I bought one of the worst rugs in America, and you can, too
Guilt makes you weak in the retail world
You may be looking at the rug pictured above thinking to yourself, “Wow! That is a terrible rug!”
And you would be correct!
Every time I look at that image above, I burst out laughing. How I acquired this rug at all, let alone paid money — and a not insubstantial amount — for it, is as baffling as it is funny.
There is a wide world of shitty rugs out there, and it is one I have long sought to avoid. When those ephemeral thoughts of getting a rug have popped into my head, a number of things have held me back.
Just about any respectable, new rug exists in an abhorrent price range. There are some other options nowadays, but if it’s a cheap-ish, new rug bought online, you’re not entirely sure what you’re getting, and it takes a few days to arrive.
Then there’s the alternatives: Craigslist, OfferUp, NextDoor, Facebook Marketplace. It’s a field of landmines out there.
I don’t know the history behind any of Craigslist’s rug offerings and don’t want to.
If it’s listed as “free,” or a rug left out on the street by neighbors, there’s even greater cause for concern. I say “free” because there’s always a price for free furniture.
I mean, just think about the term “used rug.”
Say that aloud: “Used rug.”
It should send a shiver down your spine.
You’re never going to hear the backstory of a rug and be like, “Oh, good. I want that in my house.” Used rug histories will do nothing but multiply your concerns.
I say all this as a preamble to how I ended up visiting a rug outlet store and buying the worst rug they had.
In addition to those other mental hurdles, my house used to have a massive rug in our living room. About two years into living there, it turned out there was a long-established moth infestation assaulting it.
Being that I lived mostly with guys and we have worms in our brains — and no one sat at the corner of the couch where the damage was being dealt — we never noticed.
It was only our female roommate at the time — who moved out promptly, and correctly, at the end of her lease — who pointed it out.
After that moth experience and having to dispose of said rug, I’ve been pretty wary of bringing another one into the house.
But then my mom had to go and make a helpful suggestion and this chaos ensued.
Women have a terrible habit of making you realize that you don’t have to live in squalor. Guys are completely content to live in derelict conditions, but once it’s pointed out, we have to do something about it. That’s how this rug debacle began.
This should be a lesson; when people offer you advice, ignore it. Stick to your guns. Be stubborn. Fail to grow as a person. Never progress. Actively seek to get dumber.
So, how did I get to the point that I bought that rug?
It began with telling my mom I was having my girlfriend over.
That prompted her to state that my room, which was originally designed to be an office, and is floored with a smattering of faux tile, might be a bit bleak.
I should seek to amend the floor situation, and with immediate effect, she suggested.
We had a debate back and forth for the next 10 minutes while I laughed — first at the suggestion, and then at myself for continuing to argue an incomprehensibly dumb point — and failed to understand the logistics of where the carpet would be located.
As is usually the case in these situations, moms are right.
I hopped onto a rug website which, thanks to the glory of technology, allows you to take a photo of your room and visualize the rug in your room. See the rug, be the rug, etc.
And once I did that, the horror of my flooring situation set in. It was clear I was living in unfavorable conditions. Fine by me, but my personal living standards are probably a bit too dilapidation-friendly.
All of a sudden, I had in my mind that I needed a rug, ASAP.
Instead of rationally selecting an affordably-priced rug from that website which would arrive sometime next week, I wanted to see if I could find one in person.
I looked up a rug store in the area, a place on the way back from work, and figured, hey, I’ll see if I can find something decent. If not, no worries…
*proceeds to very much worry*
This process was inherently flawed.
It put me in a frame of mind where I was heading back from work with this destination in mind, fairly intent on acquiring a rug. I was willing to pay a little extra given that I would literally have it in my hands that day, which was sort of the whole point.
There was also no alternative rug store. I was going to this one, and I would get a rug there, or not at all.
But it took a half-hour detour to get to the rug outlet before even looking at what they had. At that point, I was already subscribing to the sunk cost fallacy.
