“Are you two sisters? No? I was sure you must be with so much beauty in one place!” drawled the salesman at Ashely Home Furniture in his faux-Southern accent. And in that moment, I knew nothing would induce me to buy a couch.
It started when my co-worker and I decided to go couch shopping together. Ashley Home Furniture still had President’s Day sales running, we both needed couches, so we decided to give it a try. The deals were actually really good. She’d been eyeing a particular sofa online for a few weeks and the $1400 sofa was now a much more manageable $400. Even I considered buying one for that price.
But the salesman.
He took a condescending tone from the start, assuring us that we could “look around and make sure to give the tire a good kick to see if we liked it.” This, we quickly discovered, was a favorite saying of his. He repeated it 6 or 7 times as he wandered past us.
We sat. We sprawled. We compared price-tags. And every time he saw us, he would nod genially and say: “Good job! You’re doing your job.”
We had some questions. He barely breathed in-between answers, adding after almost every statement: “Wow, you must be good friends. You sure did your job. You known each other long? Such good friends to go shopping together. Good job finding somethin’.”
He started filling out the order form, still assuring us that “the red will look real pretty.” My friend informed him she did not want the red—she wanted it in tan. Ah! He was quick to assure. That would be equally beautiful. More beautiful, in fact! It was more popular! All her friends would be outrageously jealous when they saw this couch Why, this as a question directed at me, did I know who built these couches?
I said no.
He hurried to reassure me he also hated answering questions. Why, Ashley Home Furniture built them! And they did such a good job, he had a whole set himself. “My wife insisted when we moved here, all new furniture. You know how wives are.”
Satisfied with this remark, he then toddled up to figure the bill. A few minutes later he was back.
“Mrs. Mueller…” he said to my companion, whose neither a Mrs. nor a Mueller but a Miller. “Your first name is so lovely. Uh…what is it?”
She told him. Then pointed out it was on her driver’s license and he could have just looked there. He beamed congenially, assured her three more times she had the loveliest name all while managing to pronounce it wrong, and then turned to me.
“And what’s your name?”
“Amy.”
“Ahhh…” for half a second I thought he might tell me I had a lovely name too, but as I wasn’t buying a couch, I did not get the compliment.
But don’t worry. I was reassured of my charm, beauty, and general perfection as a friend quite sufficiently.
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