I enjoy a good sleep and I am very good at it. When I was younger, I could sleep just 
about anywhere, in any position. I have fallen asleep standing up, lying down, and even in a sitting position on the toilet which caused me to wind up with an orangutan-like ring around my buttocks.
Nowadays, I prefer sleeping on a good mattress and have enjoyed many, but this week after waking up with a sore back, and my wife waking up with a sore back, and we had previously done nothing to possibly cause sore backs, we figured it must be time for a new mattress.
As fortune would have it, we decided to buy a new mattress on National Mattress Day aka Memorial Day Weekend. I have never seen the correlation between national holidays and mattress sales but thought, “What the heck.” and we headed to the mattress store.
I had no idea how many mattress stores were located in the area with names like Come To Bed; Go To Bed; Hit The Hay; Hit The Sack; and Snoooooze. My wife and I decided on Mattresses R Us.
When we entered the store, we were energetically approached by a salesman whose intent was to put us on a new mattress today. He led us around the store to sample the different kinds of mattresses available and even provided “pillow napkins” so we could lie on the mattress without transmitting our head lice,or go home with theirs.
After being sucked deeply into a memory foam mattress and having to use a step stool to climb aboard a massive pillow top, we decided on a regular firm mattress by a reputable maker. It was expensive but it’s what we wanted. Now came the fun of negotiation.
Since I don’t buy mattresses that often, I didn’t realize that purchasing a mattress is similar to buying a car, in that only suckers pay the sticker price. On my mattress, the sticker price was already marked down for the Memorial Day Sale but I looked at this as our starting point.
Numbers were bandied back and forth and an eventual price was set. This is when I told the salesman that since it was National Mattress Day, I would be remiss not to check out the prices at other mattress shops. Not wanting me to walk out the door, he came up with a new price. I looked at it and said, “This is great. I assume it’s before my senior discount.”
The salesman was stunned by my latest offer and began sweating. “I assume you offer a senior discount” I said, “Even the pie store next door gives seniors 10% off. The salesman looked at me with a stare similar to that of a dog looking at a ceiling fan and said, “I’ll have to call my supervisor.”
I’m convinced he talked to the same “invisible man behind the curtain” that auto salesmen talk to but he did it loudly over the phone so we could hear him. Then he came back, all smiles, and said. “My boss gave me a coupon for 10% because it’s National Mattress Day.” Go figure.
We had a mattress, we had a deal, but I wasn’t quite done and after more hemming and hawing, I got two pillows thrown in to ice the deal.
Overall, it was a fun All America experience and if you need a mattress on National Mattress Day (The next one is July 4th) give me a call and I’ll get you a deal.
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