I wasn’t going to waste an hour and not come out of there with a rug.
I should have recognized the warning signs.
Literally.
The “parking lot” — a six-car plot of asphalt out front — had aggressive “no parking” and “trespassers will be towed” signage out front with a long chain laid across the ground. Evidently it blocked the entrance at night, but it was similarly uninviting in the daytime.
I parked uncertainly and searched for any signs of life in the store. The glass windows were blocked by rugs and I hesitated to open the door. I saw some legs appear next to a mound of rugs and scurry past one of the visible gaps in the windows.
I went in.
There was an assistant and the owner of the store. The assistant flagged the owner down and what followed was me getting guilt-tripped into rug hell.
I looked at the prices, which, if you’ve been to a rug outlet, you know they aren’t even remote suggestions.
They’re just insane, made-up figures.
Just about every rug is listed at something like $7500, marked down to a cool $3950. The rug is realistically worth a quarter of that.
But it’s designed — and effectively, even if you’re aware of what’s going on — to make you think you’re getting a premium rug at a very reasonable price.
I told the owner that if the rugs were anywhere in that price range, I’d just leave. And I should’ve. But he asked for my range, I said about $300, and he directed me to the rug.
That was another issue. It wasn’t like I could look around at other rugs. It was this rug or nothing. And I was leaving there with something.
There was a thick language barrier between us, but he had the sales terminology down pat.
“This rug is beauuuuutiful. Hand woven. You cannot find hand woven like this. Other rugs, machine made. This? This is hand woven. It’s good rug.”
Again, he’s talking about a rug that looks like a hot dog drenched in mustard and ketchup.
Everything in my body was screaming, “NO. Absolutely NOT.”
I was aware the entire time that the rug looked like shit. It even had visible, little stains.
But instead of saying no, I “haggled.” I asked if he could do $350. At that point, he had me. He knew I was buying.
The charade that followed was predictably funny. It’s what I assume my grandpa, who sold used cars, would do.
He made up some absolute nonsense about someone else owning the rug and having to check with them, which is absolutely not how any of that works.
He then called someone. Who? I have no idea.
But he disappeared for a couple of minutes, then came back with some hilarious spiel and a strained expression to say that the owner of the rug — which, again, is him — paid $2,000 for said rug.
I didn’t buy any of this, but I hate haggling and wanted this nightmare to end. Instead of walking away, I said, “OK, $375?”
He clearly did not register this and responded with, “OK, $350.”
I imagine this is what Trump is talking about when he says things like, “I make deals. I make the best deals. I’m a dealmaker. You can’t get better deals than the deals I’ve made. You just can’t. They’re the best deals this world has ever seen. They’re not good deals. They’re great deals. They’re the best deals. The world hasn’t seen better deals.”
Then, the owner brought me into the back office, and well, you know what happens in there…
On the walk over, he continued to tell me how I was getting the rug for “free,” and how I was basically “stealing” it from him. And with each assurance I became more and more certain I was making a grave mistake.
In my head, I was thinking, “Well he’s gone through the hassle of ringing me up, it would be rude to renege on this now.”
I gave him my credit card and watched in absolute horror as I was charged $384.57 for a condiment-aesthetic rug with what also appeared to be condiment stains.
Me:
Here’s a real visual example, from the iconic opening scene in the above episode (S1, E5) of Tim Robinson’s “I Think You Should Leave.”
I mean, shit. It even has the fucking ketchup and mustard-style squiggles. That thing on the left looks like a corn dog.
It was like sleep paralysis. I was aware, the entire time, that I was in a nightmare, but felt powerless to do anything.
It’s like that nascent, insidious thought on a winding, cliff road of “what if I just drove off?”
And instead of just continuing to drive normally, you slowly inch towards the edge. At any moment, you can stop yourself, until it’s too late, and whoops, you’ve driven off a cliff.
That was me at the rug store, fully aware I was driving off a cliff.
