Dishonesty is the Best Policy

Lying is profitable. I know this on an intellectual level, but I’ve always had trouble transforming mistruths into monetary gains. My boss has yet to accept an impromptu dance competition as a valid excuse for being late, and almost none of my neighbors donated to my Stop Same Sex Marriages Among Werewolves Fund. I probably would’ve been more successful raising money to encourage same sex werewolf marriages because it seems like that would cut down on werewolf procreation, but in reality all it would do is lead to a drastic increase in the number of lycanthrope couples adopting werewolf offspring from China. Sure, it’s a sham cause, but in all fairness the marital customs of fictional monsters are exactly as much of a threat to the world as global warming. The lesson I’ve learned through all this misguided philanthropy is I’m bad at lying but great at being lied to. In the past few weeks there have been more attempts than usual to swindle me out of my money, scams I survived not because I’m particularly cunning but because I’m incredibly cheap. After surviving one of these close calls I even had enough left over to donate a few dollars to my new Stop Gay Werewolves from Adopting Baby Chinese Werewolves Fund.

It’s hard to be swindled if you never leave home, but unfortunately Lola and I need supplies from time to time. Shopping combines my two least favorite activities: spending money and interacting with other human beings. To me, the acquisition of manufactured goods is about as fun as letting a pack of feral cats viciously attack my reproductive organs, but that’s a poor analogy since it suggests I find shopping to be moderately enjoyable. Regardless of my stance of feline-on-genital interactions, Lola and I needed a couch. If I was a real man, I would have just whittled a new couch out of a tree and maybe some sheep, but we don’t have a big enough tree and sheep-whittling is now illegal in this and every other state. Recognizing my limitations, Lola and I went to a furniture store about six weeks ago to find something long enough for me to lie down on. We have two loveseats in our living room right now, which are perfectly comfortable as long as you’re some kind of gnome. Lola, being at least eighty-five percent gnome, has no problem with this arrangement. You could probably lay three Lolas end-to-end across the loveseat cushions and still not run out of room. I, however, have to curl up in the fetal position if I want to lie down anywhere other than the dining room floor. I probably would’ve been content to stay on the floor since it saved me money, but then the dogs decided my napping area and their pooping area should be in the same spot. Being thus driven from the dining room carpet, Lola and I set out to have our monetary chastity violated by an unscrupulous furniture salesman.

We went to three or four stores on our first expedition, and shockingly each and every one of them was running a sale for ten percent off. Just don’t suggest a perpetual ten-percent sale means the regular price is actually ten percent below whatever price is listed on the sticker. Such heresy could result in unexpected charges and a savings of a mere nine percent. At one store we found a sectional couch we liked, and – after factoring in our remarkably good fortune for having walked into this particular store when everything was ten percent off – the saleswoman said the item could be ours for $1711. It was a high price, but my hatred for spending money was counterbalanced by my love of lying down in places where our dogs don’t poop. Lola and I went home to ponder our options, which is a polite way of saying we had to leave quickly because the thought of spending more than one hundred dollars at one time gives me violent diarrhea.

We returned to the same store six weeks later armed with a checkbook and preemptively emptied bowels. We hoped to take advantage of a nationally advertised President’s Day weekend sale, but little did we know that to Lazy-Boy employees “sale” and “drastic price increase” are pretty much synonymous. This time a different saleswoman excitedly told us that after factoring in a ten percent discount for paying cash and a thirty percent discount on behalf of Abraham Lincoln’s love of sectional furniture the couch in question could be ours for a mere $2048. I’ve built my life around hurling one inappropriately timed snide comment after another, but this particular attempt at financial rape was so brazen I was actually stunned to silence. When Lola and I finally managed to mutter that saving negative $337 didn’t really sound like a good deal, the three saleswomen – they gradually closed in on us like hyenas surrounding a gimpy water buffalo – refused to admit they had some latitude on pricing. We all understood they were operating under a commission-based system, meaning the final price is based entirely on how much they think they can gouge a customer. We all also understood that I look incredibly gougable. If the employees would have simply cut their losses and acknowledge this basic truth, I probably would have bought two couches as a reward for their honesty. Or maybe I just wouldn’t have gone home and written a 1,000-word rant about trying to buy a couch.

Instead of attempting something as devious as the truth, the saleswomen looked nervously at each other for five or six seconds before one of them made a frantic grab for a random pamphlet on a nearby table. She insisted this particular couch now had a higher price tag because it was recently upgraded with the space-age foam filling shown in the brochure. It was capable, she assured us, of supporting the weight of a rhinoceros dropped from a height of forty feet. Never mind that the model number of the couch hadn’t changed; never mind that the two different prices were pulled from the exact same pricing book, which definitely had not been reprinted in between our visits; and never mind that Lola and I only drop our rhinoceroses from an altitude of eighty feet, making space-age foam certified for only forty feet completely inadequate for our rhinoceros-dropping needs. Unwilling to accept defeat, I made a counter offer – I’d pay the new price if the store somehow used the profits to somehow disenfranchise gay werewolves – but the saleswomen heartlessly declined my very reasonable offer.

I like to make fun of Lola for telling stories like a woman, but I just spent five long, rambling paragraphs weaving a yarn that could be accurately summarized by saying “someone lied to us so we didn’t buy a couch.” In the future I’ll post an abstract at the top of every blog post so you can save time if you’re not concerned about how I’m doing at fulfilling my day-to-day furniture needs. For those of you who do care, Lola and I ended up ordering another couch at a different store. I’m sure we were still gouged to an incredible degree, but at least the amount we were going to get gouged stayed the same in between visits.Hurray for consistency.