Keeping Shabbos

We needed to buy aronot for our apartment/house that we will hopefully have soon. Shira found what she wanted on the IKEA website for $99.99 and we'd decided we were going to get three of them. Then a friend of ours told us that they were having a one day sale and they'd be $49.99 each on Saturday only (limit one per customer). She tried calling but they wouldn't let us purchase them on Friday or Sunday. Shira though spoke to a non-Jewish friend at work who offered to go with her husband and buy them for us since she had to get some stuff at some point at IKEA anyway. When Shira told me about it I was a little uncomfortable with that since it would be asking a goy to do melacha for us on Shabbos. I spoke to Rabbi Marwick (and a couple other people I trust) and he said that it would be preferable not to do that so we'd just have to pay the extra hundred dollars. Too bad.

Shira kept checking the website. I'm not sure why but she loves checking on things she plans on buying and all of a sudden today the website listed the bookcases for just 49.99. Shira tried calling to confirm the price but there was no answer so we immediately jumped in the car and drove out there (about 25 minutes away). When we got there we asked someone where they were and he said, "oh you mean the ones that are on sale Saturday?" We explained the website said the price is 49.99 and he said that it's 99.99 today but we can go talk to a manager if we want.

So we went to find a manager and she said, "It's only Saturday and anyway you guys would be too late. if you want to take advantage of that sale you have to be here before the stores open on Saturday and then we'll give tickets out to the first people in line." We said that the website says they're 49.99 and she said that it says it's only Saturday and she asked some guy to show us and she walked away. The guy showed us the front page of the IKEA site which did say that it's a one day only sale on Saturday so Shira showed him where it said it was only 49.99. On the page of the bookcases it made no mention of it being a one day sale. So he left to go find the manager again


She came back about 5 minutes later and said that she would honor the pirce and give us 1 for the 49.99. We said we wanted 3 so she said that she could give us 2 but that was it. They would have to override the price which they couldn't do at the tellers so we'd have to buy them and then walk over to returns and they'd give us back 100 bucks. So we got 3 for 200 dollars instead of 300. The same price as had the non-Jew bought it for us on Shabbos had she gone before the store opened and waited in line which she probably wouldn't have done because we didn't even know you had to do that. So we really came out ahead. Yay, one more thing falling into place.