5 ms·

IKEA's furniture comes with quirky instructions (no words, just graphical "sign" language, to avoid translating into tens of different languages). Women may be

by jazzyk 11y ago

IKEA's furniture comes with quirky instructions (no words, just graphical "sign" language, to avoid translating into tens of different languages). Women may be a bit more patient with figuring out what it means (more empathy, less testosterone)

wavefunction 11y ago
Empathy and testosterone have no defined relationship. Also, I don't know how anyone can argue that women have "less testosterone" than men, on average.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Females produce considerably (orders of magnitude) less testosterone (as well as other androgens) than males why is this surprising? http://www.healthline.com/health/low-testosterone/testosterone-levels-by-age#Prenatal2 http://www.healthline.com/health/low-testosterone/testostero... That said if it has any actual effect on Women varies, females would be in general much less sensitive to androgens to begin with (females have considerably less androgen receptors most of which will be present in the ovarian cells) so the effect on them will not be even close to the effect on males.
  - wavefunction 11y ago
    I had meant to say "I don't know how anyone can argue that women DON'T have less testosterone naturally than men, on average." Since some few women do have higher testosterone levels than some few men. Which I assume is why I am being voted down.
krisroadruck 11y ago
given that even with instructions the build quality of the womens furniture was still worse than the build quality of mens furniture without reading the instructions at all... I'd find it pretty hard to correlate patience and understanding to the women. The more likely conclusion is the construction already was pretty obvious to the men and the instructions clarified little extra information vs the women who barely understood how to construct the furniture and the instructions allowed them to get up to an almost passable construction after careful consideration.
krzyk 11y ago
IKEA instructions are not quirky, they are actually quite good. Compare them to intructions provided by to some no-name brand or any other smaller furniture provider - those are quirky (and low quality, photocopied paper).
- dogma1138 11y ago
  They are quite annoying but most of the no-brand Chinese furniture I ordered from amazon came with better instructions, the English wasn't stellar in some case but it had all the dimensions of every part including the angles in the instruction manual, they've also always used standard nuts and bolts and specified the exact type including diameter, torque and thread count. IKEA used non-standard parts in most cases they are "easier" to assemble in some cases since they are always designed to be pretty much with only a standard flathead/philips driver but GL getting replacement bolts if they missed one in the packaging or you lost one during assembly or disassembly, so yes I rather have a cheap photocopier paper with the measurements and part part numbers on it than the graphical IKEA instructions because I can just buy missing or broken parts or make them myself when needed rather than chug the entire thing into the garbage 3-4 years down the line. My grief with IKEA is that these days it's pretty much neither here nor there unless you are in luck and something is on one of their 80-90% discount sales then the cheap stuff will be of horrid quality sometimes being even worse than no-brand crap from Amazon or you nearest big-box while their expensive stuff is in the price range of the big department stores, furniture boutiques and depending on the country even custom made furniture (My parents have had several closets and a study custom made fitted and assembled for cheaper than IKEA's mid and upper range prices and it looked 100 times better). Not to mention that IKEA is just horrible when it comes to shipping and customer support compared to both Amazon and large department stores.

by jazzyk 11y ago

wavefunction 11y ago

Empathy and testosterone have no defined relationship. Also, I don't know how anyone can argue that women have "less testosterone" than men, on average.

dogma1138 11y ago
Females produce considerably (orders of magnitude) less testosterone (as well as other androgens) than males why is this surprising? http://www.healthline.com/health/low-testosterone/testosterone-levels-by-age#Prenatal2 http://www.healthline.com/health/low-testosterone/testostero... That said if it has any actual effect on Women varies, females would be in general much less sensitive to androgens to begin with (females have considerably less androgen receptors most of which will be present in the ovarian cells) so the effect on them will not be even close to the effect on males.
- wavefunction 11y ago
  I had meant to say "I don't know how anyone can argue that women DON'T have less testosterone naturally than men, on average." Since some few women do have higher testosterone levels than some few men. Which I assume is why I am being voted down.

krisroadruck 11y ago

given that even with instructions the build quality of the womens furniture was still worse than the build quality of mens furniture without reading the instructions at all... I'd find it pretty hard to correlate patience and understanding to the women. The more likely conclusion is the construction already was pretty obvious to the men and the instructions clarified little extra information vs the women who barely understood how to construct the furniture and the instructions allowed them to get up to an almost passable construction after careful consideration.

krzyk 11y ago

IKEA instructions are not quirky, they are actually quite good. Compare them to intructions provided by to some no-name brand or any other smaller furniture provider - those are quirky (and low quality, photocopied paper).

dogma1138 11y ago
They are quite annoying but most of the no-brand Chinese furniture I ordered from amazon came with better instructions, the English wasn't stellar in some case but it had all the dimensions of every part including the angles in the instruction manual, they've also always used standard nuts and bolts and specified the exact type including diameter, torque and thread count. IKEA used non-standard parts in most cases they are "easier" to assemble in some cases since they are always designed to be pretty much with only a standard flathead/philips driver but GL getting replacement bolts if they missed one in the packaging or you lost one during assembly or disassembly, so yes I rather have a cheap photocopier paper with the measurements and part part numbers on it than the graphical IKEA instructions because I can just buy missing or broken parts or make them myself when needed rather than chug the entire thing into the garbage 3-4 years down the line. My grief with IKEA is that these days it's pretty much neither here nor there unless you are in luck and something is on one of their 80-90% discount sales then the cheap stuff will be of horrid quality sometimes being even worse than no-brand crap from Amazon or you nearest big-box while their expensive stuff is in the price range of the big department stores, furniture boutiques and depending on the country even custom made furniture (My parents have had several closets and a study custom made fitted and assembled for cheaper than IKEA's mid and upper range prices and it looked 100 times better). Not to mention that IKEA is just horrible when it comes to shipping and customer support compared to both Amazon and large department stores.