“Call 1-800-MATTRES and leave the last 'S' off for 'savings'. ”
- Tag line for 1-800-MATTRES

“Vould you like to have a roll in ze hay? It's FUN!! ROLL! ROLL! ROLL IN ZE HAY!!!! ”
- Inga (Terri Garr) from Young Frankenstein

“It's the mattress your body has been aching for.”
- The tag line for Swedish made Dux beds

January 29th, 2006

There are few things I hate more than a bad mattress.

One is my Mary Lincoln Todd 2006 Swimsuit Edition calendar. But as I can see one of her ankles in the month of July I've opted to keep it as a collector's item for some other fool to eventually keep. Bad mattresses, however, are a pain in the neck, and ass... and back... and shoulders. And when mattresses finally go really bad, like mine, one must take action quickly.

Normally, the best route for getting a mattress quickly is to go the 1-800-MATTRES route and you'll get a new mattress in about an hour. An endeavor like that would take some amount of forethought and planning to visualize the type of mattress and support one would optimumly need. There is some amount of risk to these things. I'm not sure what 800-MATTRES does when the customer can't sleep on the bed they've ordered. I'm sure a business such as theirs has a fair and equitable practice of return and exchange policy.

Then there's the way I went about getting my mattress. Sit back kiddies, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Unlike other web authors, I have absolutely no qualms about admitting when I do something extremely stupid. This is done not only as an exercise in humility but to teach others to sometimes not follow in my footsteps.

I'm going to back up a little to let you know what's been going on in my life since I was let go from the QA position I had at the Fortune 100 company I worked for. I've been putting off the narration of this little tale for a bit to a time when I'd be able to think a bit more clearly. As of this writing, I've been somewhat jobless since the end of July. But don't worry, I have a larger game plan which will come to fruition within the next two weeks.*

It was a great day when I stopped working for the company. I got to sleep a bit later. I did not have to worry about terrorist attacks in New York. I had quite a large severence package to keep me from worrying too much about the future. The first 12 weeks of pay would come to me as if I had never left the company then I'd get the rest as a bulk sum. Plus, to add a bit more sweetness to the deal, I had recently gotten a much overdue pay increase. My layoff happened the exact payweek that my last installment of my 401K loan finished.

For the first time in years I was stress free with the exception of one little thing: No job.

Well, one must do something with his time. Even retired people have bridge tournaments. And as all my friends were either still working for the company or were working somewhere during the day, I was bored sh%tless. The one thing I did NOT want to do was start watching TV. I'm not one to let grass growing under my feet. I had to get my act together and make a gameplan.

I have one friend of mine who was let go from Sears. I called him first to get an overview of what my options were. He was very helpful. His first bit of advice was to file for unemployment as soon as I could. I decided that this could wait until August. So as I was working in New York, I had to file in New York. I called the New York department of Labor and filed for the unemployment insurance I had paid into. I justifiably reasoned that it was MY money and I was entitled to it. And for someone who was not working, I had never made so much money in my life.

Life was good.

My friend also made me aware of training options that were now available to people let go due to a reduction in force in any company. Ironically, the Department of Labor does not like to talk about these options too much and were it not for my friend, I would never have learned of it. And as the company I'd worked for really hadn't given me much training in the last 5 years I'd been there, I figured any edge I could get would prove to be valuable. So, I got the ball rolling on getting a grant for further training.

I realized also that further training really was needed especially as I was going through the want ads and Monster.com. I had enough experience to get a job but they seemed to want just a little more. I had also gotten a bit of an ego boost when I found out that my time, expertise, and experience put me in the 90k range. This was the assessment I got from the Ayers group and it only told me that I was being underpaid by, at least, 25k a year.

The only obstacle was that even as I had oodles of experience and potential job value, I couldn't get an interview anywhere. The recruiters that called the house were useless and put out offers for new jobs but none of them led to anything more than an empty promise.

