The Thing About Mattresses

     Mattresses, pillows -- sleep hardware (plushware?) of that sort is at a high level of development, but here's the thing: with the possible exception of the air pump and controller in those "pick your firmness" mattresses, there's not much to them.  The pieces and parts are basic: fabric or plastic, cotton batting or various kinds of plastic or latex foam, and spring wire.  Valves, fittings and heaters for waterbed mattresses, pumps and filters for air-support.

     Every five dollars you pay for a mattress buys perhaps five cents of materials, 25 cents of labor* and fifty cents of know-how and advertising.  Don't underestimate the cleverness and innovation that goes into designing a modern mattress: good ones are very good and even the cheap ones are well above what you could get a hundred years ago.  And don't ignore the salesmanship, either: a mattress or a pillow is a pedestrian necessity, and yet it rates specialist shops and plenty of advertising, usually with comfort highlighted and most often an engaging spokesperson.

     I was listening to NPR news while doing the dishes the other day -- actual news doesn't vary that much from BBC to Fox and Alexa's got a good bundle of NPR newscast, local weather and some in-depth reporting, usually "Up First" or "Planet Money" -- and they do run ads, of the restrained, talky, public radio type.  Lo and behold, they've got a sponsor hawking mattresses, with a positive-talking company owner extolling the product's virtues.  I snickered.  Yes, NPR has their own version of the My Pillow guy, probably in a tweet sports jacket with patches on the elbows.

     I'm not here to run down either of their product lines.  You get what you pay for, and while we probably pay more than most mattresses and pillows are worth, pricing is linked to quality and tends to be affordable.  (I still miss the factory-direct outfit I bought from when I lived in a college town. Their sales volume was enormous and prices were accordingly low.†)   But it is a business that relies more on sizzle than steak to get you to pick their brand.  There aren't that many ways to get a comfortable night's sleep.

     So when a mattress guy or a pillow guy starts talking politics, trying to sell you on a point of view?  Take it with a big, fat grain of salt.  He's a master of salesmanship, so good he sells himself on whatever he's pushing.  You're not going to come away from that transaction with anything to sleep on, no matter what channel or network he's on.  If there's a nickel's worth of substance in whatever politics he wants you to spend five bucks on, look out the window for flying pigs.
_____________________________
* If it was made in the U. S.  Elsewhere, the work doesn't pay as well.
 
† I may miss being able to buy an actual futon even more.  That's the thick, simple Japanese-style mattress, not the frame it sits on. A futon works well in the home-made platform bed I sleep on, and at a price that let me replace them every couple of years.  But they've just about vanished around here, other than low-end ones sold with the couch-convertible frames.