My Sleep Number is "Poor White Trash"

Finally bit the bullet today and did something we've been talking about doing for months: got a new mattress set. We had sent off for literature on that Sleep Number bed that Lindsay Wagner shills on infomercials, but opted instead to go to our local furniture store.

The proprietors of Englert's in Loogootee, IN, will surely be pleased to know that the saleswoman they had on the floor almost immediately talked us out of any business there whatsoever. I believe her name was Susie.

Almost immediately upon our entrance to the showroom floor, Susie greeted us and asked us what we were looking for. We told her that our mattress set was shot, and we were way overdue for a new one. She took us to the bedding section, and we first came upon those TempurPedic foam mattresses that were developed by NASA or whatever. And then came the words that, the more we thought about it afterwards, the more it riled us (paraphrasing, of course, without losing the general gist of what was said):

"These mattresses are probably a little too expensive (implied: "for you") - the inner-spring mattresses are over here."

!

You kinda hope that Susie doesn't work on commission, with bilge like that spewing forth from her oral cavity. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if she did, since she's apparently not sharp enough to get out of working on Saturdays. (And that's not meant as an affront to people who do have to work on the weekends. I'm just saying that if you're going to condescend, you'd better be damn sure you've got a reason to condescend. Yeah, maybe we were a little shoddy-looking - the maid took the latter part of the week off and the laundry on the bedroom floor is about thigh-high now - but for God's sake, you just don't act like you're better than other people based solely on appearances ... especially in any sort of business enterprise.

(I could almost see and understand the condescension if we'd accidentally wandered into a Rolls-Royce dealership looking as we did ... but this is a furniture store in a town of about 3,000 folks, where we put the hoi in the hoi polloi.)

Anyway, we had planned on spending about $1200-$1500 there (which was the lower end of the price range for one of those foam mattresses). Through her misunderstanding of basic selling techniques, Susie talked us out of spending that kind of money. (Wherever he is, Tom Hopkins is hanging his head in shame.) We wouldn't have spent *any* money there if it wasn't for the fact that there's exactly one furniture store in our town, and not too many places would deliver a mattress 30 miles to us free of charge (we don't have a truck big enough to haul one).

We ended up spending about $850 plus tax ... so Susie cost her employer anywhere from $350-$650 gross. Yeah, it's not like they're going to go out of business based on that loss, but perhaps if she'd cared a little more about making us feel welcome in her store and a little less fear about letting rabble like us paw their mattresses ... well, it just left a bad taste in my mouth.

I guess, really, we're still the suckers in this story for purchasing a mattress from there anyway. (FYI, we ended up with a Sealy PosturePedic.)