More to file under PlatKat’s Retail Bitchin’…
Payless Shoe Source is lying to us all. Payless is not a source of shoes, but a dealer of cheap, uncomfortable footwear no different from its higher quality competitors. If it were truly a source of shoes, its brick-and-mortar spaces would be filled with machines and conveyor belts churning out cookie-cutter shoes while sad, tired people watched over them. Or maybe they’d be lined with cobblers, hard at work constructing one-of-a-kind items that would last a lifetime while sad, tired slave-drivers ensured them they were indeed still in China and their 12-cents-an-hour pay rate is absolutely legal. (Whoops, I was thinking about Nike for a second there.) But no, nothing truthful or interesting takes place in these edifices—just long lines of tall shelves housing rows of boxes containing already manufactured cookie-cutter shoes while sad, tired people try to sell them.
Payless, get your act together. You’re a store like everyone else. The only thing special about you is the lack of cushion in the soles of your products, causing them to wear out, fall apart, and cause blisters and bunyons throughout the whole process.