Finally my goodwill finds

This will probably be anti climatic sharing my $15.00 find, but because I waited I ended up having a dramatic ending to my story.

About a month ago i acquired 3 pieces from my local Goodwill. This Lane Cedar Chest was brand new (from the 1960's) with tags, advertising and believe it or not the key! It was $30.

That same day I found two matching small dressers.

they are solid cherry. They were all lined with old paper and there is not a scratch or stain or mark in any of the drawers.

Yea! it is a total score for $20.00 for the small one and $25.00 for the larger one. We have NEVER had real furniture in our bedroom or any kind of end tables, so this was thrilling.then next to my $15.00 find.

so for the past 14 years Jeff and I have slept on a metal from on top of these plastic risers trying to make our bed feel like a normal bed. I have dreamed of buying an actual bed, but have not found anything I think I would love for the rest of my life and didn't want to spend the money or should I say didn't have the money to spend.

so when i walked into Goodwill and found a wooden bed taken apart and thrown in the corner I ran to see if it was a king size. I have NEVER seen a king size bed at a garage sale or thrift store, well maybe one but it was brass.
Anyway I asked the employee how much it was. He didn't know but looked at a headboard behind the one I was looking at it was a twin bamboo headboard (ugly) and it was $10.00 so he said how about $15.00. I said SOLD. I didn't care if it was a Queen or a King (i still was not quite sure) for $15.00 it was worth a try.
It was missing the finials on the bed and I thought I could find something on ebay. We came home set it up in our backyard (the bed is half the size of our backyard -oh how we miss Tennessee and our trampoline). It was a weird size too big for a queen but too small for a king.
So we took it upstairs and Jeff figured out a way to buy some wood and make it work.
He spent $50 on wood so now our bed was up to $65.00

but it was the first night in 14 years we were no sleeping on plastic stilts!

I love the headboard and felt like a grown up sleeping in a grownups bed.

I spent a few days online looking for finials that could some how work. Then I thought, "i am going back to goodwill and see if they are in the store somewhere in a box" I was thinking they were just wooden like balls that sat on the end. I walked in the store and this is what I found against the window with a sold tag on it and someone elses name. I thought THOSE GO TO MY BED.
I asked one of the cashiers if she knew who's these were. I told her my whole story. She said the name was an employee and she would do some investigating, but if she could not figure it out then she would let me have them.
Then the drama began... oh my!
I was waiting by the front when an employee asked, "can I help you" I explained I was waiting to find out these bed posts. She said, "Those are MY bed posts and you can't have them!" I was very calm and said, "oh because I think I just bought that bed last week" she said, "My Bed! you bought my bed. I have been looking for that bed, you have to bring it back to the store. I paid for that bed last week and left it in the back room when I was on vacation. That is my bed, I paid for it and you WILL bring it back" (she was giving me the total finger wave with her 4" blue fingernails)
I instantly thought to myself - {kristi do whatever you can to get those posts and be nice} I apologized over and over for buying the bed (even though I was not sorry for buying something that was for sale at a store -gee whiz) I said I felt really bad and didn't know what to do, but it was not possible for me to bring the bed back and that my husband had spent $50 on wood to make the bed work for our mattress's.
She said fine, keep your bed but you are not getting my bedposts. She said you can look at that bed in your room while I look at the bed posts in mine. One of the other employees snapped at her and said that she was being crazy and should just give me the bedposts. She said "no way I paid $35 for that bed and these are mine!" So I offered to pay her $35 for the bed posts and explained that the store will give her her money back so she will make $35 off of it.
Her story was very fishy and didn't make a lot of sense. I don't believe she did pay for it but was using this as a way to say she wanted it. I think she put it on hold for a week and after that week someone put it on the floor to sell because she had not paid for it.
She finally agreed to let me go get some cash and pay her personally for the bedposts.
I really believed that the bed posts should have been mine as I paid for the entire bed, but didn't not want to do anything to make her mad.
I picked up the girls from school and went and got some cash. I decided to take out $50 and give her an extra $15. It is likely that $15 to her could make an extra difference in her day. The story gets more exciting as I walked back into the Goodwill.
another woman (not in a uniform) was now holding the posts and waved her finger at me saying, "you are not getting this bed posts!" She was all in "my grill!" I kept telling myself to stay calm. Turns out this woman is the manager and starts accusing me of going in the back room last week to find this bed. The customer service rules do not seem to apply in thrift stores. I assured her I do not have a habit of sneaking in thrift store back rooms and that the item was on the floor for sale. The manager got a pad of paper wanted to write down my name and number, asked for my receipt and wanted me to give her the name of the man who sold it to me. I was being interrogated. I ignored the manager for a minute and turned to the other employee and handed her $50 and said, "here take yourself out to dinner, I am sorry I got the bed but can not sleep on it every night knowing you are so upset with me" She threw her arms around me and instantly became nice and my best friend. Then the manager said to me, "you did the right thing" Give me a break! I wanted to say to the manger "you did the wrong thing - attacking me like I stole the bed" but I zipped my lip and grabbed the posts and ran out the door. My only goal was to get the original bed posts for the bed. There was so much wrong with this situation i don't even want to think about it, because it kind of fires me up.
Many of the employees know me because I go in there twice a week, and that last thing I want is to get them on my bad side. I feel fine about the situation and was happy to see that lady happy in the end.

so I got my bed posts and they make the bed so much better!

so my new bedroom furniture in total cost me...

$15.00 bed
$50.00 wooden slats
$50.00 bribe for the bed posts that should have come with the bed originally
$25.00 large side dresser
$20.00 small dresser
$.free mirror my friend gave me in Tennessee that matches perfectly

total. $160.00. Definitely worth the 14 year wait for bedroom furniture.

so what do you think.

should I have bribed the lady?
should I have made a bigger stink and insisted they were mine?
do you want to come to goodwill with me and meet my new blue fingernailed friend? You better believe I will blog about seeing her again next week.