everything retails for a reason

Anyone who's been around this blog for a while knows that one of my personal mottos is "everything happens for a reason"... and sometimes that even extends to retail...

It all started first thing this morning when Sugarmonkey came into work carrying two big Footlocker carrybags, which turned out to contain three pairs of sneakers. Now I'm sure I've said this before, and if I haven't said it here I've actually said it to Sugarmonkey... but the boy has some serious personal style going on. Fortunately our bodyshapes are completely and totally different or I'd be seriously "Single White Female-ing" him. As it is he's the direct influence behind the purchase of my Converse All Stars... and I very often covet things he wears.

So it turned out he'd been stocking up on old school Adidas and Nike shoes... the ones he likes go in and out of production so he buys multiple pairs when he can... and he happened to have a 30% discount voucher, so big savings. And when I mentioned that I should go down and have a look at what they had, he offered to print me out a discount voucher too. Bless!

After checking the shoes online (and I will admit, seeking Sugarmonkey's approval on which ones were "cool"... as well as checking which shoes I couldn't buy due to aforementioned Single White Female issues) I headed down to the store in the Mall at lunchtime.

Now, the Footlocker store in the Mall is a poky, skinny little store... and it's crammed full of merchandise so you have no room to move... and with it being lunchtime, it was also kinda crammed full of customers... plus I think they'd cranked the heat up to about 150 degrees, because the deeper you went into the store, the hotter it got... and yes, the hotter and more crowded it got, the crankier I got. Added to that was the fact that there were only two staff members in the store, and neither of them seemed particularly interested in helping anybody... okay, scratch that... neither of them seemed particularly interested in helping ME. So after standing around being all hot and cranky I eventually just walked out thinking "well, you lost a sale there buddy!".

Instead I went to Harris Scarfe and spent money on underwear, since the stitching in some of my current pairs is falling apart... plus they were less than half price, so woohoo.

After work I decided to go down to West Lakes since it had the next closest Footlocker store (more or less).

Turns out that was a very good plan!

I stopped in at JB Hi Fi and found another episode of Doctor Who I didn't have which was marked down (squeeeeee)... and I also found a Bonds hoodie in that lime green colour I've been obsessing about for months... and it was my size (double squeeeee)...

Then there was the shoes...

Thankfully, not only is the Footlocker store at West Lakes ENORMOUS compared with the one in the Mall, it also wasn't overheated to 12 million degrees...

And I was served reasonably quickly by a tiny, tiny man with bleached blonde hair... so cute and pocket-sized!

Once again the retail gods (and I just realised that Lownee and I never invented a goddess of shopping... what the hell were we thinking!) were smiling down on me, because although I asked for both of the pairs I wanted to try on in a 9.5, he brought them out in a 10 because that was all they had, and they fitted perfectly.

I have to say that the Adidas Campus ST (in suede donchakno) just went on "like budda"... not only did they fit perfectly, but they instantly conformed themselves to my wider than normal feet... plus they look so damn cute. And seriously, why is that that brand new shoes always look so much shorter than the shoes you wore into the store? It might just be because they're all narrow and stuff... but they always seem tiny...

The Puma Frankie shoes I ummed and ahhed about a bit, but they're a skate shoe and have a reasonably chunky sole, which is always where my shoes wear out first... and since I was getting 30% off, I decided to just take both pairs.

Essentially I got two pairs of shoes (plus some "shoe protector" spray... gotta love that upselling), and then the Bonds hoodie (which was full price, as well as being in a completely different store), and it still came out cheaper than the two pairs of shoes would normally... which I think is a pretty good deal. Even if it does mean that my plan of not really spending any "unnecessary" money this weekend has already gone out of the window...

But I'm going to tell Sugarmonkey tomorrow that he's a bad fiscal influence on me... and also "thank you"...

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