I called my mom on the way back to discuss the disaster that just occurred. She was the one laughing this time, failing — understandably — to console me.
When I got home, I did some work knowing that if I examined the rug, it might ruin me. That assumption was correct.
Eventually, I thought, “Alright, I have to see the damage.”
I unfurled it.
It was exponentially worse than I could have imagined. Not only was it a heaping, visible pile of threaded shit, but there were far more stains than those I saw in the store.
There was an absolutely massive stain on the far left. I take at least some solace in that it was not visible when I examined the rug at the store.
It’s the sort of rug that made me instantly remember the smell of my grandpa’s back office. Full of old wool coats, receipts, files, and a general old stank that suggests there’s more than one Big Mac wrapper hidden under the desk.
It’s a rug you look at and go, “we need to get that the fuck out of here.” Not something you pay just short of $400 for.
I proceeded to share the visual damage with my mom and friends.
In that moment — for any of you familiar with “An Idiot Abroad” — I felt like Karl Pilkington getting laughed at by Ricky Gervais.
My brain was Karl Pilkington. My brain was also Ricky Gervais.
The last time I felt this stupid, I was falling off a fence in Madrid, nearly shattering my tailbone. I was *surprise surprise* drunk, couldn’t figure out where the exit was to my street, and so I decided to climb a fence covered in oil, soot and other substances; some amalgam of muddy, dark matter.
There was no falling portion. I was just teetering at the top of the fence, then on the ground. I ruined my sweatshirt climbing that fence and had a sore ass for two weeks.
That was less embarrassing than this.
After laying out the rug, I had a minor panic attack at the sheer horror of what had just occurred.
I had to take a mental health walk with my dog so as to not spiral down an existential path leading me to wonder, “Am I genuinely a stupid person?”
The answer to that question is: hopefully not, but perhaps.
On the way back from that walk, I saw two rugs a few houses down from my own in neighboring driveways.
They were staring back at me as the hook of Tears For Fears’ “Mad World” played in my head:
“All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces.”
*Worn out rugs. You get it.
The dumbest part of the whole experience is that I was aware I was being scammed.
I know the owner thought he pulled a fast one on me, and I mean, he did.
But it wasn’t like I was buying any of his shtick. I was just too set on buying a rug and too conflict avoidant in that moment to do anything but accede to his horrible rug suggestion. Maybe he knew that.
At least, as my mom reminded me, he does this for a living and has probably been doing this for longer than I’ve been alive.
I resolved to go back to the store in the morning and get my money back.
The massive stain that he’d hidden in the sales process at least gave me a confidence that I’d get a refund.
I didn’t eat breakfast and went back there with the natural agitation that comes when I haven’t eaten, coupled with my self-loathing over the purchase.
My car even did the thing when it autoplays Apple Music, so my middle school hits of Three Days Grace and Papa Roach came on blasting to put me in the angsty mood.
I shadowboxed my, “No, I don’t want an exchange, I want a refund,” voice with an “I want to speak to the manager” energy.
But what followed was the most disappointing part of the endeavor.
I was expecting to have to haggle and argue for the better part of an hour while being upsold on other rugs.
I was planning to go in there like this:
There’s no way he was just going to calmly give me my money back, right?
Wrong. It couldn’t have been more straightforward. He asked if I wanted a refund or exchange. I said, “refund” and promptly got it.
After all that angst and idiocy, it was a little bit of a letdown. I was amped up to get back at this man and instead he was extremely professional. I’m sure I wasn’t the first person he’d tried to pawn off that rug to.
I had all this pent up energy and just had to sit with it on the drive back, happy to have my money back but decidedly rug-less and without having gotten one over on the store owner.
So I went back the next day.
(Joking).
What should you take from this story?
Don’t ever seek to upgrade your home. Live in ruin.
The other takeaway is that you should watch “I Think You Should Leave,” but the sketches might sink so deep into your psyche that you’ll find yourself buying a rug that looks like a hot dog suit.