Per the request of the Bed, Bath, and Beyond Twitter monitor.

About a month ago, my husband and I bought a set of sheets at Sleep America, which is where we bought our new bed. After washing them only three times, they were pilled — you know, those little balls of thread that get stuck to the fabric? — to the point where I could not sleep on them. (It’s like sleeping in sand that can’t be swept away. Ick.) I returned the sheets to Sleep America for a refund — which they gave without question — and went in search of replacements.

Our first stop was the Camelback Bed Bath & Beyond store, which is walking distance from our Phoenix condo. As you might expect, they had quite a few options. (Sometimes I really hate the fact that we have so many choices in this country. Life would be easier if there were less options to choose from.) I was very concerned about the sheet quality. I did not want to get sheets that would pill so quickly — or at all — again. Apparently, thread count wasn’t the only indicator of quality. The sheets we’d returned were 440 thread count cotton, which we thought would be good.

One of the BB&B store staff — he may have been a manager — saw us looking at sheets and asked if we needed help. I told him we wanted sheets that wouldn’t pill. He then gave us a little lesson about sheet fabrics and recommended several brands to us, including two at the mid-range price we were willing to pay. We picked a fabric — there were samples hanging beside the sheet packages — and a color and were done.

I actually felt good about buying something that I was confident wouldn’t disappoint me. It was the sales guy who made that possible.

I went home and tweeted about it:

Just wanted to say that we got EXCELLENT service at the PHX Camelback @BedBathBeyond store. Advised on a sheet purchase by an expert!

You might think that’s kind of goofy, but after tweeting extensively about my anger and disappointment with UPS, I thought I should balance that with some positive feedback where it was deserved.

You might argue that I didn’t get any better service than what I should have expected. Unfortunately, I don’t agree. Too often these days, sales staff can’t do more than point you in the right direction. People don’t seem to know — or even care — about products they sell. I realize that being a salesperson in a BB&B store isn’t usually a person’s idea of a “career” worth investing in, so my expectations of a salesperson’s ability to help are low. It was refreshing to find someone who actually knew the product and cared enough to spend a few minutes with us. I think it’s important to reinforce positive behaviors to reward people who deserve recognition.

The person who monitors the @BedBathBeyond Twitter account picked up on my tweet and responded:

@mlanger That’s awesome. We would love 2 hear more about ur trip. Can u shoot us an email at twitter@bedbath.com with the details?

Of course, I don’t want to email them because I don’t want to get on any email list. (These days, it’s impossible to contact any company by email without them automatically adding you to their notification list.) So I decided to blog it. Not only does it fulfill the request of @BedBathBeyond, but it proves that I can say nice things about companies, too.