I suppose it's okay to talk about it now.
I'm not even sure what year it was anyway; so I'm going to guess around eight years ago.
Tim had lost his job, we had been struggling for a couple of years when I suddenly lost my job as well...and poop hit the proverbial fan, with the fan on high.
I went to work for a family owned local Italian/French restaurant. I'd known them for years, had worked with their son and knew both parents pretty well. They let me work as much as I wanted, forty hour work weeks were considered part time to them.
I got burned out quick, I'd already been working six sometimes seven days a week for a couple of years at my previous restaurant.
I had been writing my blog for a couple of years and a former classmate from high school had started following it through the Face Place.
We had known other since we'd been little kids and were on the cheer leading squad together back in high school.
Our mothers had been pretty good friends as well.
I was getting close to total burn out, mentally, physically and emotionally, when my friend from high school reached out to me with an idea to give me a little break and some much needed rest from the physically demanding job of waiting tables six days a week. (when the job's done right)
She worked for a big furniture company for years in HR and payroll. When some split off on their own for a smaller version, they recruited her and she went with them.
They had recently opened a small discount furniture store in the town where I lived.
You know the kind...Discount Prices!!! Everything must go...Financing available!
It was a no frills operation. The sofa you looked at, sat on and liked, was the exact same sofa we'd load into your truck or onto your trailer. The showroom floor was the inventory.
We were housed in a defunct Circuit City store, bad carpet and color scheme still obvious, and didn't even heat or air condition the place.
I got it though, I grew up in south Atlanta. Furniture Mart, Unclaimed Freight, Sofa Depot, Wolfman and Donna...the list was as long as the one of wrestlers who also frequented the area.
I waited on Andre the Giant one time.
(true story)
It was okay to shop in or drop in for a few minutes, but try sitting there ten hours on a freezing cold morning or the hottest afternoon on record.
The catch (for me) was that in order to make any commission, people had to pay for (or finance) and take the furniture with them when they left.
It was harder to do than it sounds...but she was right, I got some much needed rest.
My first (almost) casualty that I remember was a sweet little Asian woman, about my size but probably twenty years younger. She drove a Toyota Corolla, and was shopping for a full size mattress. We happened to have one on sale that simply "Has To Go!!"
Massey came into the store to visit while the woman was there, after getting out of high school, and was already lounging on one of the nicer sofas with her legs crossed, looking all cool, reading her phone. She was totally my prop...and a good one.
Believe it or not I sold the freaking mattress to her, and she actually paid for it, on the spot (almost never happened) but only had her little Corolla and no one to help her.
I (overly) assured her I could tie the mattress down to the roof of her car and she'd be fine...
"Let me go get my twine, I'll be right back!"
I went straight to the couch where Massey was perched, and told her to go get my twine and razor cutter (or whatever they call it) and meet me at the pick up door, where I rolled the mattress to, off the showroom floor.
It was a very hot day.
It was a tiny four door car. Massey and I wrestled it off the cart and onto the roof of her car. We wound so much twine through those windows and over the roof and mattress that I was pretty sure it wasn't going anywhere, and told the woman that same thing. She thanked me, shook my hand. She was so sweet...and had totally made my day.
My first biggish sale!
She walked around to the drivers side to open her door but it wouldn't open.
She tried again.
Her front windows had been down so Massey and I had run the twine through the top of the doors and over the top of the car.
We failed to notice door frames at the top of each door.
I guess we forgot she'd have to get into the drivers seat to drive away.
I totally blew it off as an oversight on my part and asked her to give us five more minutes to make the adjustment.
She was a little more than nervous when she got into her car.
The store was located directly by an interstate ramp and she had to drive down to the next exit.
I assured her it would be fine, after she could finally get into the drivers' seat of her car.
I went the extra mile.
I told her to pull off really quickly from the loading area and gun it out of the parking lot.
If she looked in her rear view mirror and I was giving her a thumbs up sign, the mattress wasn't bucking up at all and she was good to go.
I never read or heard about her on the local news so I am assuming we did a pretty good job and she made it home safely.
I knew right then I was a fish out of water.
It just wasn't for me.
And it got really cold in there around January.
I'm good with hot, but just like my Momma, I hate for my tootsies or hands to be cold.
I have about three other stories, equally awful yet even more hilarious and entertaining. Believe it or not, I went from the furniture store to a mattress store right down the road for a bit.
I knew even less about that inventory.
Wait until I tell you about the customer who woke me up when I fell asleep during my lunch break while reading Game of Thrones on a king size thousand dollar memory foam mattress.
Then I waited on him the next week at the restaurant where I also worked. He remembered me...I didn't have a clue, at first.
Trust me, we're just getting started here.
I feel so grateful my friend was never called onto the carpet for hiring a boob like me.
But the stories I have?
You ain't heard nothing yet.
Six mattresses in the back of a pick up for delivery....what could possibly go wrong?
How much time do you have?
Until next time,
COTTON
