My Recent Experience Going Into A Mattress Store

I thought it would be really interesting to walk into a mattress store and see what the experience would be like.  I wanted to see how the salespeople would interact with me and see whether they would try to push certain mattresses on me versus others.  Maybe I have too much time on my hands.  I’m not really sure, but I was very excited to go through this little experience.

I won’t name the store or location, but it’s a fairly well-known retail store.  As I walked up to the store I noticed a man smoking a cigarette.  He was wearing a suit, so I was fairly certain he worked at the place.  He acknowledged me and then I walked in.  He didn’t follow me in, as he still had a little bit left to go before he was done with his cigarette.  There was no one else in the store, or so I thought.  The mattresses were all evenly spaced out and I could only really see that they sold the big brand names, like Simmons, Serta, etc.  It was pretty unclear whether the man in the suit outside was the only person working there.  After a minute or so, I heard a woman from the back say “let me know if you need anything!”  So far, no one was trying to sell me anything.  I was free to check out the mattresses on my own.

After another five minutes, the woman from the back came over to me and asked if I had any questions.  I asked if they held one particular brand and she didn’t know what I was talking about.  It looked like they only sold the most well-known brands.  She didn’t really have too much else to say and didn’t really ask me any questions at all.  I thought I would be bombarded and she would try to push a certain brand over the others.  That was not the case.

Overall, my experience at the store can be classified as “chill” and “full of indifference.”  I liked the fact that I was able to check things out on my own, but at the same time it really didn’t seem like the two people working there really cared about anything.  As I left, the man in the suit was still out there.  He said “that was fast” to me as I left, which I thought was pretty funny.

I didn’t really mind the experience at all.  Overall, I was surprised that the store held so few brands in its showroom.  I was also surprised that the salespeople were very hands-off, to say the least.  This was just one experience that I’ve had, and I’m sure it was specific to this store.  I think I’ll go to another one in a month or so to compare the experience.