Tag Archives: online shopping

Black, laceless, size fourteen

Every once in a while I’ll find myself in a shoe store. I have a size fourteen foot, so it’s unlikely that they’ll have anything past thirteen. But sometimes there’s going to be something, and maybe it’s not a fourteen, maybe it’s a thirteen but I’ll try it on anyway. And it looks great, I feel like I’m doing a normal thing, buying shoes at a shoe store, I’ll do like a whole series of laps around the showroom just to make sure I’m not tricking myself into thinking that these things are going to work out when they shouldn’t. And I’ll do it, I’ll buy them.

And it always turns out that, despite my in-store laps, I had tricked myself. Because whatever pace I was maintaining on that soft shoe store carpet, now that I’m outside, man, these things are way too tight. It’s the kind of discomfort that only starts to manifest like an hour, two hours after continuous wear.

One time I bought this pair of black shoes for a job at a new restaurant. I needed a very specific style, laceless, black, some sort of adhesive grip on the bottom. I don’t know, it was all a lot of very exact rules for buying these shoes. And I had like a week to make it happen. And so I went online, I found the shoes, they showed up maybe five days later, but they were too big, like way too big. These things said fourteen but they felt like a seventeen.

And so now I only had three days left. I placed another online order, but I wasn’t sure they were going to get here in time. And they didn’t, so I wound up at the shoe store again, tricking myself into buying those thirteens. Don’t worry, I told myself, you’ve got this. These are going to work out fine.

But that slow pain that starts after an hour or two, it was crippling after three or four. By the time I got out four hours after that, my toes were practically purple. Thankfully, while I was at work, that second online order arrived at my house, and so I didn’t even bother to try to them on, I thought, well, I’m definitely never wearing the thirteens ever again, and I don’t have anything else, so they have to work, they simply must fit.

The shoe store lady kind of put up a fight when I went to return the thirteens. “Did you wear them?” and I should’ve just said no, like, what is this lady, the shoe judge? No, just accept the return, thank you very much, you have a nice day too. But for some reason I was overly honest, “Well, yes, but just for one day.”

“One day?” she looked up at me, recoiling the handheld barcode scanner that she was just about to use to zap the purchase clean from my credit card. “What do you mean one day?” and usually I’m much more confrontational, like usually I would’ve been like, “What do you care? Just zap it, what are you, personally invested in this pair of shoes?” But I was so defeated, my feet still swollen from the day before, I think I might of started to weep, a soft weeping, but still, I was like, “Come on, please, they hurt so badly, I can’t …” and she kind of deflated, like I could tell she was looking forward to that confrontation, but this, I had to have been weeping, it was a pity zap, she thought I was pathetic.

And I got to work, my second day on the job, and these shoes, the second online delivery, they said thirteen, and these actually felt like a thirteen. I couldn’t understand it. The fourteens felt like seventeens, but the thirteens a strict thirteen? There was no winning here. It was another painful night. I thought about how I was going to go forward. I thought, am I going to have to find a new job? Why is it this hard to find a pair of shoes?

At the end of the shift, peeling those thirteens off, the rush of blood to my deprived extremities, I said, screw this, I don’t care. No way am I going through another night. I returned everything, all of the boxes, take it all back, I give up. I went into the back of my closet and reached for my trusty pair of blacks, laced up, a little scuffed on the edges, soles so smooth I could slide across the floor with little more than a brisk two-step.

And you know what? Nobody said anything. That stupid rule book that they gave me when I was hired, what a joke. Someone must have written it up years ago and that was the last time it was ever seriously consulted. One time I was on the floor and one of my managers even stopped me, he was like, “Hey Rob, your shoe lace is untied.” I was like, “Hey thanks a lot boss, good eye man,” and he gave me one of these winks, a really mild thumbs-up, like keep up the good work Rob, nice shoes buddy.

Be an adult, man

I can’t take it anymore. I want out. No more of this conventional life. No more going to work and paying bills and flicking my cell phone on and off, even though nothing’s happening, no calls, tons of emails, way too many emails actually, but all junk email, TV shows that I don’t watch anymore sending me an update about last night’s episode, and tonight’s episode, and tomorrow’s, shoe manufacturers letting me know every single day about new shoes on sale, even though I only buy like one pair of shoes a year, even though when I bought them online, and it showed me a little check box, it was already checked, and it said, “Please! Keep me informed about daily deals and specials! Yes!” I made sure it was definitely unchecked, but despite my unchecking, the emails started trickling in, those crafty little algorithms refusing to take no for an answer, maybe we’ll just send him an email a day anyway, maybe he’ll buy more shoes, come on man, how about just buying one shoe? Of course I won’t buy any more shoes, but I’ll rarely go through the process of unsubscribing to those emails, you always have to open the email to find the unsubscribe button, also, it’s never a simple unsubscribing, it’s always, you will now be redirected to our web site where, amongst other nonsense, you’ll be able to hunt and dig for option to opt out of these emails, and even on that unsubscribe page, there’s still an option to stay subscribed, and of course the default, “No! I don’t know how I wound up on this page! Please, keep me updated on daily deals and specials! Yes!” is checked, another little trick.

No way, I’m totally over it, tired of getting that tiny dopamine kick every time I’m just sitting here trying to write, “ding!” email, one time out of every two hundred emails it’ll be something worth reading, but most likely it’s one of five hundred political action groups that somehow got their hands on my contact info, all of them peddling the same progressive agenda, each one of them asking for twenty five dollars, thirty five dollars, come on, just click here and make it an automatically reoccurring donation, make a difference, man, come on, man, fight the system, bro, you won’t even have to think about it. It’s like, we’ll take your money, you’ll get used to living with slightly less money, you won’t even notice it, and then we’ll start asking you for more, and then Obama’s going to be done with his second term and somebody’s going to take the reigns of that behemoth online donation machine. Who’s going to be asking for fifteen dollars every day two years from now, Biden? Clinton? Somebody else? Come on, just ten dollars. Thanks for the ten dollars. Hey, I have something else to ask you. Can I have ten more dollars? I know you just gave me ten, but, can you make it twenty? Every time you give it’s just an escalating cycle, asking for more and more almost immediately after.

Thanks, but no thanks. The only online shopping I’m going to be doing from now on is for hobo bindles. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hobo bindle in real life. What’s the point? Why not a backpack? I guess if you’re really out on your ass, you might not have a backpack readily available, maybe just a long stick, an oversized neckerchief. What do you put inside? Is it really easier to carry everything if it’s balancing on your shoulder at the end of that long stick? Maybe if I were to show up on the streets, on the back of some slow moving cross-country freight train with all of my stuff warm and dry in a backpack, whatever, in some messenger bag, maybe I’d be seen as a phony by the larger hobo community, because there’s always a natural amount of sympathy for any hobo, however reluctant we are to give it, nobody likes to see anybody out there, in the cold, hungry, dirty, down on their luck. But if that lifestyle is a choice? Then sorry pal, no soup for you, backpack or bindle, pick one, because nobody’s inclined to give you any sympathy at all. Why don’t you get back to work? How about charging up that cell phone and checking those emails? Paying for that cell phone bill on that cell phone bill-paying app? Because what’s wrong with you man? What’s your deal? You know how many people would kill to sit here and have people sell them stuff on a smart phone? Do you realize what an entitled whiny little brat you sound like? Get yourself together man, be a man, man, be an adult, dude.