Visits

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Service

Not so long ago, I went out to buy a pair of shoes, which seem to come and go in my house like stray dogs. I'm not sure why. It's not like l spend so much time walking, and I've certainly not been running any marathons lately (or ever) and yet I seem constantly in need of shoes. I guess it could be that the workmanship in this part of the world leaves something to be desired in the area of longevity of product, or perhaps it's because I am often aware of the need but rarely actually do anything about it. 

But anyway, what I noticed at the time was that trying on shoes is a rather challenging task. You pick out a pair for yourself from a table full of shoes, or you hunt down a clerk to help you find the proper size, and then you sit yourself down on a small bench and try to figure out just how you're going to get your foot to the shoe or the shoe to your foot. The distance from my hands to my feet seems rather vast nowadays, and the hand doesn't want to cooperate with the foot nor the foot with the hand once they reach one another. So you finally manage to maneuver one foot into one shoe, kind of like trying to maneuver a radioactive specimen with a robotic arm by remote control, and then you've got to tie the thing, which involves getting around the general hinderance of your stomach, which is in the way of your line of sight. You decide to buy the shoe whether it fits or not rather than put yourself through the same struggle for another choice. 

And this got me to thinking later about the long lost gracious times of my youth, and of my parents' era, when shoe stores employed 'fitters' who would sit you down, measure your feet, bring out several versions of the choice you had made, put the shoe on your foot, tie the shoe, check the heel and squeeze the toe, and then have you walk about to test the fit. Now I call that service!


Many things were like that back then. At the gas station, the attendant would fill your tank and wash your windshield and check things under the hood, and so on. That was his job as "an attendant". In many gas stations now there is no attendant whatsoever. You pump your own gas and pay by machine. 


There used to be elevator girls who would open the door and ask for your floor and press the proper button and hold the door while you exited and others entered. Of course, elevators were not quite so automatic back then. The door had to be opened and closed manually, for instance, by the elevator girl. 

In the movie theater or the symphony hall, there were people who showed you to your seat with a  little flashlight. In the restaurant, waitresses made regular rounds with the coffee pot to ask you if you'd like a refill. Nowadays, you buy one cup and that's all you get unless you pay for another. 

There were many things like this, which somehow made one's life and pursuits more personable, more connective, more individualized. It must have been good for employment figures, but perhaps not so good for the company's profit margin. But it certainly made trying on shoes easier for a rickety old man like me!

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