Feet Don't Fail Me Now

2004 Aug 11 // Link // E-mail

A lot of shoe shops have recently opened just down the street from where I live. What's unique about these shoe shops is that each one is run by a former web designer.

Coincidentally, I needed a new pair of shoes. I took a stroll down to Webshoe Lane to check out the stores.

I went into the first shop I saw, and a pleasant sales clerk came up to me and offered to place 3-D photos of their shoes into my animation scrapbook.

"I don't have an animation scrapbook on me."

The clerk just looked at my blankly. "Not even an old one?"

"No. I don't bother lugging one around because, frankly, I found the only things anybody put in it anymore were advertisements."

"But our catalog needs to go into your scrapbook. It's a great catalog. It's animated and in 3-D. It offers a better shopping experience than just shelves of shoes."

"Well, I don't have a scrapbook. Can't I just look around at the shoes you have available?"

"Um, no. We don't bother putting any shoes on our shelves because we have such a great animated 3-D musical catalog. You'll like it. It has tiny versions of classic arcade games you can play."

"So I've come all the way down the road and right into your shop, and you have nothing to show me because you assumed I'd carry around a scrapbook for your animated 3-D musical arcade game playing catalog?"

"Um … it's a really great catalog, you know."

I'm sure it was, but I walked on down the street to the next shoe shop anyway.

At least, I think it was a shoe shop. I didn't actually get to see inside the store. When I tried to enter the doorman sniffed me, mumbled to himself something about not recognizing my tailor, then roughly shoved me back outside.

I asked him why he wouldn't let me in.

"It's my job to arrange the store shelves to best meet your individual needs as a unique and important customer. With a single sniff of your clothing labels I can determine your needs and customize our store for you. Our shop owner has paid a lot of money to have many different store layouts available to suit his customers' individual preferences."

"Okay, so let me in."

"I don't recognize your tailor."

"So?"

"So I can't arrange the store to suit your needs."

"Let me in anyway. I don't care what the shelves look like. I'm not here to buy shelves, I'm here to buy shoes."

"But I don't recognize your tailor. I have a list of all the tailors our shop owner had heard about, and yours isn't on it."

"Maybe it's a new tailor. Maybe the list is incomplete. Why does it matter—just let me inside to buy shoes."

"I can't. It's my job to arrange the store shelves to best meet your individual needs as a unique and important customer. With a single sniff…"

I walked away.

The next shop I encountered had a small, neatly printed sign on the door:

Our price tags can only be seen with Opticadabra brand eyeglasses.

I was wearing a different brand of glasses, so I asked the proprietor what I should do. He advised me to go home and change into Opticadabra glasses.

"But I don't want to change glasses. Why not just write your price tags in normal ink so they are visible to anyone? If I can't see your price tags with my own glasses, I'm not going home to change them—I'm going to another store to shop."

"Ours are particularly great looking price tags. Wait until you see them. Very, very nice. I'm afraid there's just no way I can show you my shoe prices unless you change into Opticadabra glasses."

"Does Opticadabra pay you money to limit your customer base like that?"

"No, but I heard that most people wear Opticadabra glasses, so I designed my store to look best through their lenses. I don't understand why you don't just wear Opticadabra glasses like everyone else."

"I don't want to. I like my glasses. Besides, what if a new type of glasses become the big fad—you'll have to pay your interior decorator to come back and redesign the whole store."

He admitted he'd already paid his decorator three times in as many years to redesign the shop as newer glasses styles came into fashion. I left him thinking about wasted expenses and limited customer bases, and I walked on.

I had no better luck at the next shop I tried. It was a few blocks away, so I hailed a cab. I was looking for a store called "The Friendly Elf Shoe Cellar" but when I told the taxi driver to take me there he accidentally took me to "The Friendly Elf Shoe Seller" instead.

When I stepped out of the cab, the shop exploded.

It didn't explode into flames, but into advertisements for adult video stores. Suddenly the air was thick with posters and flyers and buttons and badges and all manner of advertisements for porn shops.

I brushed them aside and shoveled them away. I finally spotted the shopkeeper high up a nearby ladder arranging a precarious pile of flyers in preparation for the avalanche he'd unleash on the next person to walk by.

"Why did you try to bury me in ads for adult video stores?"

"Have you got some kind of problem with naked people? This is a freedom of speech issue! I'm allowed to do this!"

"I don't have a problem with adult videos. I have a problem with you advertising your place as The Friendly Elf Shoe Seller when (a) you don't actually sell shoes, (b) you're obviously targeting people who meant to visit the The Friendly Elf Shoe Cellar, and (c) you didn't even look to see whether I was a child or a nun or something before you buried me in booby flyers."

"Freedom of speech! Besides," he said pointing to something on the ground, "I used that form there to ask if you were an adult."

"But you wrote it on the back of a postcard of a naked 16 year old girl."

"Freedom of speech!"

I tried to argue, but he started throwing pictures of penises at me. I walked on.

I crossed the street to visit a shop I'd heard good things about, but when I got there I couldn't see inside. The shop's door and windows were completely blocked by a stack of televisions playing a generic cartoon that described the company's philosophy of shoemaking, the "emotional resonance" of its heel designs, and so forth.

The door wouldn't unlock until the end of the show, or until I bent down to the floor and found some tiny little button labeled “skip.” I just rolled my eyes and walked on.

The next store was a catalog store, but it was experiencing some difficulty. The store was completely empty aside from a pedestal on which sat a catalog with blank page after blank page. Each page had a little place to describe the shoes I should've seen, but the proprietor hadn't bothered to jot anything down. I walked on.

I came to another store. It seemed to have a nice selection of shoes but it was blaring music I didn't like. Worst of all, it was playing the music through my own iPod's headphones. I was too annoyed to look at the shoe prices, so I walked on.

Next I came to a small shop that at first appeared quite empty. But shortly a voice called from the back, "I'll be right out."

A few minutes later and fellow shuffled out of the stockroom clutching a massive display shoe he could barely move. He slowly dragged it across the store, placed it on a shelf, then moseyed his way back into the stock room. I watched for a few minutes as he brought one massive shoe after another from the back to assemble the store for me.

It was starting to look pretty nice, but he hadn't even finished the first shelf by the time I gave up and walked on.

Next door was yet another shoe shop. It had a strange name: "C Colon Shoes". Turning the doorknob was very difficult since it was too big for my hand. When I was finally inside, I tried to browse around but my feet kept slipping through holes in the floor, and I kept banging my head on low beams. Most of the shelves were empty (although the shopkeeper insisted he could see shoes on them), and the few shoes I could see had price tags so small it was as if they were written in Morse code.

The shopkeeper listened to me describe the problems I'd had shopping in his store, but he wasn't receptive to change. "That door handle works fine for me, and I never bang my head on those beams. I wear these big thick glasses so I can read the price tags no problem, and the holes in the floor are a design choice. So you can't blame the shop. The fault is clearly your own."

"But I'm the customer. Shouldn't the store fit me?"

"How could I know what you'd want. It fits me, so obviously the problem is with you."

I solved the problem by walking away.

In fact, I just gave up and went home. Nobody needs shoes that badly. Besides, I had recorded a television documentary about how poor online sales at most sites can be blamed on people not trusting online credit card transactions even though they happily give out their credit card numbers over the phone all the time.

Yeah, I'm sure it's just a security issue. What else could it be?