I am currently seated on a dark, gray-green “Cuddler Sectional” sofa in a quiet warehouse. A single fan is whirring somewhere in the corner over by the rollup door leading to a chaotically disarranged backroom full of giant boxes and stacked mattresses shrouded in opaque plastic wrap. A sign on the wall overhead shouts “FREE LAYAWAY” in blood-red block letters. Another proclaims, “SAME DAY DELIVERY.”
Somewhere I have learned that red is an action color, meant to provoke; but what happens here, mostly, is that people wait. I am waiting on this gray couch, for example. The printout taped to the couch in a plastic sleeve neat my head tells me the color is “Aspen Gray,” but no such color exists in nature. Across from me, an elderly woman is waiting in a black leather recliner. On a sofa several rows behind me another woman waits, staring forlornly at her phone. People wander around,
We are waiting in American Freight, a furniture store inside of a warehouse located in one of Tallahassee’s few light industrial areas. This is an area–always quiet on the weekend save for this furniture store–characterized by long, low buildings broken into sections of anonymous rollup doors, swimming pool and solar panel companies, fenced parking lots, box trucks.
Even if you aren’t located near one of the company’s 370 give-or-take warehouses, I am willing to bet something else like this exists in your town. Here are some characteristics.
- Business is done in a warehouse setting. There is no showroom, no fake televisions or coffee table books. There is no front door, in fact, just a large roll-up door at the top of a loading ramp.
- Customers back trucks and trailers up the ramp to the big door.
- You never see the same people working there. You may visit two or three days in a row and see different–but invariably young and business-casual–salespeople each day.
- After the first wait is over, customers back their trucks and trailers up the ramp to the big roll-up door and wait a bit longer there for someone to come load up their couches, dressers, armchairs, mattresses, tables, and dishwashers.
- FM radio plays loudly from speakers at the sales desk but is mysteriously turned off at peak wait time: two hours prior to closing.
- SHOUTING ON TV
I can describe its characteristics, but I am still left wondering: what exactly is American Freight? Buying markdown scratch-and-dents in a warehouse feels like both the purest expression of capitalism and, somehow, its negation. Does this warehouse take us backstage of the commodity showcase, peeling away the curtains to reveal the artifice? Or does it elevate commodities to an even more rarified sublime?
No matter the theory, this seems like the kind of place where the story behind the story is fascinating, where the truth is stranger than fiction. How do these random recliners and major appliances arrive here? Are these storage beds made for American Freight, or have they been rejected by some other, more discerning retailer? What’s going on here?
C.B. Crenshaw 