{"id":31785,"date":"2019-02-17T20:23:48","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T01:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=31785"},"modified":"2019-04-20T09:36:59","modified_gmt":"2019-04-20T14:36:59","slug":"adventures-in-the-shoe-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=31785","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in the Shoe Trade"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I was in college, I worked for Payless ShoeSource<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Payless wasn’t my first job — that was a comic book shop — and as jobs went, it was fine. I had just moved to Lynchburg, Virginia. I was at the mall one day, saw Payless was having a job fair because they were opening a new store, and got hired on to open the store, along with about thirty other people for a couple of days to unload the truck and set up the store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess I did okay, because I was asked to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over time I went from part-time to assistant manager, and from assistant manager to store manager. Then, in a gap year in college (I was a professional student) I carved out a kind of “traveling troubleshooter” role, and I spent two or three days a week helping solve problems in other stores in Virginia. I traveled a lot that year, and I enjoyed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had good times with Payless. I had some bad times, too, like when I caught my thumbnail on the edge of a box one night while straightening the shelves and tore it right off the nailbed. (It’s never grown back correctly since.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there were fun times, like when the company sent pre-stamped envelopes and sample letters so every employee could write their Congressman and ask them for vote for a bill extending China’s Most Favored Nation trading status<\/a> since Payless’ stock was manufactured in Chinese factories. I took the sample letter and pitched it, I took the pre-stamped enveloped, and I wrote a letter to my Congressman asking him to vote against<\/em> extending China’s Most Favored Nation trading statues. I wasn’t even shy with my coworkers about what I’d done. China didn’t deserve super-favorable trading terms, not after Tiananmen Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, all things come to an end, and in retrospect I realize I stayed at Payless longer than I should have, as I was discontented with the job my last year. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy working for the company, as I did, but my sense of rewards and satisfaction from the job diminished greatly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My dad worked for Payless a couple of times on a part-time basis. So did (and does) my sister. It was easy money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Payless is closing up shop<\/a>. They went through one bankruptcy last year, they’re about to file for a second, and this time the vulture capitalists are going to liquidate the stores and close it up, shuttering all 2,300 stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hadn’t been in a Payless store in a while, so yesterday evening I went to a store here in York, one on Market Street near Giant and Lowe’s. Partly, I needed a new pair of shoes for work; I have a terrible habit of wearing my soles out<\/em>. But, mainly, I think I wanted to take one last look at the place before the liquidation madness set in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See, I remember when Payless bought Picway Shoes in the mid-90s, liquidation the Picways, and converted them rather quickly into Payless stores. What I remember of the Picway liquidation was how junky<\/em> the Picway in Lynchburg became. The shelves weren’t straightened, there was no order to the racks. There was a sense of not caring, because it was all going to be over soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Payless on Market Street was nice. I wasn’t sure it was open at first — the outdoor signage was turned off, there were no posters on the windows, nor were there posters on the walls. Even when I walked up to the door and put my hands on the handle, I wasn’t convinced that the door would open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was only one person in the store. She was on the phone, shelving shoes from one of the carts I remember from my halcyon days. When she got off the phone, she asked if I needed any help, though I really didn’t; I’d found a style of shoe that I liked, but I needed a larger size, which I eventually found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sat on one of the benches and looked at another bench, thinking about what a pain it was to replace the mirrors on the benches. Believe me, I did that a number of times. Then I picked up the foot measuring device, turned it over in my hands. It was a fancy one, metal with all sorts of sliding things. Back in my day, we used wooden measurers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She asked me if I needed anything, and I told her I didn’t. Indulging in a little bit of nostalgia, I said, as I’d worked for the company long ages past, in a time when Ents walked the Earth and the One Ring was thought lost forever. In other words, I left Payless twenty years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“At least you got out,” she said. There was a touch of resignation there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked at the kids shoes, then down the central aisle of women’s shoes, before I went to the counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Socks!” I said. “Do you have socks?” Like a moron, I had walked past them. The men’s socks were down the aisle of men’s shoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I picked up some dress socks and went back to the counter. “Here, this will help your UPTs,” I said, maybe a little too exuberantly. (“UPT” means “units per transaction.” That was something that was tracked twenty years back.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Thanks,” she said. “Doesn’t really matter now, I guess.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Oh,” I said. “I suppose it doesn’t.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A silent pause lingered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Your store looks really good,” I said. Then, “I’m sorry.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Thanks,” she said. “I try. I’m here all the time.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I nodded. I felt like I’d dug myself a hole, then kept digging, even though I was trying to say good things, offer some praise. But what good can one say, when the person you’re saying it to has an uncertain future ahead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She rang up the shoes and the socks. I left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Payless hasn’t been my company for twenty years, and I won’t really mourn it when it’s gone. Yet, I feel a twinge of sadness that it’s closing up shop. For a time in my life, Payless loomed large, and while the stores I worked at in my career have all closed, soon the company itself will be no more, and that’s worth feeling sad about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Header photo “Payless ShoeSource<\/a>” by JJBers<\/a>, licensed Creative Commons BY 2.0<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was in college, I worked for Payless ShoeSource. Payless wasn’t my first job — that was a comic book shop — and as jobs went, it was fine. I had just moved to Lynchburg, Virginia. I was at the mall one day, saw Payless was having a job fair because they were openingContinue reading “Adventures in the Shoe Trade”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[4644,4727],"class_list":["post-31785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-lynchburg","tag-payless-shoesource","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}