Our local Barnes & Noble is pretty much the hang-out spot for... everyone. The cafe area is always full of tweens, mothers with young children, old men with thick books, younger adults studying, people working on computers, you get the picture. It's also summertime, which means people will be wearing flip-flops. That's pretty much a given.
My husband and I went in a few nights ago to get some work done. We're sitting there, minding our own business when this old guy walks by and says, really meanly, "Sir, can you put your shoes back on?"
I looked down at my husband's feet. He was wearing flip flops, but one had accidentally slid off and his foot was dangling an inch or two above it. Flip-flops do that. At this point, I was super-confused, and I even asked my husband if the guy was even an employee (I thought he might have been a random crazy). He was like, whatever, and he didn't put his flip-flop back on.
In the next 5 minutes, the guy walked by no less than 3 times (his employee tag was clearly visible), staring at my husband's feet and scowling. He then grabbed his walkie-talkie and REPORTED my husband for not wearing shoes.
This infuriated me. I went straight to the manager and told him the story. He looked kind of upset, apologized, and said he'd speak to him. I didn't even have to describe the employee to him, he knew exactly who I was talking about. I went back to the cafe, where my husband told me he had gone around to more people and bothered them, too. I looked around and noticed that almost everyone was wearing flip-flops, slides, mules, or sandals with open backs. And almost everyone had their foot at least partially out of their shoe.
I saw the manager talk to the employee, and then he was replaced with a much more pleasant employee. This was nice: we could concentrate on our work now without getting stared at by the creepy guy. But then he came back! And he would walk by us and just stare at my husband's feet. So I did the same thing with my flip-flops, just to spite him.
I called my mom and asked her if I was crazy for thinking that flip-flops naturally slide off sometimes. She wanted to know why I asked that, and I told her about the guy, and then she said that the same employee had repeatedly bothered my dad rudely for the same reason, in addition to telling him that he shouldn't be browsing through books (in a bookstore) if he wasn't going to buy all of them.
Question: why hasn't this guy been fired yet?
Edit: I love that I'm being called an evil bitch because this guy rudely and without any sort of explanation told my husband that he wasn't wearing shoes when, in fact, one flip-flop had accidentally slid off without his knowledge. And I mentioned above that we didn't think he was even an employee, hence how my husband reacted. If I started letting my flip-flop dangle too, it's because the manager took my complaint seriously and told me that what the employee said to my husband wasn't in line and he even apologized. The employee was not supposed to comment on my husband's feet. That's not his job.
To all the haters: stop staring at people's feet if it bothers you so much. Or seek therapy.
← Ctrl ← Alt
Ctrl → Alt →
← Ctrl ← Alt
Ctrl → Alt →