The time I sold furniture for a week

I worked in furniture sales for one week. It was a locally owned and operated furniture store that had bought into a large corporate franchise scheme. The fact that they had more or less sold out should have been my first sign of what was to come.

I have no interest in couches other than sitting on them. I definitely have no interest in selling them.  But it was a job with benefits and good pay and it had been three months since I was last employed and I had bills to pay. So I took it. I didn’t want to take it, but I knew I needed to. I knew someone who had been working there for many years too, so I figured it couldn’t be that bad of a job (read: by knew, I mean someone I casually knew in high school).

My schedule for training was Thursday through Monday. Certainly not ideal, but I understood and respected that that was when I had to work because that was when the sales manager was scheduled and she was the one training me. I was told in the interview that training would be about three weeks. On day one, I was told five to six weeks. By the end of day three, I had figured out that the sales associates worked open to close with one one-hour lunch break, which meant my schedule totaled around 44 hours a week and was, in fact, the shortest possible schedule you could have. The store opens at 10am and closes at 8pm during the week, though employees are expected to be there by 8:45am. Hardly the “some evenings and weekends” that was promised by the classifieds ad, the phone interview, and the in-person interview and definitely not the implied rotating morning/evening shifts. And since this was a salaried/commissioned position, there was no overtime. Once I realized how many hours I would be working and did some quick math, the training salary I was given no longer looked as exciting (think fast food pay). I wasn’t sure how to feel, though my heart was saying deceit. It felt like they purposely overlooked an important detail so they could fill a gap with a warm body because they knew it was far from being an ideal job. How exactly are you supposed to have a life when you have no weekends and literally your entire day is consumed with peddling bedroom sets and dinettes? There are far too many people in my life who I know need me to be available for them for more than a couple hours a day for me to be locked up on a retail floor for over eleven hours a day. That alone was enough to make me want to get out as soon as possible.

As my training continued, I wasn’t sure if I could continue no matter how much I needed a job.

The entire training program is based on a book published in 1986 that has accrued a whopping eighteen reviews on Amazon, the first dating back to 1997. The book is accompanied by twelve training videos that had been converted from VHS to DVD (they actually ended with the narrator reminding you to rewind the tape). Knowing these videos were as old as I am and featured a host who probably saw the Great Depression, I knew to expect some subtle sexism given the subject at hand—you know, the recliner is the man’s domain and his wife makes him a sandwich while he watches TV. That’s exactly what I saw. And the sexist sentiment was echoed by the female sales manager who oversaw an all-female sales staff, though in a slightly different light. I was told that since I was a man, I would probably run into issues with connecting with clients because it would be weird for me to compliment a woman on her purse, earrings, or hair (because apparently only women shop for furniture and the only way to connect with a customer is compliment them because we’re all vain, superficial beings or something—but maybe I’m reading too much into it) and also with describing furniture because men do not understand the aesthetics of furniture and care more about its construction and reliability—though, my skills as a writer, of which she knew little, would supposedly offset this biological setback. Not one bit of that rubbed me the right way.

And then the videos took a racist turn and I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.

I can’t for the life of me remember what comparison he was making, but the man in the videos went on this awful tangent about how if you give an American a pair of chopsticks, they won’t know how to use them. Okay, yeah, chopsticks are kinda difficult to use. And then for whatever he felt he needed to continue his example by referring to “Oriental people” not being to use a fork. And kept saying it. That was offensive when those videos were filmed let alone today. I wanted to take my shoe off and throw it at the TV. I needed this job though. And so started the conflict.

I felt like I had been deceived about the job and then you add in the sexism and then the racism and then consider the fact that this business is killing way too many trees because of a WAY outdated infrastructure. And I just didn’t know if I could continue no matter how much I needed a job.

The last straw came when I was told to lie and make stuff up.

The sales manager said to me, “I know you don’t have a girlfriend but go ahead and say to a customer, ‘My girlfriend has that purse and she loves!’” Another sales associate piped in saying she couldn’t lie because she knew that customer would come back and she would get caught in her. She did, however, offer up that she would often tell customers that she knew someone who had a particular piece of furniture because odds are she had previously sold it to someone. The sales manager agreed and upped the ante by saying she would tell customers she even owned something when she didn’t own it at all. My stomach was turning. And that wasn’t the first time that had happened. Even just the morning meetings would do it. On what would end up being my last day there, I got to see them use their tactics first hand on my friend’s mom and I couldn’t have been more disgusted when the sales manager said to the sales associate after she had left, “See, you still got it!”

My two days off came and I had some hard thinking to do. Could I continue working there? I honestly didn’t know. I needed the money and I knew that already having a job would more easily help me find new employment, but my stomach was already turning and I didn’t want to deal with ulcers anytime soon. I was afraid I would have more trouble sleeping at night than I already had.

I spent a lot of time weighing things out and asking people for advice. If I quit, would it truly be because I couldn’t tolerate the environment or would it be because I just didn’t want to do the work and didn’t like what I was doing? I went to a prestigious institution and received a real degree in a real subject so I shouldn’t be selling furniture, right? If I quit, I didn’t want that to be the reason. I had to know that I was quitting for moral reasons. By Thursday morning, I had figured that out and I’m still surprised I was paid the right amount and on time.

The sales manager tried to pass it off as joking when I said I didn’t like being told to lie to customers, but there was nothing humorous about it. She apologized for me interpreting it that way. I didn’t really accept her apology. I then told her their training videos were racist and her attitude changed. As she walked away from me, she told me not to take anything on me way out. I don’t think I had ever been disrespected that much before in my life. I should have dragged a couch out behind me just to spite her.

This was a little more than two weeks ago. I still haven’t found anything else. But I know that my head will rest easier on my pillow at night now. There’s an elderly lady I help with groceries and I get her mail for her on occasion and she kept telling me how proud she was for sticking with my morals and that pushed all doubt from my mind. Although my bank account is still dwindling, albeit with a small amount of padding from my five days in furniture sales, I know that I did the right thing and that I am a better person for it no matter how well I would have done the job.