I can’t get a mattress! The day before Labor Day, I took advantage of a mattress sale at one of the major specialty chains. It was great to get out of the house, even if it’s still necessary to mask up and be alert for body language outside of normal facial expressions. My sales associate was helpful, but didn’t hover, as I tried out some reasonably priced displays. When I finally settled on the one that felt the best, my hope was that I would soon alleviate my back pain on a nice, comfy new bed.
Unfortunately, not only do we have trouble sleeping these days, but it’s hard to find something to have trouble sleeping on.
It seems the manufacturers have fallen behind in supplying the demand for new bedding, and truckloads of mattresses and box springs cannot meet the back orders or special orders such as mine. For the third time in a row, my associate called to tell me that my order didn’t arrive. A truck finally did come this past week, but mine wasn’t on it.
Maybe my mattress took the right turn at Albuquerque, and Bugs Bunny has it now.
It’s not as if the things are made of harvested grass, straw or feathers as in the olden days, but what is holding up production is a combination of shut-down factories, from the basic components to the assembly lines, and reduced staff to release inventory already in stock.
The recommendation is to replace a mattress every five to seven years, so mine is definitely overdue. In ten years, a mattress can gain dead skin, traces of sweat or body oils, as well as dust mites (and possibly their droppings), and succumb to our daily (or nightly) abuse as we toss and turn on them and other, to put it politely, activities. Hope may spring eternal, but mattress springs don’t last forever.
So I’ve already paid the bill, and am making do with my old standby mattress, but my associate, feeling rather unhappy about the situation, says he will call me again mid-week about what to do going forward. This delay is certainly not his fault, so I don’t feel inclined to cancel the order. It’s a matter of waiting it out.
The dust mites’ days are still numbered.
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