Two customers less

This is the fourth shoe shop I have entered today. I’m looking for elegant men’s shoes in brown, and I think I might just be in luck here. I’ve seen a pair I like in the window.

As I step out of the lift, I see shoes, shoes, and more shoes, but there is no shop assistant in sight to help me. Ok, I think, I’ll find the shoes from the shop window myself, and I wander up and down the aisles looking at the shelves. There are 7, 71/2, 8… 8 1/2 – that’s my size. I search the rows of shelves from top to bottom. They’re full of shoes, but I can’t find the ones I saw in the window. In my mind, I can already hear a shop assistant telling me: ‘Sorry, we’ve sold out of your size.’ I hear those words often, and not only when I’m shopping for shoes.

It’s a very upmarket shop, but definitely understaffed. I’ve just decided to look for someone to help me on the floor below when a woman approaches me. She’s in her mid-40s and enveloped in a cloud of perfume. ‘Can I help you?’ she asks, straightening up a pair of size 7s on a shelf.

I tell her I saw just what I’m looking for in the window, and I can see she doesn’t like what she hears. And here they are, those words I’ve been dreading: ‘If they’re not on the shelves, we don’t have them.’ As I already mentioned, I’ve heard those words many times before, so I switch to Plan B, a plan that has worked many times before, though it’s something a shop assistant should think of without any prompting from me, the customer.

‘What about the shoes I saw in the window? Might they be size 81/2?’ I ask hopefully. ‘Just a moment. I’ll look and see.’ She strolls towards the stairs at a leisurely pace, stopping to chat briefly to a colleague, and disappears into shoe Never-Never- Land, or so it seems. It’s a full eight minutes before she returns. But at least she has good news for me. Plan B has done the trick again!

The shoes fit well, but cost more than I had been planning to spend – 180 euros, I think, is a lot of money for a pair of shoes. I try to quell my misgivings by reciting to myself all the arguments in favour of my buying them. Expensive shoes last longer, are more comfortable. They’re handmade, have a better shine, and so on. Besides, if I cut back on visits to the cinema and eating out for a while, I can easily afford them.

I follow the shop assistant to the cash desk, where a young lady who has just entered the store beats me to it. She takes a pair of high-heeled ladies shoes out of a plastic bag. ‘I would like to exchange these,’ she says, pointing to the bent heel of the left shoe. The shoes are a very upmarket brand, so I expect them to give her another pair without further ado. But no: the shop assistant wants the receipt. ‘I can’t give you another pair if you don’t have the receipt,’ she says in an unfriendly tone. ‘But they cost 150 euros, and you stock this label. It says so in your window. I bought these shoes on holiday in Ticino. You can’t expect me to drive 600 kilometers just to exchange a pair of shoes!’

‘Sorry. There’s nothing I can do about it,’ the shop assistant answers firmly, shrugging her shoulders, as if her words alone hadn’t been enough to express her total lack of concern. The young lady leaves the shop, close to tears, and the battleaxe shop assistant passes my shoes over the scanner. ‘Stop!’ I say. ‘On second thoughts, I don’t think I will buy them after all. From what I’ve just seen, I get the feeling it’s not a good idea to spend so much money in this store.’ ‘As you wish,’ she answers, totally unimpressed. ‘I’ll cancel the sum, then.’

‘You do that,’ I answer. ‘And be sure to tell your marketing department you’ve just lost two customers.’

Amazingly good!

Some years ago, the manufacturers of a well-known brand of leisure footwear advertised one of their models using the slogan: ‘The only thing that will ever need replacing is the laces.’ I bought a pair of these shoes in the United States and wore them regularly, at least twice a week.

After three and a half years, the back part of the sole came loose, and I was about to throw them away when I remembered their advertising slogan. I packed the shoes up and sent them to the company headquarters in Germany. I had no receipt, so I just sent a brief accompanying letter. Two weeks later, I received a parcel containing a brand new pair of my favourite shoes together with a letter from the company apologizing for the inconvenience and explaining that the problem had been caused by a production fault affecting a small proportion of the shoes. Wow! You will not be surprised to hear that I have been buying their shoes for the last 18 years.