by Karyn Bosnak
Soon enough the train came and I was saved. After a short ride, I arrived at my destination. The Bed Bath & Beyond was only a short walk away. I poked around the store for what seemed like hours.
After checking out an inflatable bed for a while, I decided to buy a queen-size feather bed instead. I’d sleep on that until my furniture was found, at which point I’d put it on top of my mattress where it belonged. I’ve always wanted a feather bed anyway, so I guess there was never a better time to buy it.
After checking out all the brands they had to offer, I picked the most expensive one they had. Why buy the cheap one, when for only a few dollars more you can get the best? I adopted this philosophy in college when I wanted a new blender. My mom wanted to buy me a cheap one, and I said, “Why buy the cheap one, when the best one is only eighty dollars more?” She looked at me, shrugged her shoulders and said, “I guess you’re right.” And I got the nice blender. But in this case, the cheap one was $80, and the nicest one they had was $230. But I needed to look at it like it was an investment.
I took the feather bed, along with a nice chenille blanket, up to the register to pay. Afterward, I asked them if I could leave it there and pick it up later when I was done shopping. There was this rug place I had heard about, and it was only a few blocks away. I really wanted to check it out. They said yes, and with that I was off.
The name of the store was ABC Carpet & Home, and everybody at work kept telling me that I’d have to go there. A few blocks away, I found the store. There were two stores actually—one with just rugs, and one across the street with just furnishings. I decided to go into the one with just rugs first.
The place was enormous and was filled with rugs. Some were hanging up, others were lying down. There were two floors too. I poked around and saw some of the prices, and most of them were really expensive. I made my way to the back and realized that I had just stumbled upon the rugs that were on sale.
My eyes stopped on a stack of eight-feet-by-ten-feet floral wool woven rugs that were in a pile on the floor. They were so pretty! I looked at the price and noticed that they were $800. That’s a steal for a wool woven rug! I flipped through the stack and found one that I really liked. I thought about it and thought about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to summon a salesman and tell him that I wanted it. It might have been a steal at $800, but I didn’t have $800. If I wanted this rug, I was going to have to charge it. And I said that I would only use my American Express card for emergencies. The feather bed could be considered an emergency, but the rug couldn’t.
I looked down at the rug again and noticed that the one I wanted didn’t have a price on it. Come to think of it, it did look a bit smaller than the others in the pile, so maybe it didn’t belong here, and maybe it wasn’t $800. A salesman was standing nearby, so I decided to ask him.
“Excuse me, how much is this rug?” I asked. “I think it’s a bit smaller than the others here, and they are eight hundred dollars.”
“Um,” he said, hesitating, “I think it’s two hundred dollars.”
Two hundred dollars! No way! No how! I told him that I’d take it, and he wrote up a tag and pinned it to the rug. As I bent down to help him roll it up, I realized that it was the same size as all the others. Oops. Now, if you were in my situation, would you tell the guy that you’d made a mistake and the rug probably was $800 like the others? Or would you grab it, run to the register to pay, and then get the hell out of the store?
I chose to do the latter. Think what you may. But I bet the extra $600 to a big fancy store like this is just a drop in the bucket. I was just one little girl in a big city on a budget. It was a big drop in the bucket to me. The rug was on sale anyway, and they were probably happy to get rid of it so they could move some new merchandise in. My mother would not be proud. She once made my sister and me go back to the grocery store because the cashier forgot to ring up a six-pack of soda. But she wasn’t here and wouldn’t have to know the story behind this rug.
I walked with the guy and waited while he wrote up my sale. He wasn’t moving fast enough. I thought for sure that any moment he was going to realize what he did and change the price. I tried to not look him in the eye and talk to him about the weather. Yep, that’s it. I’d keep him occupied so he forgot about the rug. When it was time to pay, I pulled out my Amex card and gave it to him. Swipe, entering amount, dialing, going through…gosh, this was taking a long time! Every other time when I charge things it seems to take just a second. But this time seemed to be taking forever. Finally, the machine spit the receipt out and I signed on the dotted line. It was mine!
I practically ran out the front door with my rug. It wasn’t that heavy because it was woven and didn’t have a backing. But it was bulky. But that didn’t stop me from hightailing it outta there as fast as I could. I hopped into the first cab I saw and headed back toward Bed Bath & Beyond to pick up my feather bed.
ONE HOUR AND TWO CAB RIDES LATER, I arrived home. I unfolded the rug and laid it out on the wood floor. It was gorgeous! I then put my feather bed on top of that and laid down. Ahhhh! Nice. I heard a noise come from the hallway and looked up at the door to find an eye staring at me through the hole in my door. I still hadn’t gotten a lock. I screamed.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said a voice from the hallway, “I’m Spiro, the super. I heard you needed a lock.”
I wanted to yell at him for scaring me, but it’s just not in me. “Oh, don’t worry. I was just resting,” I said, rising.
I walked to the door, opened it, and let him in. Spiro was about five feet six, bald with glasses. He seemed nice enough and pretty harmless.
“I have a lock that I can sell you for seventy-five dollars,” he said. “They usually sell for around three hundred dollars down the block.”
