My Purell Instant Hand Sanitizer “kills
99.99% of germs” my hands come in contact with.
Purell needs to figure this out…
Or, I should probably get back to work.
As a single guy on my own, there is no scarier place than Bed, Bath & Beyond. The place is frightening.
After receiving my 3,000th 20%-off coupon from Bed, Bath & Beyond in the mail, I finally decided to drive across town to check it out. There were a few things I needed for my new apartment – a toaster, a wine rack, a bathroom floor mat and a shower caddy. I figured I’d be in and out faster than a San Franciscan could say “Obama.”
Boy, was I wrong.
The first thing you notice about Bed, Bath & Beyond is not even the store itself; it’s the parking lot, and it’s massive. Not only does the parking lot rival anything you’d find at a stadium, but every spot is full. Finding a spot within 50 yards of the door is akin to actually finding a parking spot somewhere on the streets of San Francisco.
Once you manage to park the car, you walk to the front of the store and you grab a shopping cart. The shopping carts outside Bed, Bath & Beyond aren’t like the ones you’d find outside Safeway. No. The BB&B carts are gigantic, and can haul more crap than those hippie vans you always see on the side of the road.
As you enter the store, you are simply overwhelmed by EVERYTHING – the size of the building; the people; the staff; the amount of items in your immediate view; the amount of items in you not-so-immediate view; and the toaster section (the DAMN toaster section). There are more “things” in Bed, Bath & Beyond then there are people on the earth. This is a fact.
If you come to Bed, Bath & Beyond with any sort of list of items you need – good luck. It’s pointless. You are so overwhelmed by the number of how many objects there are in the store, and how many things you could picture in your cramped apartment, that by the time you look down at your list, the once neatly-printed lettering is now a smeared, sweaty mess of ink and paper.
By sheer luck, I found the one elevator in this labyrinth and made it up to the second floor to pick up the items I needed for my bathroom. This included a bathroom mat and a shower caddy, and I somehow stumbled upon the “Shower Hardware” section. As I looked for a simple, metallic device to house my soap, shampoo and conditioner, I found 196 different models that served this purpose. There was the silver caddy that came with two levels; the bronze caddy that could store multiple longneck conditioners; the gold caddy that had its own soap pump; and the “modern” caddy that sold for $89.99. If golfers at The Masters ever ran out of caddies, Bed, Bath & Beyond could certainly supply the rest.
Once I decided on a shower caddy, I moved over to the bathroom floor mat section. There weren’t as many floor mats to decide on as there were caddies, but there were still more options than numbers in Pi. Rather than dwell on all these options as I did with my first selection, I chose the first mat I saw. It was white, fluffy and rectangular, and I put it in my cart without batting an eye at the off-white selections; the circle mats; the towel/floor mat combo; or the daring color versions. I chalked this up as a tiny victory in my fight for time and self-control at the BB&B.
After picking up a few other items I felt I needed, I soon discovered a hard truth about Bed, Bath & Beyond: the hard part about going there isn’t buying the stuff you need; its not buying the stuff you don’t need. This is the tricky part. By the time I made it back to the first floor, I had hundreds of dollars of items in my cart that I had no intention of buying – wine glasses, candles, picture frames, towels, eating utensils, plates, a Brita water purifier, Brita filters, Brita cleaners, a Brita “warn-me-when-the-filter-explodes” system, etc. I had so much unneeded, house ware stuff in my cart it looked like I was preparing for either a camping trip or Armageddon.
But I persisted, and finally made it to the one section I was actually excited about hitting up: the toaster section. Oh, man. The toaster section at Bed, Bath & Beyond runs nearly the entire length of the wall with toasters on three different shelving levels. There’s no rhyme or reason why one toaster is next to another; there’s no division by model, price or functionality. There’s just a mess of toasters occupying 180-degrees of human vision.
There’s every type of toaster you can think of: silver toasters with two slots for bread; black toasters specifically designed for bagels; toaster ovens with single racks; toaster ovens with double racks; toaster ovens with double racks and electronic timers; toaster ovens with double racks, electronic timers, and non-burn contraptions; toaster ovens that aren’t toasters or ovens, but do something that heats bread. It’s insane!
After much self-deliberation for nearly an hour, I finally pulled the trigger and selected a basic, silver Krups toaster unit that cost around $50 ($40 after my 20% discount blue thing). Exhausted – both mentally and physically – I made my way to the checkout, paid and exited Bed, Bath & Beyond. Two and a half hours later, and $552 poorer, I limped out of BB&B possessing less life than could be found at a Van Morrison concert… but I survived.
Should I be fortunate one day to have a family of my own that includes at least one son, I will give my boy the following advice about going to Bed, Bath & Beyond:
“Get only what you need, focus on the task at hand, and be confident in your decision-making ability… Oh, and bring a woman.”
Either that, or “Just buy it online.”
