A hundred moments in autism - Buying a sofa

I needed a sofa, so went down the sofa store, pointed to the sofa I wanted and asked the assistant if I could have one.

The salesman then went into what I could only describe as a weird spasm, which seemed to last several minutes. I waited patiently, I assumed he had some kind of medical condition and didn’t want to interrupt, but I now realise he was pretending to be doing sums in his head and making it look difficult. “That’s £983” he said, when the fake-thinking spasm had finally passed. 

“No it’s not,” I said pointing to the £500 sign above the sofa, “It’s £500.”  

“Ah, but you need it delivered don’t you,” he said. 

“Not really, I can use a friend’s van and pick it up.” 

“You’re not allowed to pick it up.” 

“In which case delivery should be in the price. Especially when delivery is as much as the sofa.” 

“The delivery is £70, the rest is for insurance.” 

“£413 insurance?” I said (my maths is instantaneous, no weird face-pulling for minutes on end on my part). “That’s more than my car insurance, and I’m not planning to drive the sofa around – I'm not even allowed to drive it home apparently.” 

Sales techniques don’t work on me, pushy sales staff just have me running for the door. And it’s not just sales staff, I’m virtually marketing-proof, I hardly buy any of the leading brands (though I have used Daz washing powder for decades years simply because of a Danny Baker obsession thirty years’ ago when he was advertising the product). 

A 2017 article in Psychology Today concluded that advertising doesn’t work for autistic people, and it’s not just because we watch, listen to, eat, wear and generally consume the same things over and over. The paper argued that because autists focus on detail,  they were better able to tune out irrelevant data, i.e. marketing.   

For autists, the article argued “the package color and the products it is surrounded by are irrelevant to whether or not they put it in their basket. Instead, the autistic shopper focuses on what really matters: ingredients, price, and the necessity of even owning the product. Time and again they select the best product for their needs regardless of how it is displayed.” 

Adverts on the telly are also targeted at the neurotypical mind, which may be why Mrs Oblong and myself and other autists I know turn the sound down on the adverts.      

But I digress, I was in a sofa shop, getting annoyed with a salesman. The horrifying thing about these pushy and downright weird sales tactics is that this must work on neurotypical people, yet they say it’s the autists there’s something wrong with.  

I left without buying the sofa, and bought one in another store which charged the amount advertised.