Shoes, Glorious Shoes

I’m a sucker for shoes, always have been. But in recent years my requirement that they be comfortable has limited my choices. I have had the incredibly bad luck to find great shoes that are then discontinued both by Ecco and by Gabor.

I went through the entire last year without finding even one pair of comfortable new shoes to buy. I was getting a little panicky that I was going to have to go to my 40th HS reunion with dorky shoes that were falling apart.

Yesterday I decided to go to DSW, thinking that among those thousands of shoes they would have a pair or two that would work. The price was definitely right, but after an hour of trying on everything that looked like even a remote possibility, I walked out empty-handed thinking something must really be wrong with my feet if DSW was a bust.

But then I decided to go to Nordstroms, where I had had shoe luck in the distant past. Nordstroms is a place where the salespeople still work on commission. This means if they want to make a commission they know their stock, they listen to people, and they are courteous. I can’t say any of those qualities were met at DSW, where I was hard-pressed to find an employee who even spoke English. Granted the prices are about four times as high, but I was desperate.

Uzma was the young woman who waited on me at Nordstoms. She too was not from this country, but she was probably from India and spoke excellent English. She quickly sized me up and disappeared into the back, coming out with a stack of four boxes.

I warned her that I was difficult customer to please and that we might not be successful. But she just smiled and started opening the boxes. Not only did they all fit, but two of her choices were absolutely perfect. The color was right. They fit and were comfortable. I just love the black ones that will be dressy but casual at the same time.

As I was leaving I asked Uzma for her card, thinking that in the future I would go straight to her, skipping Comfort One and certainly skipping DSW.

They always say the shoes make an outfit. I hope this is true, because I have nothing new and exciting to wear. So maybe they will look at my hair (more on that later in the week) and my feet and say “Can that possibly be Barbie?” Yes, I’m sad to say that was my name until I went away to college.

Don’t you love my shiny black sandals?