My wife and I have been thinking about buying a new couch.  The one we have is technically fine, so the part of me that’s related to my mother, who believes one should not discard anything that is still useful, and who would not replace her own foot if it suddenly turned around backwards, feels like I should continue to use it, even though it is small and uncomfortable and pinkish in color if viewed in a certain light. 

One of the biggest challenges we face is that we have dogs that have a great deal of say in what color we choose. They don’t technically have a say, but since last summer they found pens lying on the ground and then dragged them all over our off-white chaise and made it look like someone held a kindergarten class in our living room, we’ve decided to go with something on the dark end of the spectrum.

Because we live in Boston we are blessed to have at least eight bona fide furniture stores, and about a million and a half other furniture discounters that to varying degrees appear to be fronts for the Chinese mafia.  On Saturday, we visited some of the bona fides for an initial assessment of the landscape.

The first place we went was Bob’s Discount furniture, which, despite its ridiculous name, does a tremendous business.  The trick with Bob’s is that it is specifically designed to cater to the person who just flew in from space and bought a house and has never heard of furniture. For this customer Bob’s provides furniture sets, such as a 27 piece living room set for $1,400 that includes a couch, loveseat, chaise, ottoman, two table lamps, a coffee table, framed pictures of Venice, a toaster, several pairs of sox, and a lawnmower, all of which match and are made of microfiber.  Since we just wanted a couch, and were so-so on the shots of Venice, we decided to go next door.

Next door is Bernie & Phyl’s, a company founded by two people named Bernie, and Phyl who used to be featured prominently in their own advertisements but who now probably live in Port St. Lucie while their children screw up the business.  Their advertisements run nearly as much as Bob’s ‘and feature an annoying-but-memorable slogan “Beeernie and Phyl’s, quality, comfort, and price, that’s nice” which among other things highlights the importance of punctuation.   Our saleswoman at B&P’s was Olga, who in addition to her great accent also possessed a legendary Russian sense of humor.  While she was selling us on the seemingly-carcinogenic stain guard treatment, I made a crack about how our couch would be nice and clean for when our livers stopped working.  Without missing a beat, she reminded me that my liver might stop working tomorrow, which seemed like a statement of fact, but which might have been a polite way of telling me I was the 1,000^th person to make some form of that joke. 

Another stop on Saturday’s journey was at Boston Interiors, a high-end store which basically sells the same couches as everyone else but at higher prices.  The high point of our experience at BI was the fact that the woman at the door asked us when we entered if there was someone we “normally do business with”.  I honestly can’t remember what couches they even had because I was too busy trying to think of a circumstance in which a person would be such a frequent furniture customer that they would command a specific salesman.  Even if we don’t end up buying something from them I’m tempted to go back and demand that I be helped by Jackie.

Though we haven’t been yet, our search will eventually take us to Jordan’s, another regional heavy hitter who has achieved tremendous success through great variety and legendary customer service and by capitalizing on the human desire to combine furniture shopping with seeing an IMAXX movie.  Even though this makes as much sense as combining jewelry shopping with lobster bisque, they’ve made it work and have performed beautifully for ages.

So far we’ve determined that what we want is an enormous couch that is so large we’ll have to pay someone to dismantle it whenever we move.  There are several such couches available in various stores so it seems nearly inevitable that we’ll make an ill-conceived purchase sooner than later.  There’s also a chance that after all this effort I’ll start to think our old couch doesn’t look so bad and lobby for keeping it around.   After all, furniture shopping is a dreadful experience, and I am my mother’s son.