For school project, students troop to Ikea & take 1,000 'free' pencils
They return pencils meant for shoppers & apologise. Store donates 200 to them
By Ng Tze Yong
May 10, 2008
IT sounds like a good bedtime story with a moral ending, but it is set in a real-life Ikea store.
The students wanted to use the pencils to make flags, like the ones shown here. TNP Picture: KELVIN CHNG
It's a story of one innocent mistake, red faces, and 1,000 pencils.
The characters: A Secondary 1 class from River Valley High School.
Their 'crime': Posing as Ikea customers and making away with 1,000 Ikea pencils, stuffed into their school bags one afternoon two months ago.
Shoplifters? Cheapskates? Ugly Singaporeans?
Don't shake your head yet. There was an honest motivation.
The students did the pencil heist for a school project.
For the school's International Understanding Day celebrations in March, every class had been assigned a country and asked to make a presentation.
Students were also encouraged to make souvenirs for schoolmates.
The class in question was assigned Italy. After a discussion, the students decided they were going to make little Italian flags to give away to others.
But what could they use as the flag masts?
Madam So Kah Lay, the school's vice-principal, said the students thought about using 'McDonald's straws' or ice-cream sticks at first, but 'they wanted to make something nice that people would keep'.
'So they decided to use pencils,' she said.
Where to find free pencils? The students went to Ikea.
It wasn't just because the pencils there, supplied for customers to scribble shopping-lists, were free.
The class in question - class Sec 1K - apparently had an inspiration for the choice.
Madam So said: 'They thought that since they were from '1K', they should go to 'Ik-ea'.'
One afternoon after class, a group of students in school uniforms trooped down to an Ikea store and picked up pencils from the plastic containers mounted on the store's walls.
No one stopped them.
Bags stuffed with about 1,000 pencils, the students went home.
But at night, they felt uneasy.
Was it shoplifting? But the pencils were free. Still...
The next morning in school, the students poured out their bounty in class.
Their teacher was 'horrified'.
Madam So related: 'The teacher scolded them. For the students, it confirmed that their actions were not right.'
After class, some representatives of the red-faced bunch returned to the Ikea store.
'They were quite certain Ikea would forgive them,' Madam So said.
At a counter, the students opened their bags and confessed their act to surprised Ikea staff members.
They apologised and asked if they could buy the pencils instead. The Ikea staff members replied that the pencils were not for sale.
Mr Lars Svensson, country marketing manager for Ikea Singapore, explained: 'The Ikea pencils are not part of the Ikea range and hence, we are unable to sell them. These shopping tools are provided for free to make it convenient for customers.'
But as a gesture of goodwill, the store donated 200 pencils to the students.
Madam So said: 'It was enough for the project. The students did not need so many in the first place.'
