I'm using a throwaway account because I'm quite an active member over at r/IKEA.

My job title is Kitchen Planning Specialist and I'm based in the UK. My job sounds fun, but the fun part accounts for only 10% of it.

I have the kitchen planning appointment in-store with the customers. I use IKEA's kitchen planning tool (the same one that's freely available for all the customers to use on the website) to help customers design their kitchen. And this is the really fun bit for me, I genuinely adore my customers and the planning appointments!

But what follows is a ridiculous amount of admin and follow-ups because I'm doing either two or three of these appointments per day, so 90% of my day is spent on Outlook just communicating with customers or fixing the fuckups caused by deliveries going wrong. That's the big drive for wanting out; the things that go wrong (almost always delivery or stock-level related) are fully out of my control to prevent. But as I'm the customers main point of contact I am the one in the firing line.

Also the salary is dire, especially given the extreme workload.

But enough of me griping about my job, what job could I do that is customer-facing, pays better, and could potentially make use of my eye for design?

I’m in the process of completely resigning my kitchen. The kitchen will be in a new space in the house so we are creating an entirely new floor plan. An architect helped me figure out the layout but I was hoping to work with an IKEA kitchen designer to create the look and layout as well as build an island. I’m worried I may be expecting too much from the ikea team and they may not be able to help me create the flow and functionality I am hoping for. Has anyone worked with the Ikea team to completely redesign your kitchen and what was your experience like?