What’s Swedish meatballs without noodles?
I’ll tell you what: It’s not enough food. You have to eat more meatballs to fill up than a proper Swedish meatballs and noodles dish.
IKEA, being Swedish, doesn’t serve noodles with their meatballs. Just because the Swedish invented the Swedish meatball does not make it right to serve them without noodles.
In any case, they don’t and so here’s the problem – you have to eat more to get a filling meal. Their meatball dinners come in 10, 15 and 20 meatball sizes, but the 15 meatball “regular” plate is their featured item.
So what’s the difference between the 15 and the 20 meatball plate?
Answer: Apparently not enough. That is, visually not enough for the clerks to be able to tell them apart when they rang them up. It used to be every time we went to IKEA, I would ask for the 20 meatball plate and get charged for the 15 meatball plate. Of course, that makes it a great deal for me, but, by the same token, probably a crummy deal for the poor slob who purchased the 10 meatball plate and gets charged for the 15.
That went on for a long time, but apparently someone noticed the meatball inventory wasn’t matching revenues and suddenly they began sending “signals” with the food to the cashiers.
15 meatball plates now have a flag with them, while the others do not.
While this system appears to be more reliable, it’s subject to a classic “man in the middle” attack. All you have to do is insert your own “message” (little swedish flag) into the packet (the 20 meatball plate) between the source (server) and destination (cashier).
Violà ! The destination misreads the packet and abnormal results occur.
Disclaimer: The Lone Locust does not endorse fraudulent activities designed to get 5 free meatballs. It’s not really worth it, is it?