My wife and I embarked on a quest for new living room furniture this past Sunday, at the time we didn’t know it would be a quest, but isn’t that always the way it turns out? And it all started so harmlessly...
After many months of diligently saving for new furniture, we began our journey to find the perfect sofa set via the web and a visit to Bob’s Discount Furniture’s

website. Why Bob’s you ask? Simple, his commercials promised great furniture at a great price and if we didn’t have to empty the savings we’d be ahead of the game! Maybe splurge for a new plasma TV! I was happy. So off we go, exploring Bob’s website where we found a good looking set for a great price and it wouldn’t blow our budget. This is easy we thought, but you can’t just buy furniture off of a website, you have to give it an ass-test first, and to the store we went.
During the journey to Bob’s a thought tugged at my mind, a softly whispered, ‘you know if it sounds too good to be true...’, ‘Shush little bitch-voice, we’re going to Best Buy later’, I countered, successfully silencing the nag that sits in my head.
Upon entering the large showroom, we were greeted by ‘Steve the Salesman’ a pleasant

man despite his toad-like appearance, all ‘yes-sir’ and ‘yes ma’am’ and great big toady smiles. We were thrilled, just one store to visit, a happy Man-Toad greeting, a great price and new furniture. We began a search for the set we saw online.
We traveled the store, happily sitting on all kinds of sofa’s and loveseats, ass-testing everything at or below our budget. But after the first few we began to feel as if we were being watched. We were. At every turn Man-Toad was there eyeing us, not with suspicion, but with hunger... like the way a hawk watches a small bunny or the way a pedophile watches his next victim. Christ almighty, I thought, don’t they pay these guys?
This went on for our entire visit, the wife and I would sit, talk about the pro’s and con’s of each set and Man-Toad would be just off to the side, watching... at

first we joked about it, then we became annoyed with it... dude, why don’t you just sit in our fucking laps already?
And there it was - the set we saw online. We sat, we liked, we should buy this… and there was Man-Toad. Gazing, watching. Endlessly staring, like he could sense the kill was near. My wife and I took one look at each other and knew what we had to do.
We left without buying a damn thing from Bob’s and our quest, the one we thought we wouldn’t have to take, began.
After trudging through six other stores and encountering many drooling, hungry, hovering salesman we finally found, at Laz-E-Boy, the perfect sofa set. It was such a sweet relief to be able to shop in peace where there were no hovering Man-Toad’s watching over us. She was happy, I was happy... the budget wasn’t.
I couldn’t get my plasma TV, but I did have a good meal later with my favorite girl and after a few pints of Guinness, I couldn’t care less. And neither could my inner nag who whispered ‘told ya’ right before I drowned him out with a great big gulp.
Just one finally word to Bob, tell your sales staff to back off, because when I’m shopping for furniture I don’t want to feel as if I’m about to be gang-raped like fresh meat at a prison dance.