In the meantime, I had decided that I really wanted to pursue a career in Web Design rather than one in Quality Assurance Testing. I probably could have found a job quite easily as a QA tester or manager, but I know that I really would not have been happy with it. I have some amount of talent as a web designer but as most of my work was trapped on the other side of a company firewall intranet, I really couldn't build a portfolio. I'd need one if I were to get any work as a designer. I needed to get some more training if I were to pursue anything I'd love doing.

Well, I got the approval to get training in e-commerce AND in the QA automation tools that were popular in the field today. I started training in mid October.

Training for e-commerce was... okay. Most of the stuff I already knew. I did get to learn new stuff with the UNIX operating system and I also got to rehash stuff with Flash MX 2004 (I even went out and got the Macromedia 7 suite to practice with). I started to teach myself C# for ADO.Net. As my coursework started somewhat irregularly, I also doubled on my course work in JavaScript. This required me to travel up to South Plainfield on Friday (The e-commerce class would meet on Tuesday's and Thursdays in Eatontown.) My QA class began early in November and was on Saturday mornings from 9 to 2PM.

At least I was busy.

Then I got the phone call. Mr. Wizard, a former manager of mine from the company, heard of my availability and wanted to meet with me. He wanted some assistance with a client he was working with and needed to know if I could help. After sitting with him and his client, Mr. Wizard offered me an interesting proposal: Would I like to join him in his new start up company?

Ya know, every once in a while, you have to say, "What the f%ck."

I had a way to support myself and it could lead to an opportunity to earn lots of cash. I was getting trained in new technologies and, if anything, it would help me build a portfolio. Planning this new business with Mr. Wizard would allow me to go to class and plan a future at the same time. Plus, I could wear jeans anytime I worked. It was an exciting time. And everything was great until....

Shortly after New Year's, I was getting really bad backaches. I attributed them to my 10 year old king sized mattress and not flipping it as often as I should. I was not attributing them to the constant driving to Eatontown, South Plainfield, and Staten Island. Also, the chairs in school were something that might have been designed by a multiple sclerosis patient with anger issues.

In order to keep my sanity, I decided to buy a new mattress. Buying a new mattress is like making a 10 year investment to one third of your life. If you have to buy a mattress, go BIG. Buy something that will induce sleep within seconds of you lying down on it. It also had to accommodate my wife and her sleeping comfort. This was going to be difficult because she likes a brick-like comfort level. The idea of a Dux bed or an air comfort bed was tempting but expensive. I wanted something affordable but comfy.

That's when I came across a sale from Overstock.com. Memory foam mattresses (king sized) reduced from $1,999.99 (Why can't they just say $2,000?) to $700 bucks. It was too good to be true. I had tried the Tempurpedic in some of the stores at the mall and couldn't believe how comfortable it was. As a Christmas present to myself, I figured it would be great to order one of these.

The only catch was you couldn't return it.

I ordered the mattress and as is typical with me, I immediately had buyer's remorse. What have I done?!! I've spent money without having a job?!! Am I insane? How could I have been so stupid?!!! I'm going to have a huge Amex bill for this and this was for the Christmas payment cycle. Did I have a head injury that I didn't know about?

The estimated delivery said that the mattress would come by mail by January 12th. I figured I could survive on my mattress for a few more days. Well, the 12th came and went. When I called the company for a status the reported that it was just being loaded on the truck which at this juncture in time was in Chicago. The mattress could arrive anytime between the next day and Friday.

Now I had new problems. What was I supposed to do about classes, Mr. Wizard's business and life in general. Well, fortunately for me, the teacher for e-commerce and JavaScript was on vacation in China and we were supposed to be doing lab work. I could do this at home if I had to. The promise I made to my wife was to leave the mattress alone until she came home to help me get it upstairs. My macho idiot side secretly saying, "What do you need her help for? You can do this all by yourself."

And, as it turned out, the mattress arrived that Friday. I missed nothing world shattering. The box arrived. It was an 8 foot tall, 2 and a half foot wide by 2 and a half foot deep box. It weighed 85 lbs. Not something you'd guess would have a mattress inside it. Now my curiosity was really active. HOW THE HELL COULD YOU GET A MATTRESS IN THAT BOX!!??

