How Not to Buy Furniture

On our drive out here, we went through High Point, North Carolina, which is known as the furniture capitol of the world.

Sounds kind of suspect to me. Really? The whole world? 
But since we're in the market for a new bedroom set, we decided to make a stop there.

We couldn't spend too long shopping, as we had a date to pick up PtB from the airport, but we thought we would check out one of the huge outlet stores and get an idea as to what kind of prices they had and if it would be worth a trip back there once we were settled.

(That was quite the run-on sentence.)

Let me set up the scene for you-- We had a couple of kids with us.
You may have heard of them.


After many days filled with hours and hours in carseats, they thought they had just entered the largest playroom known to mankind.
And what followed was several hours of :

"Come back here!"
"Don't jump on that!"
"Get your shoes off the couch!"
"Would you do that at home?"
"Where's Alex?"
"Where's Derek?"
"I'm going to send you to the zoo!"

And in between all of that, we scoured the store for bedroom furniture, kids room furniture, accent pieces, a hutch, mattresses, and everything in between.

The salesman, Mark*, had a southern twang like you read about, and started off as fairly helpful.

*name not changed, because he is not innocent

But every time we had a question about a piece of furniture, he would tell us that he'd get right back to us, and then disappear for a half an hour.

We had found a bedroom set that we liked and wanted to go ahead and buy it. But in a strange twist from the normal, where you have to peel the salesman off of your back, he was no where to be found.
We had him paged, Josh searched the offices.
Nothing.

Meanwhile, Thing 1 and Thing 2 were jumping up and down on my very last nerve. 

We had to leave the store for both my sanity as well as to get the Bunny, so we left a message that we would call him the next day to place our order.

And then my dear husband, who does all of the calling in our relationship (because I hate calling people. And he loves me), proceeded to call him the next day.
They discussed the price and cost of shipping, and Josh told him he wanted to just confirm with me and then he'd call back to order.

And so he did.
He called later that day.
And the next.
And I think the next as well.

Meanwhile we had received our household goods and went ahead and had the movers put our old bedroom furniture into the guest bedroom, since we would have a new set soon.

Josh continued to call.
At one point, he asked if he could just talk with another salesmen, but apparerntly none of the good 'ol boys wanted to step on Mark's toes and take his sale.

Josh left messages with the receptionist, he left messages on Mark's voicemail.
He jumped in a plane and wrote a message in the sky.

Okay, not really, but let's just say we made it exceedingly clear that we were ready to buy the bedroom set.

Days later, he finally takes our call.

Mark:  "Well, hey there Jawsh." (remember: twang)
Josh: "Hi Mark. I've been trying to get ahold of you.  We would like to go ahead and get that bedroom set we discussed before."
Mark: "Well, Jawsh, did you get my voicemail?"

(the only voicemail we had received was from Mark's assistant, returning one of our bazillion phone calls to Mark)

Josh: "Well, I got a message from your assistant. He said you would call us back."
Mark: "Yes, well. About that furniture. Jawsh, I sowld it."
Josh: "I'm sorry, can you repeat that? Did you just say that you sold it?"
Mark: "Yeah, I sowld it"
Josh: "Mark, I'm hanging up now."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how not  to buy bedroom furniture.