Shoe Shopping - A Steve Rant

‘New Shoes?’ Johnny said looking at Steve’s new wheels.

‘Don’t talk to me about these bloody shoes.’ Steve shook his head as he sat down and then took a swig of his beer.

‘Rubbing you?’

‘Nah it’s not that, have you been shoe shopping recently?’ Johnny shook his head. ‘Well don’t’, I can’t believe how bad the staff were. They seem to consider themselves to be some kind of benevolent royals, who should be treated with the utmost respect at all times and are only working there out of their altruism.’

Johnny smiled. ‘What happened?’

‘Well, I tried on the left one, like you do, and it was perfect and I wanted to try the other.  I must have stood there with a shoe in my hand for at least 15 minutes looking for a shop assistant to help me, but nothing.’

‘Fifteen minutes?’

‘Okay it was probably more like three minutes but it felt like 15 and I felt like a bloody idiot. Surely if you stand in a shoe shop holding one shoe you are signalling that you need assistance but the staff in this particular branch of Shoeworld were obviously inept at reading the signs.’

Johnny smiled at his friend’s misfortune.

‘I tell you if eye contact avoidance was an Olympic sport, I could have been looking at the synchronised threesome Olympic champions, so adept were they at looking in different directions as soon as I thought I'd caught their eye.’

Steve took another long swig of beer.

'Honestly I was beginning to think. I was dead but didn't know it. I looked around for Haley Joel Osment thinking that maybe he would speak to me, but where was the star of The Sixth Sense when you need him?'

Johnny smiled again.

 ‘I don't want anything special, I’m not asking for the world, I don't want to be treated like a VIP, I just want people to do their job and assist me. After all the clue is in the name, assistants, they are not shop loungers or shop gossipers are they?’

‘So what did you do?’
‘I um….’

‘What did you do Steve?

‘Well, I …um…’

‘Spit it out.’

‘I threw the shoe down and stormed out.’

Johnny laughed. ‘So where did you buy those from?’

‘Well I knew the left one fitted so I ordered them online.

‘Genius’ said Johnny. ‘Now how about trying to walk them in and go to the bar to get us another beer.’

Steve collected the empties as did as he was told.