Two dollars, please

For Saturday night entertainment, you can do no better than your local Subway and furniture store. I imagine that retail managers have been telling their employees, "Look. The economy is tanking, consumer confidence is down. No one can afford to go out to eat or buy furniture. So, to lure people in here, we're going to have to step up the entertainment factor."

At least, this is what I imagine the employees at our Subway and furniture store have been told. How else to explain their behavior during our visit Saturday evening? (We also visited the grocery store that night, although an experience involving two children in line ahead of us and a container of beach balls so traumatized us that it is likely we will never be able to speak more about it).

At Subway, the kid behind the counter rang up my meal and said, "That's sixty-four dollars." Then he cracked up.

"Well, he's with me," I said, pointing to Joe behind me in line, "so I'll let him pay the sixty-four dollars." You're not the only one who can make a joke, I thought smugly.

When Joe got to the register, the kid added his meal price to mine and said, "That'll be a hundred and twenty-five dollars." So much for my smugness.

Then it was off to the furniture store. As you may know from reading this blog, one of my most favorite things is being accosted by salespeople whose job it is to badger you into buying all manner of extremely useless merchandise or, failing that, to engender such feelings of guilt as to ensure that you will never again enjoy a peaceful night's sleep in your life. So when Joe suggested we go to look at sofas, I said, "Sure, why not? I'm in a mood to have either my wallet or my self-esteem browbeaten tonight."

We actually made it safely past the first salesperson, but only because he was busy helping another couple. We were trying to decipher the dimensions of a leather sofa on the tag when we heard, "Are you being helped?"

Obviously the smart answer to this question, if you want to be left alone, is "yes," no matter if it is true or not. But feeling compelled to answer truthfully, we said no, then immediately went back to scrutinizing the tag, hoping this would give her a hint.

"Do you want to be helped?" the woman continued.

I appreciated her asking this, I really did. Not that it made me more inclined to let her help us.

"We're really just looking," I said with a smile, which meant "Please go away and do not ever try to talk to us again, unless you have free chocolate."

"That will be two dollars," the woman said.

"Ha, ha!" we laughed nervously.

"Or five dollars for the two of you," she said.

Boy, this place was turning out to be more masochistic than most.

But finally, she gave up the comedy routine and left us in peace. We read on the tag that the sofa was of "bi-caste leather" construction.

"What does that mean?" I said to Joe. He shrugged.

The woman was still in the vicinity, lurking, so Joe asked her about the bi-caste construction.

"Two dollars," she intoned.

We thought about asking for a roll of duct tape to put over our mouths in case we thought of any more brilliant questions. Instead, we wandered some more and found another bi-caste sofa. Joe sat down on it.

"Don't let them see you!" I hissed. "That'll be more than two dollars!" But the woman, mercifully, was nowhere in sight, so this one was free.

Although we were not there to look at beds, Joe could not resist trying out the memory foam mattress. I was apoplectic about this, lest the woman charge us the full price of the mattress just for lying on it, but miraculously we got by with that, too.

When we were finished, we carefully planned our exit strategy. We had to make it look like we were still looking at the merchandise, while slowly but inexorably making our way to the exit. So occasionally we stopped to look at something -- such as a fringed leopard-print lamp -- as if to tell any salespeople who might be observing our movements, "See! We are not leaving! We are still looking! We are not even thinking of leaving in the next 30 seconds!"

Once we had a straight shot to the door, we bolted. We felt, in some small measure, as though we had escaped undetected over the Berlin Wall.

And all without paying the four thousand, three hundred and sixty-two dollars we probably owed.