Salary Expectations Asked Again? The Mattress Showroom

2026-10-27

It is Saturday, 11:20, and you are lying on a mattress in a furniture showroom.

A salesman has just told you to "really settle in, take your time." You have your shoes off. Your partner is on the other side of the aisle, bouncing on a firmer one.

Your phone buzzes against your hip. An unknown number. You almost let it go, but you have been waiting on replies all month, so you answer.

"Hi, it's Jonas from a recruiting agency. Quick one before the weekend. What are your salary expectations for the role?"

You sit up. The mattress sighs underneath you.

The number you can't find

Which role? You know you applied to it. Somewhere. There was a short form, a friendly email, maybe a call with a very cheerful person.

And the number. You gave a number to someone. Or a range. Or you said "flexible" to one company and a precise figure to another. You honestly don't know.

Your mind runs the options in a flash. If you say something higher than before, will it look strange? If you say something lower, have you just quietly cost yourself something you can't take back?

"Sure," you say, in your calm voice, the one you use for strangers. "Can I come back to you on that on Monday? I'm out at the moment."

Jonas is perfectly nice about it. "Of course, no problem at all."

You hang up, and your face is warm.

What it costs, quietly

Nobody did anything wrong here. That is the odd part. There was no disaster, just a polite pause.

But the pause follows you through the rest of the showroom. You nod at a sofa you don't see. Your partner asks if the firm one felt too firm, and you say "fine" without hearing the question.

Because the real worry is not the number itself. It is the feeling of being a little unprepared in a conversation that matters. Of being the person who is supposed to know their own story and can't find it.

You have sent applications from the sofa, from the train, from a lunch break. Each one lives in a different place. An email thread here. A browser tab there. A note on your phone called "jobs???" that you haven't opened since September.

At the checkout queue for the bedding, you scroll through your sent folder, searching for words like "salary" and "expectations." You find two emails and a half-remembered form. It tells you nothing you can trust.

The moment it clicks

Standing there with a pillow under your arm, you realise something small and a little embarrassing.

You are not bad at job hunting. You are just keeping it all in your head, and your head is also busy with rent, dinner, and whether the firm mattress is worth the money.

What you'd want, right now, is one page. A single place that says: this company, this role, this date, this is what I said, this is who I spoke to, this is what happens next. Not a system. Not a project. Just a page you can open in ten seconds and read out loud.

Then the next time a stranger asks for a number, you would not have to guess. You would look, breathe, and decide with the facts in front of you. The decision would still be yours, but you wouldn't be making it blind.

A different Monday

Picture the following Monday.

You make coffee. You open one file. Each application has a row: company, role, when you applied, what you said, when to follow up. The ones that have gone quiet are easy to spot, and you are not wondering about them any more.

You find Jonas's agency in the list. There it is: the role, the date, a short note about what you said and what you'd like to say now.

You call him at ten. Your voice is steady. It isn't a performance. You simply know where you stand, and the conversation goes the way a conversation between two adults should.

Afterwards you add a line to your notes, close the file, and get on with your day. No knot. No searching through your inbox in the supermarket queue.

The same page holds your interview preparation too: the questions you tend to stumble over, and the short stories from your work that you want to be able to tell clearly. So when the next call comes, you are not starting from nothing.

That is the whole change. Not more effort. Just less remembering.

If that was you on the mattress

If you recognised yourself in that showroom, with your shoes off and the one question you couldn't answer, there is a calm way to fix it.

The Job Search Tracker & Interview Prep Workbook is an Excel workbook that keeps every application in one place, reminds you when a follow-up is due, and gives you a question bank and room for your own STAR stories. You can open it, enter one application, and see it come together in a few minutes.

It's made with AI, checked automatically, and refined by real use. It comes with a 30-day money-back promise: if it doesn't help, you get a full refund, no questions asked.

Have a look at the Job Search Tracker & Interview Prep Workbook

And if you buy a mattress this weekend, take your time. That part, at least, was good advice.

An illustrative story, written with AI assistance.