Good Grief! Going Barefoot!

Based on replies I see on another site (Project Experience), the general public (i.e., general chaos) is hugely uninformed and completely apprehensive about going barefoot. Most (not all) of them appear to believe the world is totally littered with dirt, broken glass, and needles, and that barefooters are in constant alarming danger of stepping into all this because, obviously, they are deranged. Most restrict their barefooting to the beach and/or bed. (Richard Nixon wore shoes and socks---I wonder what Obama will wear when his family goes on beach vacation later in August.)

Bless this forum: people DO understand what they are doing.

 

Haha, this reminds me of the part of Frost/Nixon where Nixon says to Frost:

"Those shoes, they don't have laces... Aren't they a bit..... Effeminate?"

 

I think more of the public opinion is based on the way a barefooter's feet look by the end of a long day: diseased, dirty, malformed horrors.
That said, it's still your body so...who cares?

All I'd say is that no one, but no one, likes when a barefooter goes into some retail store or something...and when they're told that it's a no-no, they throw a fit. The retail guy is just telling you that so he doesn't get fired because his boss got fired because the store had to close to pay for the lawsuit filed by the guy who decided to wander around barefoot and stepped on something and got gangrene and lost their leg.

 

If someone steps on an unspecified object and gets gangrene, they are clumsy and unlucky and the place they are in is filthy. Damn.

 

When people use the "you might sue us if you hurt yourself line" they are getting so many things wrong at once, it's ridiculous.

First of all, it's suggesting that the barefooter in question is not the person most keen to avoid being injured. After all they've managed to journey from their house as far as the shop without mishap, and presumably this isn't the first time they've gone barefoot anywhere and they don't seem to have suffered enough to put them off trying it again.

Secondly it's displaying zero faith in the legal system - expecting someone who goes barefoot and hurts themself to be able to have the law blame the establishment for any injury caused. No-one would decide in favour of anyone who went in barefoot at their own risk.

Thirdly, most barefooters wouldn't try to sue even if the COULD win the case because it would just undermine their position if they wanted to go barefoot anywhere else.

Fourthly it's implying that the shop isn't a very safe place. If the risk of injury really is that high, people should be worried. Especially since customers are in there all the time wearing flip-flops and heels which pose just as much of a risk to someone not watching where they step (which a barefooter would have to do in order to get injured). By making a point about bare feet being too much of a risk, they're basically guaranteeing a victorious law suit to anyone who injures themselves while wearing some sort of footwear, however impractical.

Plus, if they think about bringing health-code into the equation then all they're doing is stating that they DON'T KNOW THEIR OWN HEALTH CODE. That's very worrying indeed. Imagine what else they might be getting wrong. Perhaps the health authorities would like to hear about it. Hmmmm....

It's usually at this point where a place (and in my case it's a bouncer on a door somewhere because I don't usually have any trouble elsewhere in Britain) will drop that argument and revert to dress code. You can't get past the dress code argument but you can leave them with a sting, pointing out that they should be able to admit straight away that it's just a snobbish dress code under the establishment's control instead of trying to pretend that there are rules that they can't do anything about imposed from above.

 

Well, despite all that, them's the rules - and as I've had to tell a few hoidy-toidy "IT ARE MY RIGHT TO SPREAD FUNGUS!!1" folks, if you're so enlightened as to go barefoot everywhere - you probably don't need the crap we sell either.

First: Did they make it uninjured? It doesn't take much for them to be leaving little dabs of blood on my floor. They may not have even felt/noticed it - but wanna bet the next soccer mom with her horrid troup will?
Second : Do I have faith in the legal system? Absolutely not. Idiots sue coffee cup manufacturers when they spill coffee on themselves, and they win. Fat people sue McDonalds for making those burgers so darn delicious, and they win. Smokers sue cig companies for the cancer they knew damn well they were getting, and they often win.
Third: These policies aren't set up to weed out the majority, they're set up to cut out the handful who will cause a problem. Most people probably wouldn't mind if I could have a flask of rum up at the counter, either - but it ain't happening.
Fourth: Of course the shop isn't safe. It's filled with dumb cow-like shoppers and their feral little kids...and all the garbage these people deposit on the floors at every moment.



So it's not snobbish. Sure nobody wants to see your roadkill-lookalike feet tromping around the store, but if/when you manage to hurt yourself as a result it becomes a problem for the store. Maybe eventually a good lawyer will get it thrown out, but still at the expense of cash and time - and possibly bad press. This isn't some civil rights issue.

 

FUNGUS? Oh dear. There's another popular misconception. Fungus (along with other microbes) thrives in a nice warm moist anaerobic environment. i.e. Shoes. If you go barefoot all the time, then fungus doesn't get the opportunity to grow.

As for "roadkill-lookalike-feet", well ok, our feet get a bit dirty but we actually go to a lot of trouble to look after our feet. The ones your describing are probably the feet that get brought out once a year to be transplanted into flip-flops and are all of a sudden on display after 10 months of festering inside sweaty closed shoes, or constrictive high-heeled pointy shoes.

Do you think we'd bother walking into the shop if there wasn't something in there we wanted to buy? I doubt it. On the other hand, you do have half a point because there are other shops out there that sell items that will do just as nicely and once we know to cross your shop off our list of places that are courteous and friendly towards us we shall not trouble you again.

You can make whatever rules you want, but please don't pretend it's anything other than your own personal preference that influences the rules. It's no different from requiring everyone to wear a pink hat, or requiring that no-one uses their mobile phones in the shop.

 

"Grim" has an opinion and I doubt this forum is going to change it. Personally, I enjoy going barefoot and will continue to do so. My feet are quite healthy, groomed, and not fungus-infested.

It seems that feelings on the topic of bare feet in public have a regional/cultural element to them. I've lived in a few different parts of the U.S. and there are definitely areas where bare feet would be less tolerated than others. Another interesting thing is that bare feet in public are accepted and encouraged in places such as beach-front boardwalk bars and restaurants, but discouraged in bars and restaurants in other parts of town (away from the beach). A bar's a bar, a restaurant's a restaurant, but somehow being by the beach absolves people from the "fears and dangers" of fungus, broken glass, etc.

I'll go barefoot where I can and when I can. If someone challenges me, I'll deal with it on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes I wear flip-flops or other footwear, but given a choice, you'll see my bare toes and soles.

 

Look Grim, i've been going barefoot for decades and my feet are in perfect condition.