Walking down the polished floor at work earlier this week, a strange noise filled the hallway.

It was the faint sound of my footsteps — nothing more.  That may seem like an obvious observation, but given that I was wearing a pair of brown leather shoes, the near silence was a relief.

I got a new pair shoes last weekend, and the quiet walk came during the first day I wore them.  The pair they replaced were similar — a different brand and 12 years older, but from a short distance you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference by looking.  But your ears would know.

This older pair, which served me valiantly through the years, had one major flaw.  The soles would let off a high squeaking noise on any hard floor with the least bit of polish to it.  Imagine submerging your shoes in a puddle and walking inside without wiping your feet.  That’s what they sounded like at all times — wet or dry.

So it’s nice to now be able to walk without thinking people are judging me to be a delinquent who can’t wipe his feet and without making everyone start to wonder how it could be raining when the weather’s nice.

Out with the old, in with the new

Buying the new shoes was a fun experience.  Since I’ve (still) spent more of my working life in the retail footwear industry than anything else, it’s odd to be on the other side of that experience.  Little things like being allowed to actually sit down on the benches feel wrong.  I even find myself tucking wayward laces into the display shoes and straightening them on the shelves as I walk by.

I wonder if anyone else in retail, or with that background, catches themselves doing those things without thinking, or is compelled to inform the sales associate of their connection to the business.  Of course I found a perfectly normally place in our conversation to slip that in — because I’m smooth like that — and it actually set off a whole round of dorky shoe technology talk that I kind of miss from my selling days.

What I miss more is working just down the hall from a Cinnabon and a Taco Bell.  Though for the sake of my health, maybe it’s a good thing I don’t work in that mall anymore.