The shoe store…

So shoe shopping is very different today from when I was a kid. First of all, you didn’t own a ton of shoes back then. At the end of each summer, the family went to get “school shoes” for the new year. In addition to these, you had a pair of sneakers and perhaps a pair of sandals or flip flops.

Upon arrival at the shoe store, we were greeted by an eager salesperson with a foot measurer in hand. They’d take a quick measure to track our foot growth, and once we picked shoes to try, the salesperson went to the back to retrieve the shoes from the stockroom. When they returned with the shoes, they would neal down, remove your current shoe, and put on the new shoe to check for fit. The employee even had the handy shoehorn for less flexible shoes. They had you stand and checked the fit again before you sauntered around the store to see if the shoes were comfortable. This dance was repeated with subsequent pairs of shoes until the winner was declared.

Fast forward to today. You walk into a store with shoes piled high on the walls. You pull your own pair from the mountain of options and groan when the wrong shoe size is in the box. You try to find a seat on which to sit and usually wind up on the floor or hobbling on one leg as you put the candidate on your foot. If it doesn’t fit and you can’t find your size…too bad! Everything is on the sales floor, and many shoes are put back in the wrong spot by other customers. Have fun searching for them.

If you really need help, it’s hard to find. As a child my son, Ethan, had sensory integration issues, so we really needed an actual human to help us with our purchase. There was no one to be found. Fortunately, the manager took pity and assisted us himself in the old fashioned way. We were able to find the perfect shoe. I went back to that same store and that same person for years to get Ethan the help he needed.

I so appreciated the assistance from that manager, but why does it take special circumstances to get quality customer service? It seems to be a thing of the past…

Stay groovy…

–Susie

(Copyright 2019 Susie Krivacic)