Favorite sport

.., as it’s universally known, is shopping. Specifically, shoe-shopping.

Got a Lord&Taylor end-of-season coupon in the mail (something useful in USPS pulp download, for a change) and went to get my “20% of our sale items” bargain. Naturally, same idea occurred to other 759 women, all wandering in pandem0nium around same 4 1/2  stands with all left-shoe sale merchandise and then shuffling among settees with boxes and single shoes strewn all over them in insane hope to find something wearable AND moderately priced – unlike a pair of some-designer-I-never-heard-of  podium-rough creation which was generously discounted from “suggested” $1,400 to mere $850. And who, incidentally, are those crazies who’d suggest such a thing? I want to look into their shameless eyes.

Anyway, what I want to is to brag. I did dug up something pretty: Franco Sarto sandals that Zappos downgrades to $55 but I fetched for $30. And naturally, the original tag was for $125!

You’d think – where’s the plus of shopping at L&T? You spend 3 hrs, give or take, among hordes of sweaty women and loud sales assistants to just get one lousy pair? Not quite; here’s why.

Among those only-left-shoes I did manage to dig up two others I wouldn’t mind to pay a bargain price for. And a saleswoman did scanned the label of them to her portable to get the right shoe for me. But apparently, those right shoes, as my luck would have it, were already packed and go to some warehouse. The lefties were put on the racks by mistake. An ordinary store sale clerk would just shrug her shoulders – but L&T’s Maxine went fighting for me; she combed through the database, made an order for those same shoes in my size from some other branch, ordered it to be delivered for free to my home at that day’s discount prices and promised they will not charge my credit card until I received the package! That’s what I call service.

I’ll give you an update when I do receive it…