Sofa: Here for It, #347

Hi! It's R. Eric Thomas. From the internet?
Hi!

I've recently been in the market for a new sofa, which is a fate worse than being selected for an IRS audit. I do not like being in want of a couch. I do not recommend it. But also, what are you going to do? Stand? Is my apartment an immersive show at a Fringe festival (yes)? Are we doing Sleep No More? (According to my jacked up circadian rhythms, also yes.)

If Reddit is to be believed, every sofa and mattress company is actively out to scam you. They're not even hiding it anymore. You walk into a sofa store and you're greeted by a man in a Hamburglar ensemble, head to toe.

I googled it and it turns out these guys are the CEOs of Mattress Firm.

Being in want of a sofa, one is tempted to ask one's friends, associates, and co-conspirators where they got their couches. This is a mistake. Because every single person's couch purchase journey is a unique snowflake, never to be seen again in this universe, unfortunately. One of my brothers and sisters-in-law (ugh, I cannot make this phrase work grammatically but you know what I mean). Two people to whom I am related have a couch that I have coveted since they first got married nigh on 15 years ago and every time I visit I ask, "Now, where is this couch from?" And they're like "Well, we ordered it from this company that has now gone out of business and all records of the company were sunk in the Mariana Trench and the materials out of which this couch was made were zapped out of existence by one of the villains in a Marvel movie, I think it was Quantamania. Oh, you didn't see that? Ah, too bad."

And I'm always like, "Got it, well, I've never sat on a more comfortable couch so I guess I'll just google it?"

You cannot ask the internet about a sofa because you get results from sites like SofaRankingsWeAreDefinitelyReal.com. Honey, please.

Can't even really trust Wirecutter that much anymore although as a geriatric millennial I absolutely do trust Wirecutter for purchases under $100. If they tell me to buy a water bottle or nice set of towels, I'm like "yes, this is unbiased and although I know that they make money off of me clicking this link, I see it as a donation to the sustainability of the journalistic endeavor." But if they tell me to buy a $400 cutting board, I'm like "HELP I am being tied to a railroad track by rapscallions!"

You can't ask ChatGPT about this or anything because it is a nonsense machine to which I am vehemently opposed. I wouldn't ask ChatGPT to tell me the time. I am so against AI, my last words will be "Could a language learning model do this?!"

Anyway, I did the old fashioned thing and walked into a store and sat on a bunch of sofas for four or five successive weekends. After getting enough info, I was ready to buy and I went to an outlet store. I was greeted by a salesman who had been frozen in a block of ice since 1991. The ole Encino Man Syndrome. He had the tweed jacket, the slicked back hair, the tall, fit-ish build of a man who pitched on his high school's baseball team 40 years ago and, yeah, there was talk of the minors but maybe it was just talk, who can say, he gave it a go and his Pap sure was eager to see it happen, but they needed extra hands at the saw mill and that was that, you know.

He came at me with Highly Heterosexual Salesman Energy which, according to my allergist, is my Krytonite. He kept calling me buddy and asking me if I was going to watch "The Game" on my couch. I was like "if by 'The Game' you mean this video of Audra McDonald reminiscing about her career, then yes. I will be."

I had done a lot of research and I knew the dimension and structure and pricepoint and whatnot. This was a sofa for a den/office so it didn't need to be attractive; it just needed to be comfortable enough to watch "The Game" (Tom Holland doing "Umbrella" on Lip Sync Battle.)

I found one that I liked and he lit up, "Oh, that's the one that my wife and I have at the lake house!" I don't enjoy this part of a sales conversation where suddenly we are exchanging personal details like we're on a late night talk show. He showed me a model of the couch with a pullout mattress that was, I swear to you, no more than two inches thick.

He says, unprompted, "It's pretty comfortable! My wife and I sleep on it at the lake house when my mother-in-law comes to visit." Oh, the lake house, you say? Your mother-in-law, you say? What an interesting sitcom setup. "Yeah, we give her the main bed so she doesn't complain. She's a sweetheart but we've had our moments! My wife loves this sofa mattress! Sometimes she sleeps on it just because!"

Why am I hearing all of this? Is this a family counseling intake session? Also, I know your 58-year-old ass is not sleeping on this two inch mattress at "the lake house" (WHAT LAKE?!) I took one look at that mattress and my sciatic nerve got up, left my body, and was like "I'm going to wait in the car. Y'all ain't serious."

This salesman was putting a little too much sauce on this story, methinks. Too many characters and locations! I've got the mental image of a mother-in-law in curlers and a housecoat. I can hear ducks quacking on "the lake." I'm stressed. I don't need this. I'm just here for a cheap sofa on which to watch "The Game" (finale of The Leftovers).

This is exactly how I lie, too. Usually when I am caught in sales conversations. I'm like "Oh, I would purchase this today but I must first check with my conservator. He handles all my financial affairs ever since I was driven mad by jealousy. He is a Duke, actually, my conservator. In England. But he's been disowned? By his family. Because he wants to marry for love, you see, and his family wants him to marry for status. He is betrothed to a woman named Hildegarde. Who is the daughter of the Countess of... Monte Cristo? She's a real sweetheart but they've had their moments."

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HELP I am being tied to railroad track by rapscallions!,
Eric