The Inner Dialogue of Your Sleepy's Salesman

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The Inner Dialogue of Your Sleepy's Salesman

I am a mattress salesman. I sell mattresses. Do you know how it feels to be at a barbecue, and when people ask what you do, you have to tell them that you are a mattress salesman? I do. It’s worse than you think it is. I used to tell people that I’m in sales, but then my wife encouraged me to embrace my life. To be proud of what I do. So, I started telling people I sell mattresses. She can hardly look at me anymore. And I do not blame her. She’s the wife of a mattress salesman.

When my father asks me how things are going, I tell him. But he does not listen to my answer. He drifts in his mind to someplace else entirely. And I wish I could go there with him, but I cannot. He goes there to get away from me, his son, the mattress salesman. 

When I take breaks in the back room drinking coffee, I take breaks and drink coffee with other mattress salesman. We don’t speak. We sit on narrow folding chairs and we contemplate if we’re truly alive or exist in a state of purgatory, forced to live our lives as mattress salesman. 

Several years ago, a salesman in our location retired. What's worse? Being a mattress salesman, or having once been a mattress salesman? I thought about this as he put his hat on and left. He did not even say goodbye. But a few months later, this man returned to the store. He wanted to buy a mattress. Do you know how it feels to sell a mattress to a mattress salesman? None of the bullshit. None of the frivolity. No deals, no discounts. We were like two primitive warriors, stripped naked and grappling in the freezing cold mud for our lives. Like in all conflict, there was no winner. We shuffled together from mattress to mattress, already having learned that no mattress is perfect and no amount of free box-springs can fix that. Mattresses are created imperfectly, but equal in their imperfection. In the end, I sold that man a mattress. And, he thanked me when we were finished.

You might thank me, too, when we finish. And when you leave this store today, in a way I will never be able to, I’ll still know that on that day, on that day, I was much more than just a mattress salesman: I was an entrant into our location's raffle, into which only salesmen who have sold a mattress may enter.

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Michael Weber is a writer and proud father of numerous children. If you received this email, you signed up for his newsletter at some point. If you'd like to unsubscribe, you must first find somebody else to replace you. Share a link to subscribe!