Day 1390: The Chair, Part 47 – The Discovery

Hi kids.  Only four more parts left in the saga of ‘The Chair’!  It’s almost done!  I hope it is all you wanted and more.

Yeah so, when the Dutchman arrived with the chair he helped me carry it up to our flat, I paid him, and he immediately left.  In the end, my transaction with the Dutchman was very clean and above board… as expected.

However, not long after he left… we quickly discovered the truth about the unscrupulous British couple… and the chair.

Remember when I told you guys how the British couple described the chair as a “like new, never been used, from a smoke-free home, Harrods’ glider chair”… yeah… well… for those of you on pins and needles… I can tell you this: It certainly was a “glider chair”.  Everything else is up for interpretation.

Discovery #1

Our first discovery was probably the grossest… and honestly, when we initially spoke with the British couple, we weren’t really concerned about finding a chair from a ‘smoke free home’… however, within minutes of arrival the smell of stale cigarette smoke began taking over our entire flat.

Listen folks… I was a poor college kid… and a poor post-college kid.  I’ve bought tons of used furniture.  I’ve gotten furniture from non-smoking households and smoking households.  I’ve picked up pieces of furniture off the side of the road and retrieved furniture from dumpsters.  Until I met Serena the only piece of new furniture I owned was my mattress. 

Heck, I’m not even a hardcore anti-smoker… I was a smoker for a while myself!  But I will tell you this: even during my heaviest smoking years, when I was too lazy and ignorant to go outside, not a single piece of my furniture, mattress included, ended up smelling as disgusting as the chair we bought from the British couple.

The smell was not slight… it was not mild.  It literally overtook the entire flat.  Imagine being in an enclosed space with an activated tear gas canister… that is how quickly the smell of stale gross cigarette smoke took over. 

But it couldn’t possibly be smoke, right?  The chair was from a ‘smoke-free’ home, right?  The British guy told me this about a dozen times on the phone.  Could he have been lying to me?

Listen, having been a smoker… this chair had not been exposed to you average, run of the mill, smoking household.  No, someone had extracted the musk of their ninety-year old Aunt Ester, who had been chain smoking since the age of twelve, turned the musk into it a gravy, and used the gravy to marinate the cushions before selling me the chair. 

In short… the British couple were smokers… heavy smokers… very heavy smokers… and fibbers. 

Discovery #2

After the smoke, our second discovery didn’t come as much of a surprise.  The “like new, only sat in the corner and never been used” chair was… clearly used.

The cushions weren’t threadbare or frayed along the seams… and the wood wasn’t scratched up… however we notices that some of the Velcro used to attach the cushions to the frame had become very warn.  Plus… you know… the crumbs we found in the creases of the cushions were pretty much a tell tale sign that someone had use the chair… maybe not for sitting, but at least as a dinner plate.

So yeah… it was totally a used chair.

In addition, Serena noticed something else entirely.  A more subtle nuance.  The cushions were not has plush as the ones Serena had tried out at Harrods.  Although the cushions looked to be in decent (to okay… passable) condition, Serena felt that the interior padding had significantly deteriorated. 

About a week later we went back to Harrods and I tried out their showroom glider and Serena was 100% correct.  The padding on the chair at Harrods was like sitting on a cloud, while the cushions of the one we bought was clearly warn out… so much so that it felt like a completely different chair!  … But… yeah… I’m totally getting ahead of myself.

Discovery #3

You know?  It’s not a bad chair.  It doesn’t squeak when you glide like our first glider did.  Despite the warn padding it’s not uncomfortable to sit in.  After washing the cushions it didn’t even smell anymore.  It’s not a bad chair.  Which is probably why Serena and I had a good laugh two weeks later when we made our final discovery:  The Chair… wait for it… That Chair was not actually from Harrods.  (GASP!)

I actually still laugh about this.  Mainly because of how bold the British couple had been… along with the fact that Serena and I had been extremely gullible.

Anyway, about two weeks after the safe delivery of The Chair, I needed access to an electrical outlet behind one of our end tables.  I needed the access for my laptop and I decided to run an extension cord rather than having to move furniture every time I needed to plug-in.  And while I was running the cord I got down on the ground and ended up with the perfect vantage point to see underneath our “like new, never been used, from a smok[ing]e-free home, Harrods’ glider chair” where I noticed a tag dangling. 

Without a second thought I grabbed it and ripped it off.  And once the tag was in my hand I looked at it more closely.  And it didn’t say ‘Harrods’.  It said ‘Tesco’.

For those of you who aren’t in the know… The best comparison I can make is that Harrods is the British equivalent of Macy’s, while Tesco is pretty much the British version of Walmart… or a really decked out Kroger.

So yeah… when it was all said and done… I hadn’t actually gotten a great deal on a Harrods glider chair… no… in the end, I paid more than full price for a new Tesco glider chair… however mine was used and smelly.