order with IKEA.