I don’t like shopping. There. I said it. I am a horrid decision maker. I get overwhelmed easily. Plus, I worked in sales for so many years that I can feel your pitch coming through your eyeballs before you even start sauntering in my direction. Odds are, if I enjoyed controversy, I could point out who authored that sales training manual and where you messed up on the verbiage. Wait – are you trying the old proof based selling concept on me? Yeah, sorry, but I don’t care that it’s the customers that rate this gizmo as number one, not you. Did your company pay beaucoup dollars to send you to the seminar where they told you testimonials were the key to win you that top salesperson trip to Cancun this year? Don’t pack your sombrero just yet. But, these are all internal thoughts that whip through my brain faster than a Vitamix blender on high speed. I don’t actually say them. I was once a scared little rabbit of a salesperson, see. I remember the stomach ulcers from not hitting goals, the write ups given both to me and by me, the lack of commission on my check. I pity buy. And, if you can make me laugh, it’s cha-ching time, because the world just needs more laughter. Still, shopping stinks, especially in the world of expensive, big-ticket items. Take mattresses, for instance. After all, if you want to hit a girl where it hurts, mess up her sleep.
In 2000, the Wall Street Journal published an article that horrified the world. OK, maybe that’s too much exaggeration for effect. Still, it was a really icky story that people still believe – I know I did right up to the moment I researched some factoids for this article. The WSJ piece claimed that in a 10-year period, a mattress would double in weight solely due to sweat, dust mites, and epithelials, or dead skin cells. Guess what? That may be true. It could be a lie, however. There just isn’t official data to support the claim. Some people sweat more than others. Some shed skin faster. Some live in env ironments where there are more dust mites because there’s just more dust. Likely, mattresses would be heavier the longer you slept on them. Ewwww. Then there’s the matter of the killer mattresses. Flammability was a big issue in the 70s. Our answer to the dilemma of house fires was to chemically coat everything from living room suites to children’s pajamas to mattresses in flame retardant. That seemed like a great idea at the time, but we now understand that snuggling up in chemically treated pjs on a chemically treated mattress wrapped in a chemically treated blanket means a triple ton of toxins, many known carcinogens, that leach from fabrics and into us. That, my friends, is a rabbit hole for a different day. Let’s pretend, for a moment, that all mattresses are healthily and sustainably made by hard working Americans who are paid a living wage and offered health insurance. I know, fiction is hard, but we can try. That only solves half our problems. What kind of mattress are we going to buy?
People get passionate about their choice of mattress. It’s worse than opposing sports teams. My mom, her sister, and my cousin were/are diehard Sleep Number people. Mention Tempur-Pedic to them over Thanksgiving dinner and you’ll find yourself outside on your keister faster than you can say “who took my turkey leg”. They can tell you what their respective sleep #s are, how much REM they average, and how they miss having actual bed remotes over a phone app. There’s only one issue. The current price for a top-of-the-line Sleep Number setup with all the bells and whistles costs more than the car I drive. I am not kidding. Tempur-Pedic, another absurdly expensive brand, swears it will keep you cool at night, change your blood pressure, reduce your cholesterol, and make your coffee. Seriously, though, we should play two truths and a lie with this advertising because it is wild. Then, there’s the world of internet mattresses, meaning you order them and they materialize on your porch immediately, in a tiny box. Just like me removing my Spanx after a long day, these boxes spawn massive clouds of mattresses like a busted can of biscuits. The only downside is you don’t get to try before you buy. More on that later. Then there are showrooms full of hybrid mattresses, the ratatouille of slumber surfaces. Let’s take a little bit of memory foam, a dash of latex, a handful of coils, and a sprinkle of bamboo and voila – here’s a mattress for you and most Ramada Inns around the country. This has been our life for the last year. We tested and poked and prodded and rolled around a vast number of mattress stores. We chose an internet mattress – two of them with conjoined bases. They reclined, massaged, went to zero gravity, and, cutting to the chase, were awful. The sides collapsed. They didn’t cure my postmenopausal hot flashes as they claimed. And, everything from our 27 remote controls to our old weenie dog fell between those mattresses.
We now have the nicest guest room in town, fancy mattresses and all. And, what did we do, you are wondering. Are they sleeping on the floor? Did they hang hammocks, Gilligan’s Island style? Actually, we are sleeping like angels. We took the barely used extraordinarily firm mattress we bought for my mother before she moved into nursing care – the kind they keep in the back of the mattress store but don’t display because it doesn’t require financing and added a 3-inch memory foam topper and a bamboo thingamabobber to the top. It’s soft yet offers support. It’s lux, yet it doesn’t make my hip bursitis flair. All our remotes, and the old weenie dog, congregate in the middle like a tiny meadow of electronics that snore and shed just a little bit. Most of all, we are happy, rested, and unfinanced.
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