Bargaining Basement

As part of my efforts to whip my house into shape before I start my new job, I thought that now would be a good time to turn my attention to my study.  Finally.

We moved into this house almost exactly a year ago, and in all that time the study has been an unfortunate victim of (not so) benign neglect.  It’s pretty much devolved into a ginormous junk drawer.

This is sad because the study has a lot going for it.  It’s a really nice room of nice, haromonius proportions (i.e. SQUARE, like me) with a beautiful stained wood ceiling.  It has a large window facing the front, so I can keep a close eye on all the neighborhood shenanigans. Oh, and it has pretty glass french doors which are really a nice touch.

That’s the good.  The bad is that it’s filled with the last of the unpacked boxes from our move a year ago.  Yes, shameful.  This is stuff I just haven’t gotten around to figuring out what to do with.  Things like knick-knacks, doo-dads, and gee-gaws.  You get the picture.  Also all my books are sitting there in a bunch of boxes, because the poor dears have no shelves to rest upon.  That is so sad.

So last weekend I thought I’d see what I could do about this mess.  The study would be a great work area, if only I could get it straightened up. Getting it straightened up means bookshelves.  Bookshelves means furniture store shopping.

Ugh!  I HATE shopping for furniture.  It takes me forever to come to a decision on something.  And I find it very tiring.  And some furniture salespeople are terribly pushy and obnoxious.  I never ever find furniture shopping an enjoyable experience, and am amazed when others tell me how much they like it.  I don’t get it.

So after wandering in the desert for a bit I finally found something that I could be happy with.  My husband was happy that I was happy so we were ready to do the deal.  This being a fairly expensive transaction, my husband decided some negotiating was in order.  He felt we were in a good bargaining position for these reasons: we would pay cash, the furniture store wasn’t exactly doing fabulous business, and we would pay cash.

I naively thought that this merchant would be willing to come down a bit on the price in order to make a sale.  Also, I’m pretty certain that the markup on furniture is fairly outrageous to begin with, so even with a discount he’d still be making a healthy profit.  Not to mention that you hear all the time nowadays about how all kinds of stores are willing to bargain because retail is so soft at the moment.

Well, I guess this guy didn’t get the memo. Part of the reason he said he couldn’t negotiate is because gas prices are so high right now.  Yes, but they are a lot lower then a year ago, when we first pondered making this purchase.  And since then the price of the bookcases has gone up a lot while the price of gas has gone down a lot.  Honestly, do people even listen to themselves sometimes?  This doesn’t even make sense.

Another point is if we paid for the purchase with a credit card, he wouldn’t even get the full price.  A percentage of that transaction goes to the credit card company.  What’s the big deal about giving a cash customer that percentage?  He wouldn’t really lose anything, and he’d gain a satisfied customer.

But, nope, he just wouldn’t budge.  Ok. We shrugged and took ourselves and our money right out of the store.  I really liked those bookcases, but I’m not broken up about it.  There are plenty of other bookcases in the world.  Silly, silly man.

So now my poor study is in limbo.  I WILL get back out there and go on the bookcase hunt one of these days, but I need to fully recover from that enervating experience.  It really took a lot out of me.