Saturday, March 25, 2006

My Shoe Guy

Mark loves my shoe guy, because he is the only man who can yell at me who I won't hit with my handbag. Today, I told Mark I thought I would have to take my shoes in and he smiled and said, "your gonna get yelled at." This is why going to the shoe repair shop is the only shopping Mark will accompany me on. He just loves it when my diminutive grey-haired shoe guy takes me to task in heavily accented english for walking on gravel roads in my kitten heeled boots. Or when he tsk, tsks me because he is going to have to replace the toe in my pointy shoes, again. How DO I wear all the rubber off, he wonders? The lectures usually take 20 minutes, the repairs take 5, the cost priceless.

Mark is very confused by why I continue to go to this guy, even though he loves to watch. You see, Mark being a man doesn't understand having a quality shoe guy. I mean he spends $19 on a pair of runners at Walmart and dumps them in the garbage when they are done. He doesn't understand the love and maintanice a good pair of shoes need. Or how hard it is to find someone who understands this about your shoes and can make them look good as new. Finding a good quality shoe guys ain't that easy. Take it from me, when my guy retires I may actually have to consider a Moneysworth and Best (shudder), these guys don't just come along all that often. Becoming a shoe guy, while sure to earn you a favorite place in a client's heart when you tell her you can fix her leather boots AND her broken purse zipper, is just not the kind of job that career advisors talk about all that often. That is why every quality shoe guy is old as Moses. People just don't train to be shoe guys anymore. What is going to happen when they all retire and instead of getting your shoes in a nice bag with some instructions on how to wear them properly you get to watch some pimply faced kid fish them out of a shoe mountain mingled with the work boots and the dockers? Yes, that sound was the collapse of civiliazation.

Picture from Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mmmfiber/117341700/

3 comments:

Squirrelly Girly said...

My dad not only has a shoe guy, he has a leather guy, a jewellery guy, a flower guy, and knows everybody in his bank by sight. I think it must be a European thing that we inheirited from our parents. I have a drycleaning guy who knows me as "That girl who always gets stuff on her Audrey Hepburn purse." I totally agree with you, these people are gems.

Mark Fournier said...

You have kitten healed boots, those poor kittens.

Mark Fournier said...

I do not spend $19 on a pair of runners. I spend $12 on a pair of runners and then use th extra $7 to buy a dozen pairs of socks to wear with the shoes.