Really, make us an offer!
I guess it’s sad that this store down the street from my house is going out of business, but when I pass the ever-growing group of signs hanging on their storefront every day, I have to laugh.
The "no reasonable offer refused" one is what really kills me. This doesn’t even seem to pertain to rugs, or light fixtures, or whatever the hell they’re trying to get rid of in there. No, this is a more over-arching promise, like you could bring them ANY reasonable offer, and they would be powerless to refuse it, as if it were this, the day of their daughter’s wedding.
Today I passed this sign on the way to a hardware store where they had a really incredible amount of lightbulbs. I only needed two, but I spent so long staring at the amazing selection that this humorless Persian woman who was not thrilled that I brought my dog in her store came over. "Can I help you?" she said, through heavily-kohled eyes, and I’m all "Um– yeah. Who buys a pink lightbulb? Why do they make pink lightbulbs?" Because like, in my mind, it’s totally ok to make blue and red lightbulbs for college kids who want to be "outrageous," but pink goes too far. Pink is the color you’d buy if you owned a brothel, maybe, or if you were Elizabeth Taylor and wanted your interior lighting to highlight your violet eyes. But, I’m not at all sure pink is a color they should be making standing, do you know what I mean?
"Pink is a very popular color," said the woman. "We sell alot of those."
I resisted the urge to yell "TO WHO– STRIP CLUB OWNERS?" because she spoke again before I could answer. "People like to soften up their home– you know, with pink light," like this was the most normal thing in the world. I then annoyed her even further by purchasing my $ 3 worth of regular-person white lightbulbs and leaving.
Right now, you know she’s at the "no reasonable offers refused" guy going "can you smack that girl with the dog for me the next time she walks by? She really annoyed me today."
My favorite is the Persian rug store on Santa Monica and..um, maybe Brockton?…that has been “going out of business” for 2 years. Their merchandise was 82% off (82???) for a long, long time. I think it may be up to 85% now. Andrew and I went in there when we first moved in thinking, “cheap rugs!” but it turns out 82% off of an item can still cost you $1500. We were like, “We want something really plain,” and they kept showing us rug after rug, even though it was clear we stumbled into the wrong store because plain rug and Persian rug do not mix. We had to lie and say we’d think about it and come back just to get out of the store.