I must know.

I had to know. I opened the box - mistake number 1. If I had brought the box upstairs and opened it there, things would have been much easier getting it up the stairs. The box revealed a cellophane wrapped yellow rolled object. It looked like it could have been a rolled up wall to wall rug. I thought, "That's the mattress? How could that be the mattress?"

I must open it.

I can only describe the resistance I made to not open the mattress as being very Shatneresque. Parts of my mind were going, "MUST... NOT... OPEN... MATTRESS...(grunt)... MUST... KEEP PROMISE TO... WIFE!!! AAARRRGGHHH!!!! I HAVE TO KNOW!!!!! "

The description on Overstock.com said that it was supposed to be 8 inches thick. The wrapped layer looked to be about 1 and a half inches thick rolled up. I grabbed a knife to open it when I spotted the sign - DO NOT OPEN WITH KNIFE (subtitled - This means you, you knife wielding idiot.). I put down the knife and began to tear the cellophane off it - mistake #2. I rolled out the mattress on the living room floor downstairs. Once again, if I struggled with the mattress downstairs even out of the box it would have probably been easier to move and get on the bed. PLUS, the old mattress was still upstairs and I hadn't moved that one off its boxspring.

The mattress looked like a yoga mat. Then the most amazing thing happened. It began to rise - like it was filled with yeast. It didn't happen quickly. It was just fast enough to start the mind going, "Whoa. Uh-oh. OH SH%T!!!" Air began to fill the memory foam of the mattress and it truly began to inflate to its full 8 inch thickness. Still not quite realizing how bad the situation was I then attempted to move the mattress up the stairs by myself. What I didn't quite accept was that air sometimes has actual weight. What the mattress became was a very flexible dense mess. I couldn't move it past the first flight.

I had three separate problems now. 1) I had to get the mattress up the stairs 2) I had to get the old mattress down the stairs 3) I had to tell my wife I was an idiot and eat a huge amount of crow. Not to get too far ahead of myself, I now have the honor in my wife's office as having done THE STUPIDEST MOVE of any known person (short of Dubya).

I took the mattress and put it back on the floor and I went upstairs to move the old mattress downstairs. Mattresses are heavy. This is one of the reasons I didn't want to flip it every month. With some significant strain on my near 40 year old body and some minor damages to the walls and furniture around me, I managed to get the mattress downstairs and put it out of the way from the other mattress. I called my friend, John, and asked him if he could spend some time this evening to help me get the mattress up the stairs. He said he'd be able to get there at around 5:30 that evening.

I then called my wife. After she heard the situation, she said, "idiot" and hung up.

She had no idea how she truly overestimated my intelligence. Reasoning that this was a new mattress, I did not want the dogs to do something truly horrific to it and I needed to get it out of the way. I took the mattress and attempted to get it up the stairs again. However, this time, I managed to jam it such a way in the stairwell that it stuck. On the brightside, the dogs couldn't get it. On the downside, I wasn't going to be going upstairs until it was moved.

You know you've done something incredibly stupid when a new observer can assess the situation with these words, "I have to get a picture of this." John took his camera phone out and said that he needed to preserve this moment for posterity (picture above). Within a few hours, the mattress picture made cyberspace. I was able to get to the other side of the barricade and John gave me a hand getting the mattress up the stairs. We popped it onto the box spring and called it a day.

My wife came home and saw the mattress and said it might not be thick enough for her. I told her she was welcome to bring the other one back and we'd eat the money for the new mattress. She reconsidered and we're enjoying the new mattress. I still have back pain but I now realize it's from the classroom chairs.

People can do stupid things and most of the time a specific amount of hubris and bad intelligence are involved. But as I've always said, if you're going to screw up, screw up big. It'll make for a good story someday.

*- My e-commerce class will be over in two weeks. The same time my unemployment will run out.