Buying A Bed: Part Two
Sheffield Admin Thursday, November 1, 2007 at 11:32AM So, Sam began bed shopping.
One drawback to having a fully and happily employed boyfriend (okay, maybe the only drawback) is that he is busy a lot, and so Sam asked me, Stylehound that I am, to accompany her on her preliminary search for a new bed. The Bachelor would be brought in as necessary at the end of the search.
The first place we went was Macy’s. I should have known when the elevator got stuck on the way up to the top floor that this would not go well, and it didn’t.
While we waited for the elevator to start moving again, we decided we would turn down any salesman’s attempts to talk to us before we got a chance to just look everything over.
As soon as we walked into the bed department, a salesman came over to us. I told myself that the fact that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Richard Nixon did not necessarily mean the beds here would be untrustworthy, and I boldly said, “We just want to look first,” and he muttered, “Sure, sure, of course,” and crept away.
“That was easy,” Sam said.
“See? Stick with the Stylehound. I know how to handle these guys.”
We lay on one bed, a Sealy.
$1600. It was really quite comfortable, but it’s a little hard to tell, you know, when you’re lying there in your jacket and boots. Still, it felt great, but maybe that’s just because it always feels great to lie down, especially after lunch.
As we were whispering about the quality of the mattress, Nixon appeared.
“I just want to tell you that these beds are all on sale, about twenty percent off.”
“Okay,” we said, and struggled to our feet.
“What kind of mattress are you looking for?” he asked. He seemed to be wringing his hands a little bit, but maybe that was my imagination.
“Medium,” Sam said, and then we were in it, Nixon leading us from bed to bed. We duly threw ourselves onto each one, lying there as he stood over us, telling us about the springs and coils and foam until I had no idea anymore which bed was which.
We staggered out of there and back to the elevator, and then Sam turned to me. “Listen,” she said, “we’d better take the escalator.”
On our way down, she ran down the mattresses, their prices and quality.
“But you know,” she said when we reached the first floor, “there wasn’t any one of them that I Rathed.”
“Rathing” is a term coined by Sam’s mother, one of those expert shoppers. It stands for “Really Have to Have.” Sam’s mother always said that you shouldn’t buy anything---whether it’s a sofa, or a t-shirt, or a pair of socks---unless you feel passionately about it, unless you love it so much you want to wear it out of the store, unless you Really Have to Have it.
“Well, there are other kinds of mattresses to look at,” I said, realizing even as I was speaking the words that I was getting myself into an extended job here.
We went through the revolving door, which spit us neatly back onto 34th Street.
“Plus, there was something about that salesman that just seemed a little like a crook,” Sam said.
Reader Comments (3)
We bought the Sealy mattress, and less than 3 months later we brought it back, because it was sagging already. It wasn't cheap one. finally we bought natural latex mattress from Ikea ( about $1000) without any springs and we like it now.
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