It's not upholstery

[gene]

It's not upholstery, but it has sewing, sharpening, craftmanship, quality...

I found this video amazing!!! Yes, three of exclamation marks.

http://wimp.com/vuittonshoe/

gene

[mike802]

Thanks Gene, Darren aught to get a kick out of this one :D

[bobbin]

Very interesting, Gene.  I've worked in "shoe shops" and if you never have you have no clue how hard the work can be.  It's hard to believe that there was once a time when shoe manufacture was a staple component in the economic backbone of New England.  Lewiston/Auburn, Biddeford, Saco,Sanford in Maine.  Nashua, Manchester, Dover, Rochester in NH.  Fall River, Lowell, Lawrence in Massachusetts... a drive through those communities is presently shrouded in privation but if you look carefully at the architecture you see plainly that huge wealth was created in those communities. 

My brief stint in a "shoe shop" taught me several things:
1.)  I was "doin' time" and the end was in sight!
2.)  I worked with people who had no other option.  They were trapped; some were illiterate, some were lazy, others never considered another "way".  Too many smoked and drank their paychecks and were -ucked out of their pensions because they were too ignorant to see that "their jobs" were being outsourced and they never bothered to consider life beyond that Friday's paycheck. Or the mandatory shop closing (for "maintenance") in mid-July.
3.)  If you put 20 0f those stalwart workers together you'd be lucky to cobble together a full set of teeth. 
4.)  They were cranking out shoes on equipment that was obsolete in 1940, but the shopowners never bothered to upgrade anything, ever.  But at the "meetings" they'd tell their workers to increase production so they'd win the next contract.  They never had a chance of saving their jobs.  Andwhen the "next" contract never mateialized it was laways because production had been below par...

Nothing made in that shop was constructed of the quality that it could be repaired/refurbished, although plenty of the workers could have repaired anyting put in front of them.  And so it is with the cheap crap from SE Asia.  Use it up, throw it out and buy more... price is king and so is crap. 

I worked in the shipping dep't. and was fired because I "back talked" the shop owner.  He called me an "uppity college -itch" when I failed to answer the phone by identifying myself first (no one else did either).  And I called him on it in excellent English, without raising my voice, and in front of the entire clerical "front end" staff.  I wonder if he ever knew that his son was selling grass and crack to the shop workers?! or maybe he didn't care.

[hidebound]

     When I was growing up there was a shoe factory in most of the towns around.

When I was just 16 I decided that my parents didnt know anything much and all I wanted to do anyway was farm, so I might as well get a head start and go to work in the local shoe factory.

My first day just before lunch my group leader came up and made the comment that he had only been there 15 years and they just made him group leader that day.

I went to lunch and I couldnt get his words out of my head. 15 years didnt seem to be much of a head start.


I didnt go back after lunch and I was happy to be back in school the next day. One of the great lessons of my life.