For a while now, I've been wanting a bench/coffee table for the living room. Something simple, preferably modern (a la the George Nelson one I can't afford) that looks good with the rest of my furniture. My plan was to replace the end table next to one of the chairs and use the new table as a place to stack current magazines and some of the great coffee table books that I own. I just don't like these things on my cocktail table (which was my grandmothers and something I always dreamed of having and will never get rid of), which is round and therefore awkward for stacking. Plus, I have a nice little still life of objet d'art that would be diluted by stacks of superfluous things. And, I want to be able to use it as a bench if there were to be an excess of guests at a party or gathering.
So I've been shopping around and keeping my eye out, but not finding anything that really fit the bill. Everything is really just too ornate or too wobbly or in bad shape. Then one day at lunch, I popped into the Salvation Army and found what I thought would work. It was low and sturdy, and the color was close to the other furniture in the room. Not in perfect shape, it even had a place where a kid had colored in the front with blue and green chalk. Kind of quirky. I thought 5 or 10 bucks and it would probably work. But, there was no price tag, so I asked one of the friendly Salvation Army sales people. They said it was TWENTY-FOUR DOLLARS!! Huh? Thinking, "somebody is smoking crack in the back room," I politely decline. Twenty-four dollars? Nothing in my living room cost over $15, so I'm certainly not bringing in a twenty-four dollar table to make all the rest of my furniture feel cheap and low-class. Hell-o?
Couple weeks later, I'm back at the Salvation Army and the table is still sitting there, unpurchased and unloved. Truly, it was a table that few could love, but I knew I could make it work. I looked it over, again, and still NO price tag. So the manager with the big afro, the one who I've mentioned before who isn't nice to some of the other employees, came walking past and I asked him how much the table was. Few minutes later, he returns and says it's $14.99. Hmmm. I said to him "You know, it looks more like a $10 table to me." He responded that since it had been here for a week, they could take 10% off. $1.50? What a bargain? What a discount? I declined again...
But returned the next week when the price went down by 20%, ending up paying $12 for the stinking table. It works though, exactly how I wanted to. But I felt cheap, really cheap. I mean, I would have paid $24 for a really excellent table in perfect shape, and while I like this one, it wasn't that. Oh well, all's well that ends well.