So it does pay to be a nice guy!

Yesterday, Mrs. Lime and I dropped by a mall in the area. Mrs. Lime needed to get some more maternity clothes. Since I knew she'd be shopping for awhile, I thought I'd go to the nearby sports shoe store.

I have to go out and grab some new shoes every couple of years or so. I wear basketball shoes non-stop. They're comfortable and ready for any situation. I can do anything from sit at my desk working to running to get the car in the parking lot. They're good for anything. Multi-task footwear at its finest.

I like bright colored or really nicely styled shoes. As I've found from experience, it's pretty evident that women tend to notice nice or bright colored shoes much more so than men. I'm guessing that has to do with women's general enjoyment of shoe shopping. I have 5-6 pair of shoes; my wife has 50-75. They just like shoes and evidently tend to look at other people's shoes. There's several women in the building (there's over 1,500 people in our building, so you don't know everyone) who often comment when I wear shoes that they like, but have no clue who I am. I'm generally known as 'the guy with the shoes'. I guess I could be known for worse things than having nice shoes.

So I headed into the store to look for some shoes. I'm a guy who doesn't necessarily look to have the latest shoe model that just came out. Most athletic companies release new shoe models once a year, just like cars by Ford or something like that. I tend to look for the models that are 8 months to one year old. They're usually marked down to half what they would have cost new, yet they're just as good as the ones that were released at the very beginning.

I went over to the rack and immediately saw the line of Jumpman shoes by Nike. These shoes originally started being created in the early 1980s. You may also know this line as the Jordan shoes (because they were created specifically for Michael Jordan by Nike). They are called Jumpman shoes because of the silhouette of a jumping Michael Jordan on all the shoes. They're always really slick looking and I've bought many a pair of Jumpman shoes.

I was standing by the shoes looking for a salesman. It became pretty obvious that there was only one guy running the store as he was dashing in and out of the storeroom in the back getting shoes for multiple customers. He saw me standing on the side and asked if I needed any help as he was going by with someone else's shoes. I said I did, but that he could finish up with the other people and then come back. He said OK and then headed over to finish working with a couple of other customers.

After a couple of minutes, he came back by and asked what I wanted to see. I asked him to bring me a pair of black hi-tops and a pair of red and white low-tops. The low tops were the bargain pair on sale and the black pair was regular price. He brought the shoes out, but had a line of 3-4 customers who were ready to check out, so he went over to the register first to try to get some of them taken care of first. I saw that he was getting out one of my shoes and lacing them up while checking out someone else, so I walked over to get the shoe to try it on and make it easier on him. I did the same with the second pair and told him I'd take them both. I also got a couple of heavy sweatshirts that were 'buy 1, get 1 free'.

I went to wait in line. It now was obvious that there was a teenager in the front of the line who tried to write a check for his purchase and the check was denied. He was pretty frustrated and was running the sales guy through the ringer. Meanwhile, the line had grown to 5-6 customers while this guy was complaining. I finally got up to the front and commented that it looked like he was having one of those days. He said that he had one employee not show up and another had to pick their kid up from daycare. So he was left alone to run the store.

It looked like I settled the guy down a bit because he appeared to relax. He reached into his pocket and told me he was going to give me a coupon that was for 30% off and 40% off if I spend over $100. I had done that, so it was a massive savings for me. Instead of spending around $300 on everything I purchased, I only had to spend $160 for everything. Great savings and I was pretty sure I had just earned $130-140 just by being nice to a guy for a few minutes who was having a bad day. Score one for me!

Moral of the story: Nice guys may finish last, but they end up spending less at shoe stores.