“Oh, really? They’re that expensive? Wow. Um, I guess…sure, I’ll take it,” I said reluctantly. Now obviously the last thing that I wanted to be spending $300 on was a lock for my door, so I should have jumped at the chance to buy the lock for $75 from Spiro. But I didn’t have any cash. If I went to the store to buy a lock, I could have charged it. But if I bought it from him, I would have to pay him cash. So I didn’t really want to buy it from him, and was unsure why I said I would. Payday was one week away.
“Great. I’ll bring it up and put it on the door and everything,” Spiro said, heading toward the door.
“Okay,” I replied, having no clue how I was going to pay him. “Sounds good. I’ll see you later.”
“Oh, I’ll be right back,” he said.
As soon as Spiro left, I pulled out my cell phone and called American Express to see how I could get a cash advance so I could pay Spiro. I had bought a cell phone on the way to Bed Bath & Beyond that morning. I needed it to do work because my phone wouldn’t be hooked up for at least two more weeks. It was an emergency. It was a cute Motorola with a flippy thing on the bottom that covered up all the numbers. Anywho, I called American Express and they told me that I couldn’t get a cash advance from them, because American Express is a charge card, not a credit card. Oh, yeah, right. That’s why I got one in the first place.
I’m not really great with money. I never have been. So when I opted to move to New York, I decided to cancel all of my credit cards and get only an American Express card. I did this because American Express is a charge card, not a credit card—meaning that I have to pay off the balance in full every month. They don’t let you carry over balances to the next month. By only having an American Express card, I decided that I would be less likely to charge up frivolous items. But a lock for my front door wasn’t a frivolous item. A lock was a necessity.
“But all I need is a hundred dollars,” I begged to the woman on the phone.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t get that with this card,” she said. “And just so you know, your balance is $3,434 and $2,581 of that is due in one week.”
“Um, great, thanks. Bye,” I said and hung up.
Crap. I had been here for two weeks exactly and
hadn’t gotten paid yet. And that American Express lady just told me that I owed more than what I expected my next paycheck would be. But I could figure that out later. Back to Spiro and the lock. How was I going to pay him $75?
A few seconds later, he came to my front door.
“Oh, hi,” I said. “Spiro, before you put that on, I just realized that I left my checkbook at work, and I don’t have an ATM card yet, so I probably won’t be able to pay you until sometime next week.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll put it on anyway. You shouldn’t be sleeping here with a big hole in the door,” he said. “Just leave it in an envelope with the doormen when you are able to get it.”
How nice was that?
“Thank you so much,” I said.
“When I was downstairs, I noticed I have an air conditioner too that I can sell to you if you want. I’ll give you that and the lock for two hundred dollars.”
He was so nice to let me pay him next week that I felt like I had to buy the air conditioner. What if it was something he was trying to unload? I’d have to get one eventually anyway.
“That would be great. I’ll leave the money in an envelope for you next week.”
Spiro finished installing the lock and left. I laid down on my feather bed again on my nice, new oriental rug, in the middle of my empty apartment, with no more hole in the door and fell asleep. I’d had an exhausting day.
IS IT THE BLACK?
Before I knew it, it was Monday, and time for my first case. I was nervous, to say the least. Working in television was never something that I set out to do. I just sort of ended up there. I’ve always been a “go-with-the-flow” type of girl. I never make the plans, I just “go-with.” I end up places. And I just ended up in television.
After having a gazillion majors in college, I finally graduated with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. After graduation, I worked at Hyatt Hotel’s corporate office in the marketing development office for six months. The Hyatt job was boring, to say the least. And the only reason I wanted to work there was for the free hotel rooms. But after I started, I found out that I had to work there for a whole year before I got those. So one day while trying to get my first year under my belt, my college roommate and good friend Tracy called me up and told me that The Jenny Jones Show was looking to hire a new audience producer.
Tracy and I met and bonded in college when we joined the same sorority—and we both hated it. We thought that dressing up in matching outfits, holding candles, and singing songs to girls telling them that they were our best friends was a bit strange. How could they be our best friends when we’d just met them? And weren’t we just a bit too old to be dressing up? I thought so. Tracy felt the same way.
“All you have to do is jump around and clap your hands all day. Basically, you are a glorified cheerleader,” she said, describing the job at Jenny Jones. It sounded good to me. So I quit my Hyatt job, interviewed and got hired at The Jenny Jones Show, and stayed for four years. And that’s how I ended up working in television. It was never something I set out to do. I just ended up there.
As audience producer at Jenny, my job was to make sure the audience was very enthusiastic and involved in every show. I was therefore in the studio for every single show taping for four years. At two hundred shows a season, that’s eight hundred shows.
During that time I learned a lot. So when I knew that I was going to move to New York, I interviewed for a producer position at the new court show. The jump from audience producer to producer would be a big one, but I felt that I was ready for the challenge.
I got ready and went to work early, because I wanted to be extra prepared for my first big show day. My guests were from Texas, and arrived on Sunday afternoon. The case involved a thirty-five-year-old woman who was suing a man for hanging her wallpaper upside down in her kitchen. The man said that the woman told him to hang it that way, and added that it was so ugly that he couldn’t tell which way it was supposed to go. He was counter-suing for emotional distress because he said after the wallpaper was hung the plaintiff started harassing him, and called his wife a “fat pig.”
