Dear High Street Shoe Store,
I recently purchased the most delightful pair of faux patent leather shoes – I believe the term is ‘pleather’? – from a branch of your reputable high street store.
The shoes themselves were a ‘must-have’ investment; I make a 45 minute journey twice a day to-and-from my frightfully dreary marketing job based in a small business which manufactures health products of questionable genuine medical benefit for sufferers of a crippling disability known in laymen’s terms as ‘laziness’, who are searching for a miracle cure.
Having worked for this establishment for three years now, I can tell you with authority that no amount of distilled fish oil or seaweed extract will safeguard you from the tragic sexual moribundity brought on by morbid obesity.
I selected this particular pair of shoes for purchase based upon the fact that I knew I had to make a lengthy journey by foot to the office and back, five days a week, and that I had to turn up looking smart and professional.
After discussing this with a Sales Assistant who was dressed in the style of an Extra from Moulin Rouge, we agreed that it might be best to go for a sturdy, plain, flat shoe with a relatively resistant surface.
I chose to ignore the look of blatant revulsion adopted by the Sales Assistant while I tried the shoe on, because:
a. I was in agreement with her that the shoe was ugly and made me look like a 1950’s lesbian on a rambling holiday
b. She was probably finding it quite difficult to maintain her position as a Sales Assistant at a shoe store whilst simultaneously moonlighting as a dancing Prostitute in a Parisian Brothel. We’ve all been affected in our own little ways by the credit crunch, haven’t we?
So I bought the ugly, practical shoe at significant expense, and then I bought the shoe protectant suggested by the Prostitute/Sales Assistant to make the shoe last for as long as possible.
You can imagine my surprise when I duly donned the shoe for my trip to work the following morning, only to find that it disintegrated within minutes.
And I mean literally disintegrated. As if the shoe itself were composed of flesh and my foot from a particularly virulent strain of flesh-eating bacteria.
I took the shoe back to your store to discuss the issue with the prostitute, but she wasn’t there, presumably because she had contracted some form of sexually transmitted disease the evening before; an element of prostitution which I feel was inadequately portrayed by the Moulin Rouge Musical, but anyway, I digress.
The Prostitute’s Sales Assistant Colleague, cleverly disguised as the Terminator going through a ‘Goth’ phase, kindly explained to me that she was unable to provide me with a refund on account of the fact that I must have used the shoes, and please note that this is a direct quote, ‘in a way which conflicts with the terms of usage or the purpose for which they were designed’, thereby absolving the shoe store of any legal obligation to cover the cost of the aforementioned damage.
‘Just out of interest’, I asked the Terminator-Goth hybrid, ‘what sort of behaviour constitutes a conflict of the terms of usage or the purpose for which they were designed, because, I just used them for walking, you see, and not for dancing, rock-climbing, running, robbing banks, kicking an elf to death or providing a shark with dental care using only my feet’.
‘Well’, the Terminator explained, ‘these aren”t really, y’know, walking shoes’
‘Right’, I said, ‘So, they are the sort of shoes that you aren’t supposed to walk in, then?’
‘That’s right’, she said, smiling and flashing her lazer-beams at me.
Well, as long as that’s clear then. My mistake.
Yours, quite full of rage,
Nicolette Smith.
