No Shirts No Shoes No Soup For You!

            Remember the days when the signs were everywhere? “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service.” I remember them being mostly pictorial warnings. It seemed reasonable. I don’t know why anyone would try and enter a restaurant or place of business either without shoes or half naked. It’s just indecent. I have recently noticed that these decals seem to be missing from a lot of business entrances. 

            Do the businesses assume that people have gotten smarter and don’t need that reminder? That is ridiculously wishful thinking. People are NOT getting smarter. Did they decide the signs were aesthetically violating? I guess that could be true, but people without shirts who are ordering donuts are much less appealing than a tiny sticker on a door. Maybe there is a secret club of shirtless, shoeless rebels that have removed the signs when no one was paying attention. Whatever the reason, I call for a reinstatement of the No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service rule.

            I would also like to add an amendment to this rule. If I see that you have taken your shoes off in a restaurant, coffee shop, or really any place of business, I (or the business) want the right to come and violently rip your food and drink out of your hands and hold it hostage until you put your shoes back on. What is that all about? Can I tell you that I have seen at least four people with their shoes removed in places of business in the last week? Who decided that was appropriate?

I saw one woman in a restaurant who had taken her sandals off, left them on the floor and was sitting Indian-style in booth. Granted, I’m happy she didn’t have her dirty shoes on the seat, but really, her feet didn’t belong on that seat, shoes or no shoes. At Barnes and Noble in the café, I saw a girl who had also removed her sandals and was sitting on one foot and dangling the other one. These places serve food! Why are your dirty, skanky-ass feet airing themselves out? And again, in another place of food service, Starbucks, I witnessed an Asian couple, BOTH of whom had taken their shoes off and actually were reclining in the lounge chairs in such a way that their feet were UP IN THE AIR. That’s right, their feet were higher than olfactory height for a midget. That has to be some sort of Board of Health violation. Speaking of olfactory sense and foot combination, a few weeks ago my poor mother actually witnessed a man in a book store who sat down, took his shoe off, and then lifted the shoe to his nose to smell it, as if he were enjoying it’s smell like a freshly-bloomed rose.

If you want your feet to be fancy free while you eat or drink, get your stuff to go, take it home, and then take your shoes off. It is discourteous to take your shoes off in a public place unless you are getting a pedicure. I don’t want to see your feet. I don’t want to smell your feet. I don’t want to sit where your dirty feet have rested their ten little piggies. If I see your feet while I’m waiting for my coffee, I want to run up to you and smack your coffee cup out of your hands much in the way I remember the beer cups were hastily tossed to the floor at frat parties when word was out that the Dean was paying a visit (Indiana was a “dry campus.” HA right). And if you are still so selfish as to think you have the right to take your shoes off in public places, where other people will have to experience your feet, well, then I hope you get ringworm.