On the way to work, I called my mom from my cell phone for that extra boost of confidence.
“Hi, Mona!” she said. My mom has called me Mona since high school because she thinks that I “whine, moan and complain” too much. It’s her nickname for me.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. “My first show is today and I’m really nervous. Will you say a prayer to Grandma for me and ask her to make sure it’s a good one?” Not like I couldn’t say a prayer by myself, but I thought God would be more apt to listen to my mom because she went to church every Sunday. I’m Catholic, so I had a bit of the Catholic guilt for not going to church on a regular basis.
“Yes, I will,” she said.
“Do it right now while I am on the phone,” I said.
“Okay. Hold on,” she said. We sat there for a few seconds in silence until my mom said she was done.
“Thank you, Mama. Okay, I have to go now,” I said. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said and hung up. I missed my mom. It’s times like these when I’m nervous that I just want to crawl up and sit on her lap. It’s always safe there.
Around 9:00 A.M., my guests arrived for their case, which was scheduled to start taping at 10:30 A.M. I greeted them in their green rooms and after talking with them a bit, was confident it was going to be a good one. The blond Texan was really high energy. I mean really high energy. Her twin sister came with her, and asked me if she could testify on her behalf to tell Judge Curtis that she was an honest person. They were dressed alike. They told me how they were both former Bud girls. They actually told everybody how they were both former Bud girls. But they didn’t look like Bud girls. I wondered if they ever looked like Bud girls.
Shortly before the case was scheduled to begin, I walked into the studio and took my place on the side of the stage where the producer and the executive producer, who is my boss, stand during the taping. My boss, the woman who hired me, was Mary, a woman who is famous in the world of daytime television. She is an Emmy-winning producer who had been in the business for years. And I wanted so much to impress her.
Soon enough, the show began and the plaintiff told the judge all about how the defendant hung her wallpaper upside down.
“It has tulips on it, Your Honor. Everyone knows that tulips grow upward. What kind of tulips grow downward? None. That’s what kind,” she said. The judge asked the defendant what his side of the story was.
“Well, she told me to hang it that way,” he said. “And I had to ask her because it’s ugly and I couldn’t tell which way was up all by myself. It looked the same any way you hung it.”
“Excuse me, Your Honor,” the plaintiff interrupted. “I just want to tell you that he tried to come on to me when he was hanging my wallpaper. He was taking his time hanging it, not paying attention to what he was doing because he wanted me. I mean, I was a former Bud girl, Your Honor. It was many, many years ago, but I was.” Of course she was.
“That is untrue,” the defendant argued back. “After I hung the wallpaper up, she started calling my house and harassing my wife because she wanted me. That’s why I’m countersuing her for harassment. She called my wife a fat pig.”
The judge asked the plaintiff if this was true.
“Well, Your Honor,” she said, pointing at the defendant’s wife, “she is a pig. Just look at her. She’s a pig.” I felt bad for the defendant’s wife, but I had to laugh because the plaintiff was in her mid-thirties and was acting like a teenager.
At the end of the case, while the judge was delivering his verdict, the plaintiff kept interrupting him. He banged his gavel and looked at her. He was a very large African American man with a powerful voice, and she was just a small Texan with big blond hair and a sister to match.
“Why aren’t you listening to me? It is the black?” he asked while tugging at his black judge robe.
“Oh, no, Yo
ur Honor. We don’t hate blacks,” she replied, pointing to herself and her sister. With that, the judge burst into laughter and just shook his head. I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing.
“That’s not really what I asked you, but I’m glad to know that you don’t hate black people,” he said.
A few moments later, after the judge composed himself, he made his ruling. The plaintiff was not rewarded any money and the defendant was found not guilty for hanging her wallpaper upside down, because, well, it was ugly and looked the same any way you hung it. He then banged his gavel and went back to his chambers. Okay, he didn’t really have chambers—it was more like a dressing room, but it always sounded more courtlike to say chambers. Afterward, I looked at my boss to see what her reaction was. She smiled at me and patted me on the back.
“That was good,” she said, hurrying off to get ready for the next case. “You rock, sister!”
I did it! I produced my first case! And it was good! And I rocked!
I walked backstage and said good-bye to the litigants, and went back to my desk to get ready for my case the next day. It was a couple suing a dog groomer over a bad haircut on their Maltese.
So far this court show thing was kind of fun. Nothing was too serious. There weren’t parents wanting to send their out-of-control teens to boot camp, or girls trying to find out if their boyfriends were indeed the fathers of their babies. It was just good old-fashioned small claims cases. Sure you had your “ex suing an ex” case every now and then, or a family member suing another family member. But more often than not it was pretty lighthearted. And that was good because I liked lighthearted, fun things.
After about an hour, I decided to take a walk to an office supply store to jazz up my short cube. A few blocks down I found a gift store/office supply place that had a lot of cute frames and stuff. This stuff would do just fine. Forty-two dollars later, I walked out of the store, got something to eat, and headed back to the office.