Little Things and Little Boxes

i mentioned earlier that it is not uncommon for a customer to come into the shoe store carrying an entire outfit, in hopes to find matching shoes. i've only been working for three weeks, but it's happened over ten times.

there is, however, a less common activity which has happened twice since my hiring.

"would you mind trying them on?"

"you want me to try them on?"

"is that okay?"

and they've had great excuses for why they need me to try on their shoes. one of them was a photographer and needed to see it on someone elses foot. the other was a girl shopping for her boyfriend.

that's what they say anyway. i say foot fetishers.

but that's only happened twice.

i actually ended up buying one of the pairs i modeled.

what happens every single day-- besides shoplifting-- is the confused look of a customer who has arrived on the second floor via escalator but cannot figure out how to get back down. the escalator only goes up. they'll stand at the top, looking around for other means of escaping, and sometimes they look as though they are legitimately considering running down the up-escalator and trying to beat it.

the stairs, the elevator, they're both on the other side of the floor.

and every day, i'll make corny shoe-related jokes-- telling the customer we'll have to tie a series of shoelaces together and lower them to the first floor-- but ultimately pointing out that the stairs are on the opposite wall.

for a while, i was lightly referring to it as "horrible architecture". but after seeing it happen, day after day, and after noticing that the stairwell is not only located on the far wall but in the woman's section i've changed my mind.

it's marketing as much as displaying milk at the back of a grocery store is marketing.

when any customer is ready to leave, and has found the escalator upon which they arrived, they will discover they have to walk all the way back across the store's floor one more time-- passing through the women's shoes-- and trying to escape.

generally they don't escape very immediately. the women's section has a way of eating people. and the stairs are no accident-- no horrible architecture.

oh, and on a separate note, i discovered something interesting to me and perhaps boring to you regarding the structure of a shoe box.

do you see the metal eyelet? not all boxes are as fanciful about it, but about 98% of them have some form of seemingly useless hole on the side that tells you size and style. steve madden boxes don't have a hole and i hate them for it.

the hole is for me, it's also for you-- but it's much more for me. it's because when you stack ten shoe boxes on top of each other, it becomes very difficult to pull the bottom one out without destroying the box. if you pull by the lid, it will rip and the box will still not come out-- the lid will come out and the tower of shoe boxes will tilt, but the box will not come out.

also, if you were to grab the box with your whole hand-- grasping both the lid and the box at once-- you will be able to pull it out and as soon as it's free, it'll flip open and the shoes will fall on the ground. you can't hold a shoe box by the short end alone because it forces the other end to open-- sort of like how a clothespin works, just without the spring to make it close.

that's why there are those holes. you just slide your finger in as a hook, and pull the box out with ease and perfection. it's a savior when it comes to stocking and closing.

appreciate that little hole if you didn't already.

posts like this happen when i've had too much coffee and didn't plan out what i was going to write.