From: P.R.
8-12-2019
A Victory (for entering a business while barefoot)
In answer to a member who wrote: “Yesterday I was kicked out of a local gas station…for being barefoot. The employee told me it was against the [state] Health Code to be barefoot,” another member replied:
For some reason, gas stations (perhaps even more than grocery stores) seem most concerned about enforcing shoe policies and posting signs. That seems odd since people don’t generally “dress up” to get gas or buy products inside (mostly cigarettes, soda and junk food). So why the big deal there? I don’t know.
But many gas station/convenience stores do not have a shoe policy. As anywhere else, it often depends on the particular employee we encounter. The employee you met clearly doesn’t understand the Health Code. They just referred to it as an excuse–hoping you’d cave in. When you didn’t, they moved to the next excuse–a typical pattern of an insecure person who doesn’t like to be challenged or corrected. So, what might we say when an employee claims it’s the owner’s policy? I’d ask to speak to the owner! I had a recent experience just like that in an RV park office that also sold some food items.
The employee, using the Health Code excuse, insisted that people needed shoes inside the park office since “they sold food there.” The employee would not look at the Health Dept. letter I carried with me (confirming that they have has no such rule), but then, with a scowl, switched to, “well, it’s our policy.”
I later met up with the owner and related the experience. He rolled his eyes and confirmed that they had no such policy. He apologized for the employee’s attitude and promised to follow up with some retraining regarding customer service! So don’t give up. Sometimes a story can have a satisfactory ending.