I was very honest with the sales guy telling him my story of changing out beds for a place that most likely would be a rental. I only needed a mattress and not the box springs and so he showed me several floor models. I climbed into bed more times than I could count with him standing over me looking down as I tossed and turned. I felt very exposed doing this, and when I didn't find anything at Sears I left. I decided that mattress shopping was better with two people and so I arranged a shopping day with my friend SueG and her daughter Sydney.
We set off on Saturday and went to the closest shopping area by our house. There were three mattress places on one corner; two of them Mattress Firms. We went inside and again I told the sales guy my story and what I wanted; a decent mattress for a decent price. Austin agreed he could find me that and explained the store color code; green is firm, orange is medium, blue is soft, something along those lines. Sydney and I hopped on beds, rolled around on beds, pretended to sleep on beds. We inspected those with memory foam and those with springs. Mattress Firm also sells back mattresses that have been returned after a certain day trial run at a discounted price. I made a comment about things that might have gone on on those mattresses and Austin was quick to insure me that the mattresses were thoroughly cleaned, disinfected, and sanitized as required by law. Uh huh.
Austin went off to check the computer and returned with the bad news. No warehouse had that mattress in stock. We went back to examining mattresses and found another one only to find that the one they had in stock wasn't all that nice looking. So much for the cleaning, disinfecting route. We thanked him and left. We spent the next couple of hours visiting various stores that sold mattresses. I found a kitchen table I wanted at a furniture store, but their mattresses were too expensive and the used ones smelled smokey. We finally headed back the way we had come and ended up at the Mattress Firm across the street from Austin's Mattress Firm. Supposedly he had checked their inventory, but since we still didn't have a mattress we decided to check for ourselves.
Paul was very helpful, but once he found out we had been across the street he called Austin to get the scoop. That was probably something we should have discussed among ourselves before giving up, but the damage done we went about climbing up and on mattresses. Eventually Paul found us a mattress, in stock, for the same price Austin had given us for the other mattresses. Uh huh. Our bad. But at this point my back was hurting from all of the trying out of beds and so I said, "Sold! Ring me up." (the mattress above is the one I bought) We sat down and he went about trying to sell me covers that would ward off everything including cancer. I turned him down and then he told me it would be a $70 delivery fee and it wouldn't be able to be delivered until February 7th. WHAT? SueG and I tried to dicker with him, but he said it was a logistic issue. SueG then said we should save the money and tie it to the roof of the car.
SueG: "Think what a good blog story that would be."
SOLD. Paul let us try to move the mattress in the store so we could see if I was able to do it, but Sydney and SueG could do it and so we set off to pick up the mattress at another Mattress Firm. Apparently Mattress Firm is on more street corners than Walgreens or CVS. Who knew? The fact that there are two or more across from each other had to do with buying out other mattress stores and agreeing to take over those stores. Strangely, we didn't question that and headed south. At the store John, sales guy number 3, had us drive around the back down an alley where he attached the mattress to the top of SueG's van.
While John was tying it down with rope with our verbal help Madison face timed me on my phone. I answered so that I could tell her that I would have to call her back.
Madison: "Where are you? It looks very suspicious like an alley."
Me: "We are at Mattress Firm tying a new mattress to the roof of SueG's van to save $70 in delivery fees."
Madison: "It looks like a very shady deal."
Me: "Well, it is and now we are going to tie Sydney to the mattress and the roof to hold it all together."
I promised to call her back later and we thanked John, signed away our lives on some forms he had, and headed to The Condo...without Sydney on the roof, although we agreed that would have made a better blog entry. About halfway to The Condo I realized I didn't have keys to the place and we had to make a detour to my house to retrieve those. Every few minutes SueG would ask if the mattress was still attached, and I would look out my side of the window and Sydney would look out her side of the window and we would give SueG the thumbs up.
Once at The Condo it took me longer to cut through John's ropes then it did to haul the mattress up the stairs to the second floor condo. My mother's neighbor, who is a sweetheart, immediately popped out of his condo to assist in the carrying. He and SueG took an end and up the stairs they went with me following behind snapping photos.
Neighbor: "Why's you taking pictures?"
SueG: "For her blog."
Neighbor: "I don't know what that is, but I hope she gets my good side."
From there it was a breeze into The Condo and on to the box springs where Sydney and I promptly jumped on it to make sure it was as comfy in there as it was in the store. Once we agreed it was going to work just fine we left it there to breathe.
And then we went out to dinner where we spent $70 and agreed that food and booze was a better splurge than a mattress delivery.
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