i got kicked out of Whole Foods!

yeah cus when i go into a food store i like to walk in the deli case and dance on the selves of food. arty:

who is it unsanitary for?

 

Even though there is a signboard saying to not go barefoot, despite it being perfectly legal. Even I have to follow those same regulations. Whole Foods isn't alone in this, in fact, McDonald's, Burger King, various shopping malls and certain sporting events don't allow bare feet. Gotta live with it.

 

I've been in both McDonalds and Burger King barefoot a number of times without incident. Been to baseball games barefoot as well in Oakland and Arlington and never a problem.

Its often not about any policy so much as one individual's intolerance. The vast majority people either do not care, or refuse to confront people. That one odd person is just really a case of bad luck.

 

Just was in the downtown Baltimore Whole Foods - no sign, no prob. Was in there a long time, too, 'cuz some doofus tried to buy groceries with maxxed out credit cards and wouldn't leave. Was in line when the manager had him leave - looked right at me; said nyuthin' about being BF. Perhaps I was the lesser of two evils.

 

what if i went in there barefoot.. but walked on my hands instead? huh? huh? now what? oh oh!! maybe i could just roll.. my barefeet bottoms would never have to touch the ground! damn i'm so smart i impress myself!

 

Whats the difference Between the dirt on your barefeet & the dirt on the soles of the shoes worn by the person standing next to you ?

 

thats what i always wonder... and how often do shoes get washed? i wash my feet when i shower.. so thats at least once every other day... shoes are nasty!

 

Its the stupid rules that defy logic were they require footwear in Hardware/Homehandyman Stores in case something heavy falls on your foot but Jandals are considered acceptable footwear, Am I missing something here?

 

haha... i just thought of a good comeback... a week late, but ya know! next time someone tells me that i need to put on shoes, i'll ask them
"if someone had no feet and had to walk on their hands, would you make them wear gloves in here?"

 

Or the other way around:

"If someone had lost his/her arms or were born without them,
and thus has to use the feet as if they were their hands... would
you deny them entrance and service...?"

Of course, in both cases the corporate people would gasp in horror and quickly say "No, of course not!" as not to risk any heavy lawsuit from bodily disabled people for violating anti-discrimination laws.

Interesting side note: Yesterday I saw a report about shoes and feet (featuring a female barefooter in her 50s in the rural region of the Eifel - a region south-western of Cologne, the usual arguments in favour of sensible footwear, plus at least one doctor claiming the best for one's feet is to be barefoot as often as possible), which had a report about a woman who simply has to do anything with her feet, since she was born without arms (her mother used a Thalidomide product known as Contergan before birth, which led to many an infant in Europe and Africa - about 10,000 - being born malformed. Lucky U.S., since the FDA blocked the American market by refusing approval for sale of that product in the States). They showed pictures and film bits about that women named Bettina Eistel from her school days, up to winning a silver medal at the 2004 Paralympics for dressage riding (she held the reins in her mouth and steered the horse with her legs alone). One film bit from the late 1960s showed her in the supermarket, fishing her purse from her bag with her toes at the checkout.
Being a fully-studied psychologist, she states that people are much easier around her for her being different. A nice thing was her display of ease with which she handles (sic!) her life by using her feet. A thing, which us "normal" people have forgotten during the course of evolution, since Nature has made our hands the primary grapple hooks.

Her sense of humour was one prominent feature, as she answered when asked about people who wonder what she can't do without arms: "Well, tennis... and I am not about to be a handball champion, either."

Just having returned from barefoot grocery shopping,

~*Ganesha*~

 

Whole Foods isn't a hippy store, it's a YUPPY store frequented by "trendy" folks in their brand new Subarus and hybrids. (I drive an eight year old pick-up, myself) wearing the "uniform" of their non-conformity, you know, the clothes they bought at REI.

I'm not surprised they'd object to bare feet, how tacky of you not to be wearing the latest "outdoor" fashion boots mass produced by slave labor in Red China.

 

It isnt a hippy store, it is a large corporation....

A large corporation which needs to cover all its bases to avoid potential problems.

 

Ew. Your attitude is tacky.

 

Quit trolling. If you have a problem with it then what the hell are you doing on this board other than trying to be a jerk?

 

I agree. Shame when cute girls are prissy...

 

Are you serious? I have been here for five years, I dont troll. We dont censor here, because you are sensitive.

All Im saying is... why be a bitch about a life style people choose that is different than your own? Its not very 'hippy' is it.

 

So what exactly is hippy then I'd like to be enlightened... Seriously

 

Hell if I know.

 

Someone earlier posted that the "FDA" requires shoes. Not true at all. See the barefooters.org page for more information.

As for Whole Foods, one time a friend and I were in a store somewhere in NorCal, either Santa Rosa or Marin, I can't quite recall (we were on the road a lot that week). Anyway, we had been barefoot for days on end anyway and didn't think twice about going in barefoot, didn't even look to see if there was a sign. But some other customer, an uptight woman in her 50s, pointed at our feet as an employee was helping us. "You're gonna, you're gonna...you could cut...you need some shoes on!" I calmly turned to the woman and said, "It's cool, we're barefoot almost all the time and have really strong feet." She just went blank-faced and rolled her cart away. The store employee laughed and said "We're supposed to be about personal responsibility..." and went right back to answering our question. Later my friend, who has been going barefoot pretty mcuh since she graduated high school in the 1970s, said that one of the interesting things about living a barefoot life here in the US of A is how we (barefooters) sometimes serve as a place for people with "issues" unrelated to bare feet to dump all their anxieties.

To NakedTreeHugger, have you tried making some soleless sandals out of hemp? Try a two-piece design, one being basically an anklet with loops and the other a piece that wraps around the second toes but reaches back to loop into points around the ankle, giving the illusion of footwear. The advantage to a 2-piece design in that the anklet part can also have side loops for more threading, making it look like more sandal straps.