许多人在宜家店里玩捉迷藏引发危险

Ikea has repeatedly asked people not to play hide-and-seek in its stores. And yet people keep organizing massive, thousand-person games at Ikea.

宜家多次请求人们不要在店里玩捉迷藏，然而人们依然在宜家组织大型的千人游戏。

The first evidence of this trend dates back to 2017, when a Belgian blogger named Elise De Rijck coordinated a hide-and-seek meet-up at her local Wilrijk store to celebrate her 30th birthday.

这一趋势最早可追溯至2017年，当时一位比利时博主伊利斯·德里克为了庆祝她30岁的生日，在当地的宜家维尔里克店组织了一场捉迷藏聚会。

She created a Facebook group and invited her friends—but soon, thousands of people had joined the group.

她在脸书上创建了一个群组，并邀请了她的朋友，但很快上千人加入了这个群组。

Ikea Belgium got wind of the plan and instead of squashing it, offered Ikea's full support, including extra staff and security to host the event.

宜家比利时分公司听说了这个计划，但并没有制止这一活动，还提供了全力支持，安排了额外的工作人员和安保人员来举行这一活动。

From the photos that still circulate online, the event was a riot, replete with people hiding under bins and beds all over the store.

从网上流传的照片来看，这场活动简直一团乱，人们躲在门店各处的垃圾箱或床下。

But for Ikea, it was a one-time thing. The company soon reached out to similar Facebook groups organizing games and asked them to disband, citing safety risks. And for good reason: Ikea is full of heavy furniture and forklifts.

但对于宜家而言，这样的活动只有一次。该公司很快就联系了组织类似游戏的脸书小组，并以安全风险为由要求他们解散。理由也很充分：宜家里到处都是重型家具和叉车。

Just this week, authorities in Glasgow foiled a new plan for a 3,000-person game in the Scottish city's Ikea store.

就在这周，格拉斯哥当局否决了在这座苏格兰城市的宜家门店中举行3000人游戏的新计划。

Employees at the local Ikea spotted the plan on Facebook and called the police, who turned away the would-be gamesters. An Ikea spokesperson told The Scotsman, "We need to make sure people are safe, and that's hard if we don't know where they are."

宜家当地的员工在脸书上看到了这一计划并报了警，而警方拒绝了这些想赌博的人。宜家的一位发言人告诉《苏格兰人报》，“我们需要确保人们是安全的，但如果我们不知道他们在哪儿，这就很难做到。”

Ikea's crackdown on hide-and-seek makes sense. But at the same time, it's hard not to see the phenomenon as a potential opportunity for the company, which has been working desperately to reinvent itself, rethinking its store designs and opening smaller urban stores that are really just a showroom for digital orders.

宜家对捉迷藏的压制是合理的。但与此同时，很难不把这种现象视为该公司的一个潜在机遇，而宜家一直在拼命地重塑自身，重新考虑门店设计，在市区开设小型门店，而这种门店真的只是一个数字订单的展示厅。

No, it probably truly isn't safe to play guerilla-style games at a store that sells heavy furniture.

不过在一家出售重型家具的店里玩游击类游戏确实不安全。

Then again, Ikea has thousands of people excited about driving to the very suburban box stores it wants people to visit. Isn't that a potential opportunity, rather than a problem?

但再想想，上千人兴奋地开车前往宜家郊区的大门店，而这些店也是宜家希望人们光顾的。这难道不是一个潜在的机遇吗？反而是一个难题？